Carbon Footprint: Whose fault is it anyway?

It has been taught to us since junior schooling that the environment is a place for all living beings. We have been taught interdependence and mutual benefit. For the next ten minutes let us forget that humans are destroying everything for their own greed. Let us dissect this and see.

Every living thing has a role to play in this eco-system. Since time immemorial, animals and plants have been maintaining all sorts of cycles to keep the ground cool and the wind blowing. The plants have refilled oxygen in the air that every organism breathes and taken in their carbon dioxide. Animals have been carrying forward the food chain smoothly. The simplest way to explain food chain would be this: the lion eats the deer, who feasts on the grass. More deer would mean less grass; that would mean more soil erosion. Soil erosion leads to damage to trees and that would get us into all sorts of trouble. So you see what I mean when I say how animals maintain the food chain.

Carbon footprint is the measure of emission of greenhouse gases by an individual or an organisation. Before humans found ways to emit greenhouse gases, there were seldom any instruments of harm. But since that ship has already sailed, it is wiser to look at things that can be done. Animals are our hope of bringing global warming to somewhat a stop. This is how.

Animals regulate the system of a particular region. Like a few cycles mentioned above, every region has a different setting, climatic conditions, and weather and eco system. Biodiversity of a particular region is adapted to a style which is maintained by animals and plants of that region. Therefore, animals have a direct involvement in maintaining the carbon cycle of the forests among others.

In a lot of villages where I surveyed people, there one problem was tigers harming their crops and cattle. These were villages close to protected forest areas. That was the first time I really understood what animals could really do. So, forests are animals’ habitat and therefore, they protect them. In a forest, people are only afraid to go because they fear being eaten. Out of the lot of them, 70% of people wouldn’t mind killing the tigers, but they couldn’t because a) it is illegal, and b) they were scared. Only 30% truly understand that only animals can hold the forests and their environments together. Of course protecting their habitat isn’t the first thing, but it is a chief reason, and I say this after really hearing it first hand from people who have experienced it.

By protecting our forests, they are directly helping reduce the carbon footprint of every individual. Every person who doesn’t understand the power of one tree, one whiff of oxygen, one less unit of greenhouse gases in our air, is likely to be in debt of animals that are protecting their share of trees.

But now we can remind ourselves again that we are destroying everything. Let us take a moment and think about this, shall we? Why do we say that the animals and plants are helping us? The world is not centered around us. We are a part of the system; everyone has a role to play. The organisms are not serving us, they are doing their job. It’s time we do ours. 

Vaibhavi Khanwalkar