Environmental concerns and strategies c.1
- New Delhi Indian Environmental Society 1984
- 296 p.
The Indian Environment Society, New Delhi, decided to bring to gether in a volume, the lectures delivered by me during the last two years before varied audiences on equally diverse subjects. Since the lectures have been reproduced in their original form and several were delivered extempore, there is bound to be some measure of repetition of ideas. Even so, it is hoped that the volume may prove to be of some interest and use. The views expressed in these lectures are in my personal capa city. The unlimited diversity of life forms on earth, be they plants or ani mals, including humankind, is most remarkable. However, all life can be traced back to the simpler forms, often single cells or even still simpler ones, involving only DNA. Against this background, modern human being first appeared several thousand years back. At first he was one among the many species, vying with all others, for survival till his reason, intelligence and budding scientific genius could lead him to the top of the heap. Today humankind dominates nature, shapes the environ ment to suit itself and uses everything around it with scant regard whatsoever for the natural scheme of interdependent ecological regimes. In the process, human race has changed from a simple-minded fruit and root gatherer, the hunter and the grower of food who worship ped nature, to a callous, self-centred destroyer of nature, so much so that today development has in a sense become synonymous with deforestation and desertification and progress with pollution.