Living Green:
Our Responsibility to THE PLANET (eARTH DAY 2022)

Earth is a beautiful living planet in the Universe and the common habitat of more than 7 billion human population and millions of species of biodiversity. Our Earth provides us with food, shelter and most of our requirements.
Despite unavoidable free services provided by the earth to humans, we are not able to pay off her kindness to us. Rather we humans are being cruel to our Earth with our selfish activities. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”
Every day we produce tons of degradable and non-degradable waste, and throw it anywhere recklessly. Smoke and harmful gases from our homes, vehicles and industries are suffocating her. We are disposing of dirty sewage, drainage and even chemicals recklessly, although we know that more than 7 billion humans, along with all plants and animals in this world, rely on water for their lives. If we aren’t concentrating on saving those water resources, then in near future water may be as expensive as PETROL or one-day people may die due to thirst. Despite huge noise by our jumbo population itself, we use loudspeakers for our entertainment & industries, airplanes or other noisy vehicles for our luxury. We destroy forests for agriculture & settlement. We build huge buildings, roads & factories beyond her carrying capacity. The establishment of nuclear reactors vastly affects the environment & human lives.
Harmful gases emitted by ACs, refrigerators, industries & vehicles are depleting ozone layer & increasing our exposure to very harmful UV rays of sun leading us towards various skin diseases, eye cataract & even cancer. Wastes like plastics & other non-degradable wastes like insecticides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers etc. highly degrade soil quality & decrease agricultural products & kills soil microorganisms & decomposers. Water pollution increases the risk of water-borne diseases like cholera, dysentery etc. and lead & arsenic highly degrade our mental ability & causes the extinction of many aquatic animals. Air pollution causes airborne diseases like asthma in humans & animals and disturbs whole metabolism process in plants. Noise pollution causes insomnia & heart diseases in humans. Deforestation is leading to natural calamities like floods, soil erosion etc, temperature increase and changed rainfall distribution, drought, loss of valuable biodiversity, decreased oxygen density etc. The burning issues in the world at present are “Climate Change & Greenhouse Effect”.
Looking at the issue of climate change through the lens of a technology company, we know that data centers are one of the nation’s fastest-growing consumers of electricity. In an IDC Whitepaper sponsored by Seagate, they estimated that by 2025, every connected person in the world on average will have a digital data engagement over 4,900 times per day – that’s about 1 digital interaction every 18 seconds. With the increase in applications, big data, e-commerce, and Internet traffic, the amount of electricity that data centers consume isn’t slowing down.
On top of the massive amount of data being processed, consider the fact that almost every data center in the world is dramatically overprovisioned – the average rate of server utilization is only 12-18% of capacity. And, much of the energy consumed by U.S. data centers is used to power over 12 million servers that are running idle most of the time. Unsurprisingly, the National Resource Defense Council suggests that increasing server utilization is one of the industry’s biggest energy-saving opportunities.
Solutions to environmental problems are not impossible for superior creatures like humans, if they are committed. As a global citizen, We too have the responsibilities to our earth. Our first role in nature is to reduce our own carbon footprint via eco-friendly activities. Then, we need to raise awareness in our circle, neighbourhood & the community about environment sanitation by changing degradable wastes into compost manure & by 3R principle (reduce, reuse & recycle) of non-degradable wastes, create workshops with local people that air pollution can be controlled by replacing household energy sources like coal, firewood etc. by biogas, electricity or solar energy & we can negotiate with factory owners & vehicle owners to use dust & smoke purification systems in industries & vehicles & we can encourage them to use solar-energy based industries & vehicles.
We can organize environment sanitation programs & afforestation programs in barren lands. We youths can appeal the government to bring eco-friendly development policies & proper planning of cities. We can organize orientation programs about climate change, its causes, and effects & mitigation measures in schools & colleges to induce other youths towards conservation of nature. Youths can initiate the concept of “Payment of Ecosystem services (PES)” in society & emphasize homestay tourism in the villages. As a student of the forestry sector, I have the responsibility to aware local people about the importance of forests & effects of deforestation along with the new concept of carbon trade via REDD++ programs.
Thus, for the sustainability of our planet we need to fulfil our responsibilities towards Nature as a global citizen so as to protect this living planet from deterioration & to handover clean & green planet to our future generations. Maybe our single efforts may seem small but if thousands of youths can unite together towards nature conservation then one day our efforts will be a drastic step to protect our motherland Earth from destruction.
On this Earth Day , consider how you, and perhaps the company you work for, can help fulfill the duty we have to our environment.