The Hindu Business Line : Leading by example to save the Earth

With all the climate change — its greenhouse effects and global warming — water is going to become scarce and the single biggest threat to global food security.

All activities that humans indulge in generate greenhouse gas emissions that have a negative impact on the environment.

Shashi Ravichandran

I am Wally. I am the friendly word worm. I live in my boss’ diary. My boss is an important man — he is the Chairman of a big international company with people working in offices across all continents.

My boss keeps me very busy — he makes so many scribbles about his appointments and activities, the speeches he has to make and the emails he has to send out, on the walls of my home that I often run out of breath trying to keep pace with him. ‘Carbon footprint’

Take for instance this coming week. Going by the multiple items he has listed out for himself, it looks like he is excited by an event called the World Environment Day. Although that day falls on June 5, he is speaking in several forums during the week to commemorate this important occasion. He has pencilled in an item called ‘Carbon Footprint’ as his topic for the first meeting and he has made many notes about it.

For instance, he says that greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans are having a negative impact on the environment.

He says virtually all activities that humans indulge in from using electricity generated from fossil fuels to driving a car, to taking an airplane trip, to transporting consumer goods in diesel engine powered trucks across several miles from production sites to distribution and marketing centres, generate significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO{-2}) and other greenhouse emissions.

These emissions he says are the main contributors to climate change, including dramatic changes like the melting of the poles. He says this total set of emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organisation, event or product is commonly called their ‘carbon footprint’.

Water, scarce commodity

The next day he is going to talk about ‘Water’ — he says the world’s most precious commodity is not gold, or diamonds or even oil, but fresh water.

He is worried that the world’s population is growing at the rate of 70-80 million every year and is predicted to reach seven billion in a few years. He says that with all the climate change — its greenhouse effects and global warming — water is going to become scarce and the single biggest threat to global food security.

He is worried about rising sea levels and flooding — with polar ice sheets melting down, he says that portions of the coastal sections of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could well slide into the sea causing sea levels to rise. Sometime ago, he saw a movie about New York City being inundated with rising flood waters. He is really scared.

Talk about trees

He then wants to talk about ‘Trees’ which have the ability to improve the quality of air we breathe by trapping carbon. Trees also determine quantity as they replenish the atmosphere by giving off water everyday. As more water gets put back in the atmosphere, clouds form and provide a cover from the sun’s harmful rays.

Trees also protect watershed and reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. Exploitation of forests, such as harvesting of trees, he says, will cause an ecological imbalance and lead to loss of biodiversity, flooding, global climate changes, and environmental pollution.

Gosh, how clever he is, but how ominous are his conclusions.

His whole week is crammed with speaking engagements and sponsorship dinners to combat global warming. I am sure he will get on with his day job the week after that. Let me see what his diary looks like…

Flying around the globe

He is on a flight Monday morning to Paris, France; he is meeting a few investors there. That evening he takes another flight to New York, US — he has important meetings in Manhattan with his Board and executive committee.

On Wednesday he takes a flight to Jakarta, Indonesia and the next day he goes to Tokyo, Japan. He returns home to attend a wedding on Saturday but is off again on Sunday to London, England.

The poor man will not even have a meal at home with his family all that week. His office has arranged limos to pick him up when he gets off in the airports in all these foreign destinations and his secretary has put together a briefing docket with travel details and meeting highlights for his entire trip. She has carefully colour-coded the trips, and has given him a vibrant, multi-colored 90-page document in a plastic folder. I am sure it weighs a tonne with all that paper.

He is also carrying his desi food with him neatly packed in plastic pouches — rotis and pickle, chivda, theplas, and even pappad and laddus.

Not to mention all his gadgets — his laptop, two cell phones, a BlackBerry, an iPod, and a camera. He is going to be weighed down by all these items in his hand luggage. But silly me; of course, he is flying first class — he is allowed extra weight in his carry-on.

Why should I worry?

I pity the man though — with all this flying around the globe across various time zones, I am sure he will be in the grips of severe jet lag when he returns home after almost two weeks. And he only has two days to catch up since he is off to South America after that.

He is negotiating a contract — he has this vision of building a state-of-the-art seven-star resort hotel in a section of the Amazon rainforests and has to urgently finalise the clearing of 200 acres of forest land.

I really worry why he is at this. I really worry if he is thinking about the carbon emissions he will be responsible for in the coming weeks. Carbon Footprint and Global Warming: His favourite topics for next week. His speeches about video and web conferencing versus travel; about long flights and carbon emissions; about unnecessary paper usage and the consequent destruction of trees; about the negative impacts of printing, particularly in colour; about plastic; about de-forestation and loss of bio-diversity.

I really worry if he should be leading by example. But, then, who am I to worry? After all, he is the Chairman; I am only Wally, the word worm.

(The author is Head-Corporate Affairs, Scope International Pvt.Ltd., wholly-owned subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, UK. The views are personal.)