Happy Earth Day 2024!

I met with @Prasiddhi Singh along with her mother on Feb 20 this year. We had a very interesting conversation on the two-hour travel from Chennai to Mumbai. Prasiddhi has a very unique thought process towards earth and human beings in general. She's 11 years old and a class 6 student. She's planted more than 1,30,000 trees and started her journey right from the age of 5. She's recognised with the Prime Minister National Child Award 2021 as the youngest social entrepreneur. Among her several recognitions, she's recognised as “Earth Day” Network Rising Star, Global Sustainability Award 2021 by GCPIT & the Top 100 Global Child Prodigy 2022. 

If you have not met Prasiddhi – Think India’s own Greta Thenburg and she's all about climate action. And you can contribute today to her green revolution - https://prasiddhiforest.org/

And Prasiddi urges each and everyone of us to take a small action on this earth day in her own message

As youth, we need to have a sense of responsibility towards our earth. Like a small 4mm seed grows into a 400ft mighty tree, our small action however small, can create a forest of possibilities. Lets be guardians' of nature. For in earth's flourish, we can find our own. Let's create an equitable and resilient action.

Today, April 22 is Earth Day! And we ought to celebrate it by taking more collective action. And what we are doing today is certainly not enough as some numbers are reflecting it.

Earth’s core temperature has increased by 1degree – source CNN

We are having one of the worst heat wave in centuries across our diverse country

The climate change is observed over millennia. We are in the midst of a Boiling frog syndrome and it’s time to act. If you are interested on the boiling frog story or the surrounded mystery you can have a fun reading here :)

How can we as collective intelligent beings fail to act? Conversely, if today was the first day for the rest of earth’s life what would those climate actions be. I started reflecting on what else might I do?

Already I do the following

-       Segregate my waste so that there is very less than goes to the landfill

-       Avoid plastic to buy my usual grocery and vegetables

-       Buy everything I need as much as possible from local buyers

-       Charge my phone only when its less than 20% charge to conserve the electricity

-       Drive a Hybrid car that uses battery power along with petrol

This is what I want to find my answers’ and think that we could do better!

I travel between Chennai and Mumbai often (maybe twice a month) for my technology consulting. When I use the simple calculator from Climate Stewards . I see some very unsettling numbers.

For e.g one flight that’s about 1200 miles using a domestic economy flight is emitting about 424 kgCO2

I further did some calculation using this IIT Kharagpur Carbon emission calculator for my entire household across the following headings of fuel used for travel, refrigeration or cooling services, electricity, water consumed, waste recycled and air travel.

One of the cool things about this calculator is an availability to provide a way to enable me to share my offset in the form of green cover created in the same period.

I was shocked to see that as a single individual I definitely am at surplus carbon consumer and the numbers were not very delightful at all.

I wanted to create an open set of actions that I want to proclaim so that the universe can be my accountability partner (from James Clear Atomic Habits)

-       Setup solar power for my house to ensure that my power consumption comes down from the power grid

-       Start measuring my carbon footprint and publish on an annual basis

-       And maybe maybe persuade few more people to start publishing their numbers!

I find that numbers often tell a very powerful story! Hence this is our NumOry - Num (from numbers) + Ory (from Story)

What is your carbon consumption this year?

If you want to make an impact positively - Would you like join Sangatna Angels - visit us at www.sangatna.com/join

Image Courtesy:

Mountains overlooking Photo by Karen Mork on Unsplash

Carbon Calculator: IIT Kharagpur Carbon Calculator & Climate Stewards

Photo with Prasiddi from my personal collection