Global warming is one of the major challenges that we face today, and all indications are that it will become an even more important issue in the near future. It needs to be tackled immediately with seriousness. This week, world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark to put together a new climate treaty, with commitments from nations all over the world to either reduce or cap their emissions. The politics of the negotiations are proving to be difficult – developing countries, led by India, claim that the west is to “blame” for all the CO2 already in the atmosphere and therefore it is their responsibility to clean up before making any demands of others. Developed countries, including the United States, argue that the increase in emissions from 3 billion expected additional middle-class consumers from emerging economies in the coming decades will dwarf any cuts by the west. In the midst of all this, global warming deniers, oil companies, oil producing nations, environmental groups and everyone in between are screaming as loudly as they can, hoping to be heard.
While global warming affects everyone in many ways, it is expected to particularly hit Hindus and the practice of Hinduism. Many Hindu places of worship will be devastated by climate change. Pilgrimage sites high up in the Himalayas such as Amarnath, Kedarnath and Badrinath will no longer exist – the ice Shiva lingam in Amarnath was reported to have completely melted in 2007, and now requires artificial cooling. And Gangotri, the glacial source of the Ganga, is receding to higher altitudes and in the worst case might disappear completely sometime this century. The Himalayan glaciers melting will result in our sacred rivers, such as the Ganga, becoming minor seasonal rivers or, at worst, drying up altogether. The consequences of such changes for the 400 million people that live in the Indo-Gangetic plains (the overwhelming majority of whom are Hindus, and who constitute 40% of the world’s Hindus) will be unthinkable. The Indian government seems oblivious to these dire predictions, and is instead taking the lead in questioning climate research in order to escape making any commitments at Copenhagen.
The response to global warming seems to be primarily a practical matter with no obvious role for religion. So it might seem strange to ask what Hinduism has to say about dealing with climate change. However, Hinduism in many ways anticipates and warns against the problems that arise from living a careless, unsustainable lifestyle. Meat production for instance is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases – beef in particular. The Vedic texts place great value on simple living and suggest small, self-sustaining farming communities as the ideal communities to live in. They also warn that moving away from such simple communities will have harmful effects on nature and on society. In the Mahabharata, there are references to floods, earthquakes and drought as being nature’s “revolt” against the greed and selfishness of King Duryodhana and his brothers. Harmony with nature is emphasized throughout – in the worship of rivers as sacred, in the use of only completely natural ingredients in pujas and other ceremonies, and in the construction of temples and homes in ways to maximize ventilation and sunlight without the need for artificial temperature control or lighting.
This advice inspired Mahatma Gandhi, who took it to heart and abandoned his westernized lifestyle to build his own self-sustaining ashram in Gujarat. Just before his assassination, Mahatma Gandhi suggested that everyone in the world should just walk away from technology – walk away from the world’s factories, chemical plants, oil fields, and return to the simple life of farming and self-sustaining communities. Asked whether he realistically expected humans to abandon all the comforts provided by modern technology, Gandhi replied that at some point in the future humankind will not have a choice. We will have to pick between our comforts and our continued existence. He famously said, “Nature has enough for every man’s need, but not for every man’s greed.” Addressing Indians in particular, he warned “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialization like the west. If our nation took to similar exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” 60 years later the environmental impact of 300 million Americans is clear; and as 1.2 billion Indians and 1.4 billion Chinese begin adopting that lifestyle, it really does seem that we will “strip the world bare like locusts.”
Gandhi’s suggested remedy sounds just as ridiculous now as it did when he first made it, and is often used to show that Gandhi had a lunatic side to him. However, if 200 years of industrialization comes at the cost of mass famine, contaminated groundwater, weapons of mass destruction, dry rivers, sinking countries, and a planet whose climate and natural cycles are dangerously out of control, then maybe Gandhi was not such a lunatic after all. If the leaders at Copenhagen fail to reach an agreement and we continue to destroy our planet, historians of the future will look back and see Gandhi not as a fool but as a visionary – the one sane voice that saw that this grand project of industrialization was an idea destined to end badly, and that the simple Vedic lifestyle might be the only truly sustainable one. Let us hope that this future will not come to pass.
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