Raghu Murtugudde was delivering the PR Pisharoty distinguished lecture under the auspices of the India Meteorological Society, Pune chapter (IMSP) held at the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) auditorium in Pune on Thursday morning.
Giving a fillip to the universal debate on sustainability, Raghu Murtugudde, a teacher at the University of Maryland’s (USA) Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Centre (ESSIC) said that the only way to ensure a sustainable world was to conserve our
natural resources.
Murtugudde was delivering the PR Pisharoty distinguished lecture under the auspices of the India Meteorological Society, Pune chapter (IMSP) held at the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) auditorium in the city on Thursday morning.
Quoting Mahatma Gandhi, Murtugudde said that when someone quizzed Gandhiji for his views on sustainability, he is said to have said, “If it took half the resources of the world to make England so rich, how many worlds would India need?” driving home his point succinctly.
Murtugudde said, “Gandhi said this a good 70 years ago, much before the world had even begun to discuss sustainability.”
According to him, human beings are the worst offenders on the planet because “we are constantly polluting the air, water and natural resources of the world.”
Quoting American economist, Herman Daly, Murtugudde said, “Daly always stressed on the need for development of natural resources over economic growth. According to Daly, growth of the economy could not be sustainable over long periods of time. Daly has suggested three golden principles for the same (see box).”
Murtugudde, a 1983 alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay), said that climate change was a reality that we all had to accept. According to him, a total of 3.5 lakh people perished
annually due to the ill-effects of climate change.
Admitting that the subject of evolution was complicated, Murtugudde pointed out that co-evolution was a key to conservation of natural resources. He cited the example of the African continent, where he said human beings and animals had co-existed better than other continents.
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