The warm gleam of the setting sun reflects off the glossy leaves, freshly cleansed by the monsoon rain. For a fleeting moment, I forget I live in a colossal, choking hazard of a city and roll down my window. As the car halts at a red light, I savor the rare, clean air -- a gift as elusive as a rainbow in our smog-filled metropolis.
Suddenly, my attention shifts to my driver. With a swift motion, he crumples a plastic packet and casually tosses it onto the sidewalk. My throat tightens in protest, but I remain silent. The streets are already littered with similar debris -- what difference could one more piece make? As the sun disappears beneath the clouds, Mother Nature seems to turn away in sadness.
In a flash, an undernourished figure dashes out of the alley, walks up to the trash, and scans his perimeter with fiery eyes in search of the culprit. Failing to find my guilty chauffeur, he vents his frustration by promptly disposing of the packet in a dustbin and smirks with satisfaction -- a hopeful ray of orange penetrates through the smog before finally fading under the horizon.
A cold sweat of shame rolls down my temple as I ponder on my inaction.
This world is mine too, am I willing to remain a spectator and watch as it is destroyed?
We cannot rely on our institutions alone; true change starts with us, our choices and our actions.
Each plastic bag we haphazardly dispose of clogs up our waterways, makes our mighty rivers stagnant and floods our low-lying deltas.
Every candy wrapper we carelessly throw upon the road gets swept into our lakes, broken down into microplastics and ends up inside the food we eat.
CFC emissions from our archaic air-conditioners tear away the atmosphere, subjecting us to the Sun’s tyranny. Still, we keep them around because they are cheaper than new models. We don’t realize that the money saved is compensated through a different currency -- our futures.
So, let's think twice before throwing something away; perhaps that piece of plastic can be repurposed.
Let’s ensure our trash reaches the right destination - the landfills, not our intestines.
Let’s consider the broader consequences of our actions every single day, instead of the usual once-in-a-blue-moon reflection like armchair philosophers.
Finding solutions is pointless, however, if we don’t believe in the problem in the first place. Denizens of Dhaka, this voracious beast outspreading its tentacles each year, have become desensitized to their decaying surroundings:
“We used to have bright yellow mustard fields in our village, but only gray towers of concrete stand over them now,” my chauffeur tells me. Keeping the environment clean has become an afterthought because he’s grown up in a society that encourages ignorance.
“Who has time to think about where my plastics and papers end up when I’m struggling to put food on the table?” they ask. And yet, the climate crisis is as real here as it is anywhere in the world. You need only walk a hundred meters from any commercial hub to come upon a shanty town occupied by climate migrants, displaced from their homes by river erosion and rising sea levels, now working as domestic helpers and child laborers.
Awareness of the climate crisis cannot be taken for granted in the developing world. Low literacy rates mean large portions of our populations live without knowing of the disasters looming outside their doorstep. Enacting educational reforms is an ambitious endeavor and will take years. But in the meantime, it is the responsibility of the educated to share their knowledge. We must empower people to connect the dots between their reckless actions and nature’s retribution. When a person knows that their wood-fired stove is part of the reason their relatives are suffering from lung cancer, they’ll be more willing to mend their choices.
The climate crisis is a global problem. The developing world must play its part and reevaluate its priorities. “Growth at all costs” has become our mantra. Despite the Paris Climate Agreement, developing countries like Bangladesh are moving backwards on the transition to clean energy. Coal-powered plants are being constructed in greater numbers, and entire ecosystems are eviscerated to fuel them. While we must make our voices heard through rallies and votes, we also must make changes ourselves. Even with limited means, we can make a profound impact.
Roof-top solar panels are a simple step towards ensuring green energy supply. We must work towards making them ubiquitous across societies both rural and urban, while embracing innovative ideas like SOLshare’s integrated solar panel network which allows the sharing of stored energy by households for profit, each house acting as a micro-power station.
We can integrate smart home and office systems to dim our lights and turn off our appliances when not in use, reducing unnecessary demand from the grid as well. We cannot let these technologies remain exclusive to modern offices alone.
Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption is slow because of their relative expense compared to diesel engines. But not all EVs have to be luxuries. All it takes is a battery, motor, and innovation. Electric CNGs can be made a common sight in Dhaka through effective policies, and these three-wheelers will not suffocate pedestrians like their carbon-emitting predecessors.
We’ve all experienced the grueling heat waves in recent years, a prime example of global warming. Instead of seeking refuge within artificial cooling systems, let us work to cool the whole planet. Planting trees in our neighbourhood park is effortless but the effects are tremendous, and we can curb the urban heat strangling our communities. Pot plants can be nurtured at home as heat absorbers, cutting our energy bills and reducing demand for fossil fuels, while also supplying us with clean oxygen.
Smarter dietary decisions can also save our planet. Methane emissions from livestock are a leading pollutant. By restructuring our diets to include more vegetables, not only do we bolster our own health but the Earth’s as well.
Our capability as individuals may seem inconsequential in this fight, but when we all make more sustainable choices daily, our world will inevitably be a better place. We must believe in the cumulative power of humanity. In the words of Neil Armstrong, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Let’s take that step -- together.
Kazi Rafsan Mahboob is a student at Sir John Wilson School.
