‘Go live on the Moon,’ says Mother Nature

(There is an angry rumble of thunder.)

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Mother Nature: You dare blame me for all this? It’s taken me 3.7 billion years to put this cycle of life system in place — to evolve creatures that fit into every niche possible, so that the planet could run smoothly as a Bentley. Alas, I didn’t realise that evolution would behave like a runaway nuclear reactor. I thought humans were my smartest triumph but you’re proving to be my biggest mistake. You’ve killed the soil, poisoned the waters, made the air un-breathable, overexploited natural resources, bred like viruses, cut down forests and now are tinkering with genetic material.

DIJ: But surely ma’am, letting half of the Arctic and Antarctic ice-caps to melt into the sea is, to say the least, an extreme response…like using an RPG to kill a fly?

Mother Nature: Who is causing climate change: belching all that carbon dioxide into the air, knowing full well it behaves like a tea-cozy over the planet? The air in your cities is the most polluted in the world — you will need to evolve lead-lined lungs. You make all sorts of laws, talk a lot, but are still hell-bent on using fossil fuels.

DIJ: Ma’am, but there’s battery technology, hydro-power and solar power and wind power, which are sustainable, in which we have invested heavily. It will take time but it will happen.

Mother Nature: As John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run, you’ll all be dead. And your children will be cursing you for leaving them a curdling, toxic planet. Battery technology simply displaces the pollution and you have to mine those scarce metals like lithium. You cut down prime rainforests for timber, and in order to build reservoirs for dams, you dare change the natural flow of rivers. Your windmills, like a weed whacker, are slicing up rare fauna (such as bustards).

DIJ: But ma’am, we are cleaning up our act. We’ve spent millions on cleaning up our rivers.

Mother Nature (exploding): What? You call your rivers, especially the gorgeous Ganga, holy and you still pour millions of tons of sewage and toxic industrial waste into her every single day, in addition to the dead; it’s like crapping in a place of worship! The holy Yamuna dies as she flows through 22 km of Delhi. Every waterbody in the country is polluted. The oceans have more plastic than fish.

DIJ: The use of plastics is being restricted and banned.

Mother Nature: Oh, yes, whatever happened to that grandiose scheme of banning plastic bottles? All your politicians made huge, noble promises — and what do we see at every public gathering — even conferences on the environment? Plastic water bottles by the hundred at every event.

DIJ: But you have to agree that India has among the finest environment-protection laws in the world.

Mother Nature: Which, your precious leaders are diluting by the hour — like a dishonest milkman pouring dirty water into milk. Expressways through national parks, mining and tunnelling are fine, fragment the forests, cut down the trees, but do compensatory afforestation in wastelands where nothing can grow. All this legally! Don’t forget what goes on illegally, the illegal wildlife trade is the fourth-largest illegal industry in the world.

DIJ: But there’s this new positive development — rewilding, which has been quite successful. Forests are being re-planted, wildlife is returning. So, you must agree all is not lost.

Mother Nature: At the rate you’re going you are going to have to rewild the whole Amazon rainforest, let’s see you do that!

DIJ: Ma’am, sustainable development has become quite the in-thing these days — everyone is talking about it.

Mother Nature: Then why do even pipsqueak leaders need a 100-car cavalcade to get from point A to B, 1 km away? What is sustainable about that? Why don’t they cycle, which they are exhorting everyone else to do?

DIJ: Ma’am, they’re saying the sixth mass extinction is upon us. Aren’t you going to do anything to stop it?

Mother Nature: Why should I? You triggered it, you stop it. Hopefully, it will include your species, too.

DIJ: Ma’am, we humans have very strong survival instincts. We’re already looking at other planets to colonize…

Mother Nature: Nice! You take a dump here then, when the stench gets unbearable, go to another planet and do the same thing there: And which planet? Have you seen what the moon looks like? So, go! Just remember what happened during the COVID-19 lockdowns. You lined up at your windows and stared longingly at the trees outside and envied the animals, birds and insects, and began writing mushy poetry about Nature. What does every astronaut say about the view from space? That the most beautiful thing they see out there is our sapphire blue planet!

DIJ: Thank you for talking to Down in Jungleland. I’m sure we will be able to meet your high expectations.

(As I leave, a bolt of lightning spears down and thunder rattles the windows, as rain pelts down. Behind me, I hear a distinct snicker from Mother Nature.)

Mother Nature (softly): Mess with me sonny boy, will you?