The climate crisis is a spiritual crisis
Questioner (Q): Having seen your videos and being in constant touch with you, one can see that the central idea of your teachings is, as you very lucidly have said, “You are not missing the secret, you are missing the obvious.” For us humans as social beings, the most obvious thing today is the phenomenon called global warming or climate change. The scientists, the socialists, the researchers who have tried to study this phenomenon have averred, have concluded that the sole cause of this phenomenon is human; it is an anthropocentric issue. By virtue of being in touch with you, one can also understand that spirituality, too, is anthropocentric: it places the mind at the center. So, this evening, let us talk about spirituality, climate change, and this anthropos, the human.
Acharya Prashant (AP): Alright, what is it that you want to talk about? We know man; we also know this thing called climate change or climate catastrophe. What is it specifically that you would want to discuss?
Q: While going through some articles on the internet and a few science journals, I came across news which were very alarming to me. Somehow, when I look at the world around me, when I look at the social media, when I look at people especially in the cafeterias, I usually don’t find this topic there. Those news articles were…
AP: You mean you don’t find them discussing climate change in all these public places, cafeterias, malls, and all these places? I think it’s very much in vogue now. People are discussing it.
Q: There was recently a climate strike that the media covered quite extensively, and then the topic was very much in the limelight. But before that…
AP: This has been highlighted recently, but even before that, it’s not something unknown or unheard of; people are talking about it. It’s not that the discussion tonight needs to be related to raising general awareness on the topic. Let’s go a bit deeper into it. See, what is it that you want to understand about it? Let us explore together.
Q: I feel that in the public purview, the intensity of the problem, the magnitude in which it is hovering over us, is not very clear. For example, I was going through the United Nations website and I read this article which mentions that if we actually want to stop some irreversible change happening due to climate change, we have only eleven years left to take action. Then I came across a BBC report, and there they said that when we think we have eleven years, we think that we have a lot of time, but to achieve that target of eleven years, we need to act right now; and to have those policies implemented, we have just eighteen months. This article was written in 2020.
