The human race began its long and successful journey from a humble livelihood of an experimenting ape. This weak and fragile but intelligent ape’s future, was bleak against the beasts of Savanah armed with sharp teeth and long pounce.
Its intelligence was no match to the teeth of tigers or the nails of lions of the time. Nobody at that time would ever have imagined that this ape, would one day rule the world. One simple and accidental finding of this intelligent ape, not only changed its destiny, but the world’s as well.
Fire is this finding. Fire transfigured early ape in to the modern man. The finding of energy, and the technology to utilise it took the ape from the Savannah, sailed him across the seas, populated him all over the earth and even took him to the moon. The early human, once afraid to walk out of its cave door was found crossing the solar system, 33,000 years later. No species in the world has managed to populate itself from the tropics to the polar regions, to travel across the world in the span of a day and rare a herd of 7.8 billion.
Energy utilisation
The energy utilisation technology is the human’s secret. Against this energy savvy ape, the beasts that once ruled the world fell to the brink of extinction. But is this ape really as successful as it appears? It seems that today, the human race has come to a point of a crisis of unimaginable magnitude. The once, solution giving technology itself has created some problems that it cannot solve. The environmental destruction humans have created in the guise of conquering the earth has boomeranged on them endangering their very existence.
A microscopic look at the onset of this crisis exposes us to even more intriguing facts related to it. The advent of fossil fuels marked the beginning of the environmental crisis of the world. The excessive use of coal and petroleum for human development started with the industrial revolution. One needs to understand that the industrial revolution and this massive use of fossil fuels for human life has only counted no more than 200 years in the 4.6 million years of human history. If all of human history was compressed into one day, then the time we were using fossil fuels is no more than four seconds of the day.
Us as humans, created most of our history without fossil fuels. Our roads were crowded by horse chariots, our fields were farmed by manpower and our houses were lit by candles. Building material for all the great buildings of mankind, such as the Pyramids of Giza, Notre dame Cathedral of Paris, Colosseum of Rome, Louvre castle of Paris and Ruwanwelisaya stupa of Sri Lanka were drawn by horse and oxen driven chariots.
All great artwork of mankind, such as Mona Lisa of Da Vinci and Last Judgement of Michelangelo were drawn not under electric light. All great novels such as ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, ‘Le Misérable’ and ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ were written under the light of candles or gas lamps. During this period, we were no more than 2 billion in population, one forth the population today. The industrial revolution and the advent of mass use of energy quadrupled the human population of the earth and increased the problems we were facing ten-fold.
Our use of fossil fuels, destroying nature at this magnitude was just over a short four seconds of our 24 hour history. Even though this era of fossil fuels is a blink of an eye in the history of mankind, it lacerated deep in to the heart of mother nature creating an incurable wound.
Damage to environment
During this short four seconds of our days’ history what have we done to our environment? The damage we have done is unimaginable and irreparable. It looks as if that one or two generations of mankind has lived the lives of everybody to be born. The destruction of the marine biology, the depletion of the polar ice caps, the damage to the ozone layer, the mass poisoning of the sea and the soil has driven this world to the brinks of un-inhabitability. One needs to look in to the energy usage and the production technologies through the lens of this socio-anthropologic catastrophe.
The scientific realisation of this bitter truth is catalysing the entire world under one order to claim that the most valuable resource of a nation is its environment. Sustainable development is the way how humans have to develop within the context of the limited resources of mother nature.
What is sustainability? Sustainability is the capacity of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. In simpler terms, it is all about not to live today forgetting the future. Even though international forums are formed for this topic and national level dialog is initiated as to how the policies of countries are to be oriented in this regard, one needs to understand that this is not a concept that can be popularised at the national or international level. This is a concept that needs to be sprouted from within.
The concept of sustainability has to be cultivated at home and be implemented at the household level. It is more of a cultural transformation than a decision either a person, an organisation or a country can take. At the onset of the expected cultural transformation, the required decision making will be smooth and seamless. How can we achieve this cultural transformation?
A culture comprises customs and traditions. We need to establish a set of customs and traditions directed towards sustainability. Imagine our old culture of not allowing rice to be spilt on the ground to be trampled by the foot of a person. Our grandparents had a belief that if one allows rice to be trampled then such a person will never go to success. Therefore, our grandparents, if rice is spilled on the ground took laborious efforts to collect all the seeds. This is a classic element of a custom targeted at sustainability by curtailing waste.
Customs and traditions
Generally, these sort of customs and traditions are developed by the customary and religious leaders of the society. The formation of the customs and traditions is one factor which binds the society together. Therefore, the sociologists recognise the customs and traditions in a society as one valuable element of social architecture and an enabler of social engineering. A society which is made out of such tightly bonded families by customs and traditions is a great resource in social development, if the society leans how to engineer its matrix of traditions for a purpose.
We are fortunate that, as Sri Lankans, we have a highly family based society and our family structure is very strong. This is a resource we inherit from our rich culture. Therefore, we as a nation are placed at a very positive position within the context of implementing the concept of sustainability. We are a society which can be engineered with great ease if this resource is property tapped.
Saving electricity, saving water and even saving money is one way a family can develop traditions. Essentially if these concepts are to be driven to the depths of the society they need to be carried out, not as mere trivialities within the family, but as traditions and customs. Once such customs are formed in to a family tradition, it goes a long way in to the lives of the family as well as into the lives of the children.
Similarly, the cultural and religious leaders of the society can enter into the mission of developing energy related customs and traditions so that the society as a whole will fall in to a single order of a tradition. This is a mass social reformation process where the concepts of energy saving are encapsulated within the inner depths of the society.
The most interesting aspect of the implementation of such a social traditional framework in energy conservation and sustainability lies in another societal phenomenon. It is not only that the society is enriched and strengthened by an order of such families bonded by sustainability traditions but also that such strongly bonded families are enriched in return by the society.
Energy conservation
Energy friendly family is a world friendly family. Recent research shows that families which engaged in several singly isolated energy conservation actions have developed within the family a strong inclination towards sustainability and has changed their value system. Environmental friendliness today represents a certain class of the society and a certain high level thinking. This new social stratum comprises academics and affluent members of the society.
The adaptation of the environmental traditions and customs within the family today migrates such a family to this elevated strata of the society. In every society the social stratification is instigated by the contribution the particular sub culture provides for the society. Their contribution elevates them to the higher social strata which attracts certain respect from the rest of the society. This is evident in every era.
In the feudal society the upper class was represented by land. In the era of capitalism, the upper class of the society was represented by wealth. Similarly, in the present era of knowledge, the upper class of the society is represented by education. The future is the era of sustainability and in this era, the upper class will be represented by the contribution of the family to the environment.
Today the early indications of the rise of this era within the society is evident to the observant eye of a social analyst. The institutions are no force to resist this change. They will merely fall in to this culture once the basic building block of the society adopts this value system.
The present transformation of the society towards digitalisation is immensely weakening the institutional architecture of the world. Our known world was ruled by institutions. We were humble creatures attached to mighty institutions. When a friend visits you the first question he asks your son was ‘what is the school you go’. When you go somewhere there will be a question in the first minute of dialogue asking where you work. We are characterised by the institutions we draw affiliation. This is the product of the post-world war society which is overarched by institutes. The advent of digital technology is weakening these institutions.
Individualism
Today there are Oxford scholars who have not seen Oxford. There will be workers who work for organisations and derive their living but has not even once walked in to its head-office. The giant institutions in our known world are going to be crumbled down and on the debris of these institutions, a new era of individualism is to rise.
In setting up an energy conservation society, this transitional aspect of the society needs to be well respected. We need to understand our efforts for the institutionalisation of energy conservation and sustainability efforts are not going to live long. The measures of talking to the individuals and families will be the way forward in this mission.
Education, awareness and individual focus should be the strategy in this social reformation process. It is not that the institutional performance in the process of reducing the carbon footprint of a country is marginalised anyway. The approach to institutions in the future would not be through the institutional management but through the individual stakeholders of that institution. This is coupled with another mega trend the society is undergoing today.
The representative democracy is transforming back to participatory democracy. Today the people try to individually participate in democratic action rather than through their representatives. They are trying to take decision making to their hand. This is also one aspect of rising individualism.
Anyhow the rising individuals who love to see the entire world rotating around them have to be inculcated one important aspect of governance. This concept of inseparability of rights from duties is well pronounced in our Constitution in the chapter where the Directive Principles of State Policy and Fundamental Duties are enshrined.
Article 28 of our Constitution reads as ‘The exercise and enjoyment of rights and freedoms are inseparable from the performance of duties and obligations and accordingly it is the duty of every person in Sri Lanka … (f) to protect nature and conserve its riches’.
At a time where there are no institutions to guide and nurture this individual at rise and at a time he is no more controlled by the well weather participatory democratic machinery of the society, his governance needs to be established though the sense of his duties to the society.
The fact that the enjoyment of rights and freedoms are inseparable from the performance of duties and obligations is a concept which needs to be engraved deep in to the inner recess of his inner mind. National Energy Day is the day we may start this process.