<!--QuoteBegin-ashyam+Mar 29 2008, 11:19 AM-->QUOTE(ashyam @ Mar 29 2008, 11:19 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->I would do many things on my own like preventing wastage of power & water at home[right][snapback]80131[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm willing to wager that most people on IF and their relatives already try to save water, electricity (switching off lights when not used, for instance), use savings lamps, recycle old clothing and try to take cloth-bags from home so that they can avoid plastic bags from stores. Even I've been doing most of these things since childhood. Meanwhile, a Karnatakan friend doesn't even approve of wasting kitchen paper (but where I live that's from local sustainable resources; though I haven't found much cause to use a lot of it). Similarly, the Taoist Buddhists I know won't let the tap drip - ever; they strongly disapprove of water wastage.
People were doing all this before the western world started screaming 'global warming' as if it was a sudden apocalypse now. From where did I learn to be conscious of use and wastage? Not from Al Gore - who won whatever it was he won again for noticing the environment or something - nor from the media, nor those self-crowned environmentalists off on a crusade to make the world cleaner and greener as if they suddenly discovered the world was meant to be green and was anything but clean.
Instead, I learnt it from the usual source (the same I guess from where all Asian, native American and other 'non-progressive unsaved' people learn it from): Grandparents. Parents. Uncles and aunts. (Using common sense would get one there as well, I think.)
They don't ever waste water. They never ever waste food. Hindus always used recyclable leaves to eat on (I regularly do so, when back home in India). But nowadays washable, reusable stainless steel plates are also there and in use.
Even after diapers, pads/tampons and other plasticky stuff started proliferating in India, aunts still refused to use anything but what they had always used (they always say No Thank You to the ladies who come by to sell these things).
Anything the family didn't finish eating, or whatever was accidentally dropped on the ground for instance, we put outside for the roaming goats or other animals to eat. Oddly enough, I continue that today, though there are no goats where I am, of course - the birds eat it all up instead. (Don't panic, it's vegetarian and it isn't anything high-cholesterol. Just a few rice grains and stuff. So the birds are all fine.) The amount of rubbish my family puts outside is no more than a quarter of the weekly allowance - we wait for two weeks before putting out a bag. All our neighbours here (and they have fewer members per household) go the full quota each week.
Come to think of it, the last time I accompanied relatives in India on a shopping-for-a-wedding spree, I remember my aunt carrying a cloth-bag to ensure that saree-storekeepers don't dunk plastic bags on her. She doesn't like junk cluttering her home.
So I don't think we need western (or western-minded Indian) environmentalists telling us how to behave or what to do. Instead, here's something they could do to help: they can stop selling their junk in our countries (L'Oreal products, yuck McDonalds food and other unwanted stuff, for instance). Sadly, Indian industry has already started manufacturing lots of waste paper bags in imitation of western 'progress', but hopefully more of the younger generation of Dharmics will inherit the mind-set of their ancestors and discourage its use and production altogether.
Similarly, we don't need PETA threatening us to "become vegetarians or else". I understand that they only recently graduated from the christoview of the world where humans could do whatever to animals; and now they want to force others to follow the path they've just discovered and chosen for themselves. (I always wonder why PETA invaded India...) But really, we don't need their sermons, since Dharmics have always known about ethical treatment of animals, because we don't think of animals as less than us, even if not all Dharmics are vegetarians.
And it's because we're Dharmic that we don't childishly threaten/lecture/whine to others to follow our way. PETA and environmentalists haven't graduated to that yet (or, in PETA's case, even beyond the concept of mere "ethical treatment" of animals). It's the eternal christoimperialist manner to push half-digested 'discoveries' onto others as if they've just re-invented the circular wheel.
Us 'uncivilised' people will continue to plod along, saving water, saving electricity, not wasting food, doing our bit to sensibly manage the waste we acquire/accumulate. Oh yeah, and we'll continue to consider animals as no less than humans ... ("Oooh how unsalvageably heathen! Jehojeebusvallah will smite ..." - well, he's always smiting left and right according to the babble, so what else is new).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Personally I would suggest, try to make this campaign a flop.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I don't care about this or other lame campaigns either. (Christo missionary organisation Oxfam recently stole Gandhi's "Be the Change you wish to see in the world" and are now suddenly campaigning for the environment with their "Be The Change" TM © thing. Guess they found they weren't converting enough people with their food bribes and threats of hell, and realised they needed a sympathetic environmental angle. Nice attempt, trying to give christoism a green image, but it's too late when the whole world already knows the babble is what inspired the great christian enterprise to turn the world into a wasteland. 'Steward of the animals' is the best it could come up with... Oh yeah, I see: because humans have really proven to be great "stewards" of nature <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> One really wonders how nature ever managed before it invented humanity! I mean, when the christian wasn't there to steward it.)
Ignoring the silly campaigns and bully-activism, am hoping that in general people continue to live consciously, avoiding wastefulness and keeping an eye out for ways to be kinder to our world and to better its present predicament. After all, what is mere earth to environmentalists is Bhuma Devi to us (MahaVishnu's wife), just as India is BharatMata.
People were doing all this before the western world started screaming 'global warming' as if it was a sudden apocalypse now. From where did I learn to be conscious of use and wastage? Not from Al Gore - who won whatever it was he won again for noticing the environment or something - nor from the media, nor those self-crowned environmentalists off on a crusade to make the world cleaner and greener as if they suddenly discovered the world was meant to be green and was anything but clean.
Instead, I learnt it from the usual source (the same I guess from where all Asian, native American and other 'non-progressive unsaved' people learn it from): Grandparents. Parents. Uncles and aunts. (Using common sense would get one there as well, I think.)
They don't ever waste water. They never ever waste food. Hindus always used recyclable leaves to eat on (I regularly do so, when back home in India). But nowadays washable, reusable stainless steel plates are also there and in use.
Even after diapers, pads/tampons and other plasticky stuff started proliferating in India, aunts still refused to use anything but what they had always used (they always say No Thank You to the ladies who come by to sell these things).
Anything the family didn't finish eating, or whatever was accidentally dropped on the ground for instance, we put outside for the roaming goats or other animals to eat. Oddly enough, I continue that today, though there are no goats where I am, of course - the birds eat it all up instead. (Don't panic, it's vegetarian and it isn't anything high-cholesterol. Just a few rice grains and stuff. So the birds are all fine.) The amount of rubbish my family puts outside is no more than a quarter of the weekly allowance - we wait for two weeks before putting out a bag. All our neighbours here (and they have fewer members per household) go the full quota each week.
Come to think of it, the last time I accompanied relatives in India on a shopping-for-a-wedding spree, I remember my aunt carrying a cloth-bag to ensure that saree-storekeepers don't dunk plastic bags on her. She doesn't like junk cluttering her home.
So I don't think we need western (or western-minded Indian) environmentalists telling us how to behave or what to do. Instead, here's something they could do to help: they can stop selling their junk in our countries (L'Oreal products, yuck McDonalds food and other unwanted stuff, for instance). Sadly, Indian industry has already started manufacturing lots of waste paper bags in imitation of western 'progress', but hopefully more of the younger generation of Dharmics will inherit the mind-set of their ancestors and discourage its use and production altogether.
Similarly, we don't need PETA threatening us to "become vegetarians or else". I understand that they only recently graduated from the christoview of the world where humans could do whatever to animals; and now they want to force others to follow the path they've just discovered and chosen for themselves. (I always wonder why PETA invaded India...) But really, we don't need their sermons, since Dharmics have always known about ethical treatment of animals, because we don't think of animals as less than us, even if not all Dharmics are vegetarians.
And it's because we're Dharmic that we don't childishly threaten/lecture/whine to others to follow our way. PETA and environmentalists haven't graduated to that yet (or, in PETA's case, even beyond the concept of mere "ethical treatment" of animals). It's the eternal christoimperialist manner to push half-digested 'discoveries' onto others as if they've just re-invented the circular wheel.
Us 'uncivilised' people will continue to plod along, saving water, saving electricity, not wasting food, doing our bit to sensibly manage the waste we acquire/accumulate. Oh yeah, and we'll continue to consider animals as no less than humans ... ("Oooh how unsalvageably heathen! Jehojeebusvallah will smite ..." - well, he's always smiting left and right according to the babble, so what else is new).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Personally I would suggest, try to make this campaign a flop.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I don't care about this or other lame campaigns either. (Christo missionary organisation Oxfam recently stole Gandhi's "Be the Change you wish to see in the world" and are now suddenly campaigning for the environment with their "Be The Change" TM © thing. Guess they found they weren't converting enough people with their food bribes and threats of hell, and realised they needed a sympathetic environmental angle. Nice attempt, trying to give christoism a green image, but it's too late when the whole world already knows the babble is what inspired the great christian enterprise to turn the world into a wasteland. 'Steward of the animals' is the best it could come up with... Oh yeah, I see: because humans have really proven to be great "stewards" of nature <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> One really wonders how nature ever managed before it invented humanity! I mean, when the christian wasn't there to steward it.)
Ignoring the silly campaigns and bully-activism, am hoping that in general people continue to live consciously, avoiding wastefulness and keeping an eye out for ways to be kinder to our world and to better its present predicament. After all, what is mere earth to environmentalists is Bhuma Devi to us (MahaVishnu's wife), just as India is BharatMata.
Death to traitors.