Environment Day? What environment day?!

The world came together to celebrate Environment Day this week Environment Day is of monumental importance because when the aliens find the greyedout husks of our civilisation 20000 years from now they will comprehend the precise reason we died out because every time we encountered an extinctionlevel threat we responded by thinking about it for 24 hours a year Mostly on our smartphones built of materials torn thoughtlessly from the face of the Earth by a nineyearold in RwandaEnvironment Minister Prakash Javadekar gifted PM Modi a sapling following which he released a new poster because nothing says ldquoI love you Mother Earthrdquo like printing a ton of paper posters that nobody will ever use picPTIEnvironment Day is more important than ever in 2014 because this is the year of El Nino in South America and while I donrsquot know much on the subject I will say this I think Brazil has the home advantage and theyrsquoll probably win Vamos Les BleusA bunch of very smart people seem to think this will be a particularly bad year except nobody is listening to them which historically is the number one way of telling if such smart people are correctWhat happens is this ever so often a band of warm water that shouldnrsquot be there develops in the Pacific Ocean near South America And because the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone the planet starts behaving like itrsquos auditioning for the lead role in a Roland Emmerich movieThe worst El Nino in recent memory occurred in 1997 That year there was a flood in Peru a tropical cyclone that stands among the strongest ever recorded in the Pacific a spike in diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and other vectors and droughtlike conditions around the world By my count thatrsquos death pestilence a great flood and a famine Thatrsquos not an environmental problem itrsquos a basis for the birth of religionsYou may ask ldquoDid India do anythingrdquo Be prepared to hear a disappointing answer Good news This time we did not sit on our hands as our future slips away from us We responded with a flurry of initiatives and activities First our Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar gifted PM Narendra Modi a sapling following which he released a new poster to commemorate the day Because nothing says ldquoI love you Mother Earthrdquo like printing up a ton of paper posters that nobody will ever useFear not We are not a nation of tokengesture makers except when we are We did more than that For example the Economic Times reported that the environment ministry is also considering a proposal to rework the parameters that must be met to strip forestland for mining Whew thank God our forests will be protected yoursquore thinking Allow me to George RR Martin your hopes because the ministry is actually reducing the number of ecological parameters required to clear a forest for mining HA Mining corporations have responded to this news by slaughtering a kitten at an altar made of dead plants because that is how I imagine mining corporates react to everythingBut there is hope the numbers are encouraging for example in the Environmental Protection Index 2014 India made great strides We marched over 30 spaces downward to 155th of 178 on the list below Kyrgyzstan Iraq and cue the outrage Pakistan But hey wersquove never lost World Cup match to any of these guys so hifives and cigars for everybody However please refrain from lighting those cigars because Chad is 156th and catching upWe need to step up We need to heal the world make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race I just made that upLetrsquos go back out there and take back our environment from the miners and the builders who are taking a gigantic dump on a mangrove somewhere as you read this Letrsquos do this Not today though itrsquos hot as hell and Irsquove got the AC just right Also Irsquove already done my bit because this column was written on 100 per cent Recycled IdeasRohan Joshi is a writer and standup comedian who likes reading films and people who do not use the SMS lingo You can also contact him on wwwfacebookcomtherohanjoshi