The real causes of climate change
Nowadays, much is discussed about climate change, but we almost always fail to identify the core issue.
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Nowadays, much is discussed about climate change. The planet is becoming hotter, and this is causing a series of climate anomalies that are making the lives of millions of people around the world more difficult. Researchers conclude that the planet is becoming hotter due to the emission of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases, but this is actually just the apparent cause. The real cause is greediness, which leads to the overexploitation of natural resources, and such greediness comes from a lack of spiritual values.
Greed leads to industrial extraction and industrial production, creating a host of unnecessary goods that can be sold for profit. Overproduction combined with marketing leads to overconsumption, which leads to an artificial lifestyle, where people have to work almost like slaves to buy things they don’t really need. All of this leads to an erosion of spiritual values, and as people become more materialistic, the cycle is reinforced.
As Śrila Prabhupāda points out on SB 1.14.3: “A man becomes too greedy for wealth and power when he has no higher objective in life and when he thinks that this earthly life of a few years is all in all.”
Climate change is thus just one symptom inside a bigger pattern: pollution, soil depletion, destruction of forests and animal life, depletion of natural resources, mental illness, moral and spiritual degradation, etc. Forgetfulness of God leads to sense gratification, since that’s the path every conditioned soul tries to use to fill the emptiness of a materialistic lifestyle, and a path of unrestricted sense gratification leads to individual and collective karmic reactions that bring only future misery.
The Vedas offer us a concept of sustainable living based on living in connection with nature and with Kṛṣṇa. This system is called Varnāśrama. We often think of Varnāśrama as a caste system, but this is just another misconception. The core of the Varnāśrama system is actually not the division of society into classes but a simple, progressive lifestyle based on cow protection and agriculture. The social divisions are simply a natural division that facilitates that.
Nowadays, we use an industrial approach to the production of food, using machines, chemical fertilizers, and GMO seeds to achieve the best possible yields. The problem with this approach is threefold. The first issue is that it is highly destructive to the environment, destroying the ecosystems and exhausting the very arable lands we depend on for our survival. The second problem is that food produced in this way is low in nutrients and highly contaminated by the chemicals used to control pests. People can’t be healthy or happy eating this type of food, as we can practically see all around. Artificial food leads to health problems that push us in the direction of an artificial health system that is often more effective in bankrupting families than in saving lives.
The third problem is that it causes unemployment. A tractor can do the work of thousands of people, who don’t have any other option than to go to the cities. The abundance of cheap labor in the cities is exploited by the capitalists to create all kinds of products and services, which leads to an increasingly artificial and unhealthy lifestyle.
In a varnāśrama society, more people live in the land, producing organic food that nourishes not only the body but also the spiritual intellect of the people, helping society to progress in the right direction. Organic agriculture, with the use of bulls for labor and cows for the production of milk, is the only system that is sustainable in the long run. In fact, it was a system that allowed humanity to prosper for millions of years, while modern civilization is already showing signs of collapse after just two centuries.
The industrial model of food production has several problems. The first problem is that it requires constant external inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, fuel). When the flow of these supplies is disturbed by wars and other causes, cultivation is interrupted or production drops, causing famines.
In the Gītā (3.14-15), Kṛṣṇa mentions that “All living bodies subsist on food grains, which are produced from rains. Rains are produced by performance of yajña [sacrifice], and yajña is born of prescribed duties. Regulated activities are prescribed in the Vedas, and the Vedas are directly manifested from the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Consequently the all-pervading Transcendence is eternally situated in acts of sacrifice.”
Modern people often reject this process, preferring to depend on a modern economy, but this is making our lives riskier instead of more stable. This is without even entering into the question of farmer dependency, debt, monocultures, and so on, which simply add to the human cost.
The Vedic village model, on the other hand, builds resilience: local seed saving, mixed crops, local dairy production, local labor, and so on. Cities are there, serving as commercial and administrative centers, but they are smaller, inside what is practically viable, and not giant megalopolises sustained by artificial supply chains.
One could argue that with more people involved in food production, the economy would become smaller, but that’s exactly the point. The whole economic model is built on a hoax, on replacing essential needs, such as nutritious food, human relations, spiritual values, and security, with artificial products we can put a price tag on. The point is exactly to reduce these artificial, negative aspects of human society and make the essential needs available to all. That’s an increase in living standards, not a reduction.
To properly work, however, the varnāśrama system must be, in turn, based on spiritual values. As long as people don’t have spiritual goals in their lives, they will continue being greedy and uncontrollably exploiting the resources of nature, creating pollution and environmental degradation.
This process happened in the past, when the greedy Hiranyākṣa exploited the natural resources of the planet to the extent that it was moved out of its orbit, leading to the pastime of Varāhadeva killing him and putting the planet back in its orbit.
People can discuss different solutions for reducing the emissions that are driving climate change. Transitioning to renewable energy, reducing waste, etc., are fine, but without attacking the core of the problem, materialism, the problem will never be solved. Even if an electric car is two times more energy intensive, if we just double the number of cars, we go nowhere.
In one sense, we are the true culprits of climate change, since we have the only knowledge that can reverse it, but we are not doing enough to spread it. Instead, we are often distracted by the idea of using fewer plastic bags or using natural gas instead of coal. While these things may help, they do nothing to attack the core of the problem. Even if everyone stops using plastic bags and all industries switch to natural gas, still, the dominant materialism will keep moving things in the wrong direction.
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