Sustainability & Society
By- Hitaishi Thakkar
Recently I read an article about how Kylie Jenner took a chartered flight for a meagre three minutes. It seems astonishing and concerning at the same time that a mere 40-minute car run seemed rather troublesome for the 24-year-old billionaire.
But what have we got to do with it? Simply put, the hourly carbon footprint of most private jets is larger than the average annual carbon footprint of a normal individual.
This raises an important concern, are we really making this planet inhabitable for our future generations? Do our selfish needs for globalization take over and hamper the future of this planet? Are we really advocating sustainable development?
So what exactly is sustainable development? It is the kind of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. While the rich seem to be unfazed by these concerns the truth is that most of them are what we call “Nonsustainable”
Sustainable development is not just a mere trend but a lifestyle and an absolute necessity in this era. We have started to recognise that although we need to have development and globalisation, it should maintain the integrity and ecosystem of this planet along with the development and betterment of the human race. In other words, sustainability is an amalgamation of environmental, social, and economical development.
In order to do this, the United Nations has launched 17 Sustainable development goals that need to be met by 2030 in order to halt the dystopian era of extinction and prevent its infinite existence.
These goals encompass different concerns ranging from education to climate change as well as globalisation. All these are direct or indirect factors that are intermingling with one another and in a way affect our ultimate goal of sustainable development as a whole.
These goals launched in the year 2016 are aiming to completely transform our world and create an idealistic grandiose.
While this seems like an amazing approach theoretically, practically it seems too dreamy and far from the actual reality. We are still in the process of propagating and implementing the various policies that the UN has proposed.
This seems to be fairly working with the general crowd as we’re noticing a new term coined that is “sustainable lifestyle” that’s going around the internet. But that is only half of our concern, because the fat-cat money loaded people like Kylie don’t really seem to understand the sad reality behind their glamorous lives. They are too disconnected from the real world and seem to be hardly concerned about the negative impact they seem to be creating on this planet.
A study shows that more than 40% of the carbon footprint is due to the 1% creme de la creme.
In Great thunbergs words, ” We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules need to be changed. Everything needs to change- and it has to start today”
An unknown catastrophic future will slap us if we do not wake up from our slumber.
While the UN has created these SDGs, the pie is still half raw. We need to come up with a set of laws that are in tandem with these goals and put a fine on those people who are publically destroying our planet and hampering the future of humankind.
Unsustainable behaviour by these money-clad aristocrats should not be tolerated by the court of law and should be equally punishable like any other crimes as it not only risks the lives of people living on this planet but also influences the future of humankind as a whole.
We all have no beef against Kylie and are definitely starstruck by her effortless (not really) charm but that doesn’t mean we can ignore concern that has come to light.
We’ll just have to wait and watch to see if the UN is actually able to implement and meet the goals by 2030. Until then let’s just manifest our utopia and maybe some brains for the elite!
