A Green Footprint is a term we have all grown accustomed to hearing on the news, primarily by activists such as Greta Thunberg and her contemporaries. I find it shockingly fascinating that such a term is so often ignored and forgotten by the majority of us who have heard of it. The Green Footprint of a building, for example, is its impact on the environment around it; and to build a sustainable future ahead, one must attempt to minimise the dependence of human capital on the natural resources we have been gifted.
To dive into economics, the main building blocks of an economy are its utilisations of land, labour and capital; wherein capital refers to money and it’s intrinsic value, regardless of its form (i.e. 1,000 INR sent via cheque has the same intrinsic value of 1,000 INR paid in cash). Now, one might wonder what this has to do with an ecological footprint or the ideas of protecting the environment; and the answer is everything!
Humans have, for centuries now, built industries and profited off the resources they have. However, as the world progresses, industrialisation becomes a necessity. In such a situation, the ecological footprint of a nation is highly dependent on the care it provides to its people.
India, despite its large population, consumes far less, with regards to energy forms, than the global average, but this too will change with growing industrial ambitions. What can the average citizen do? Corporations and industries are simply the biggest offenders for the worsening of the ecological condition globally, and yet, we, the consumers also bear the blame. If we truly wish to save nature, we should not financially support the organisations and the products which thrive off the exploitation of the natural world.
We tell ourselves we are destroying the planet, and to some extent, we are. However, we tend to forget that we are truly destroying ourselves, and humanity will be the most important virus to be purged. Not even our dominant position in the world will protect us from the destiny the planet will offer; that is, of course, unless we rally around the cause, and protect not just the world, but also ourselves.
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