Would you rather hold on to that Landcruiser, or a living planet?

Every night lately, I’ve been going to bed with a thudding heart.  Its not the cop shows on TV or the day’s stresses, but rather the reading matter that’s been on my night table.

On the non fiction front, I’ve got the 2006 edition of James Lovelock’s “The Revenge of Gaia” which talks about the earth as a single symbiotic organism that is in collapse from our years of pillage.  On the fiction side, I’ve got – an early purchase on my Kindle electronic reader - Margeret Atwood’s “The Year of the Flood” – a fictional account of a world shaped by many of Lovelock’s doomsday scenarios; a world where most animal and plant species are extinct, where disease has wiped out much of humanity, and the few stragglers who are left cope with days so hot they can’t go out without protective clothing.

All in all, not a happy combination of reading matter.  But it’s had an effect of sorts.

And, you know, it’s not like before I read these books, I was in a bubble in a locked vault in a cave in the desert or anything, and had never heard of climate change.  In fact, I always thought of myself as pretty conscientious on that front - voted for the Green Party, was more or less frugal in my living habits, and always did more kilometres on the bike than in the car.

But this particular combination of books has tipped me over the brink from being in a “more or less aware” state to a wakeful, “Oh Crikey Is It Already Too Late?” kind of inner panic.

Here are a couple of recent resolutions:

- the car has simply got to go.

- my family and I are moving from extreme carnivore status to semi vegetarian (meat not more than twice a week) aiming for full vegetarianism in the not too distant future.

- I’ve switched from paper to electronic reading whenever possible.

- I’m trying to cut down on heating and electricity use.

Of course I can’t switch off that nagging voice in me that says:  Pathetic.  I mean think of the giant factories around the world belching smoke and guzzling precious water resources, think of the empty headed rich from Lahore to Paris, with their four wheel drives, of the air conditioned shopping malls of Asia, of the glitteratti who fly from Mumbai to Dubai for a weekend of shopping.  In the face of all that, what can my pathetic little efforts do?

Maybe not much.  But would it be better to do nothing?

Here’s a little taster of what Lovelock has to offer:  “before the century is out, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” Most of the world’s land will be unsuitable for farming, most coastal areas will be under water.

Keep in mind he’s not some maniacal religious prophet, but one of the world’s most eminent scientists, and most of his theories are provable and many of the effects he describes are already underway.  And its not like the end of the century is that long in the general scheme of things.  My daughters, and their children  will be living in an unrecognizable world.

I can’t see the people in my circles in Mumbai, Dacca or Karachi changing too fast in regards to consuming less, giving up their airco cars and bedrooms, wasting fewer resources. But it is these places that will suffer the most.  However, at least there are voices in the region that are seriously talking about how climate change will affect not just some far off  islands in the Pacific, but South Asia.
Check out this video loaded onto You Tube by the environmental NGO,  Lead Pakistan.

And if you want to really get that adrenalin pumping, forget Bollywood, Lollywood or Hollywood.

Just grab a copy of Lovelock or Atwood.