Reframing the Green movement

THE TIMES OF INDIA - Feb 7, 2011 Jairam Ramesh has deepened the divide between those who believe that we need to do everything possible to save the environment and those who think of the Green movement as a fad perpetrated on the human race by a bunch of soft, left-leaning bleeding hearts forever looking for a cause to adopt that helps them express disaffection with the dominant discourse of growth and development. His supporters heave a sigh of relief that we finally have a minister genuinely interested in the environment (Posco notwithstanding), one who is enforcing the laws that have existed for long on our statute books. For the others, he is an indulgence the country cannot afford, particularly at its current stage of development. Worse, this side feels that it marks a return to the licence-permit Raj of yore, albeit in today's garb. It is particularly interesting that the 'soft' narrative surrounding the Green movement continues in spite of the fact that it receives overwhelming support from the world of hard science. This has to do in part with the fact that environmental consciousness asks us to sacrifice significantly in the tangible today for intangible and uncertain benefits in the future, an entity in which our stake is a somewhat abstract one. But another factor is that the Green movement has become a lightning rod for all kind of antiestablishment concerns. The most vocal opponents of environmental degradation also happen to take predictable positions on other issues giving rise to a feeling that they are pre-disposed to opposing the mainstream, no matter what the subject. Even the manner in which Jairam Ramesh is pursuing the cause adds weight to this feeling for it seems like a lonely crusade by a single individual, rather than as a part of a coherent long-term vision. It is almost certain that with a new minister, the government's apparent interest in this cause will abate substantially, reinforcing the feeling that the issue of the environment is at best an erratic indulgence that the government occasionally gives in to. The characterising of the Green-minded as soft idealists uncomfortable with the pragmatic realities of the day is not restricted to India. Although a lot of progress has been made in enhancing the environmental consciousness of different sections of society, the narrative around the environmental movement has always been the same - it has always been cast in opposition to the hard-headed pragmatists concerned more with human beings in the here-and-now than with rain forests and exotic species of blue-bottled finches. Rather than worry about saving nature and miscellaneous animals we have barely heard of, we are better off, this argument goes, on focussing on generating employment, growth and generating prosperity. The earth has always looked after itself and always will, is the implicit certainty. But is the framing of environmental concern as a 'soft' issue meant for people who like their world all touchy-feely as inevitable as it appears to be? It could be argued that the human race does not really need to preserve the environment or offer protection to nature. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad that can be done to the environment for it exists as a value-neutral condition. Nature is the word we use for set of conditions that prevail on our planet and these have been subject to change since the beginning of time and will continue to be so. There is nothing fundamentally desirable about forests and nothing that terrible about rising temperatures insofar as the planet goes. Other planets have their own environments that are violently different from ours and the planets continue to survive. The problem is not about saving the planet; it is about saving us, the human race. And since the human race is part of an unbroken chain that binds everything on this planet, the interest in the environment is a consequence of our interest in self-preservation. Concern for the ecology is nothing but the absolutely hardheaded and completely pragmatic concern about saving our skins.