The Climate Clock, Global Metacrisis & Intergenerational Injustice: Saving Our Children from Greed Selfishness and Apathy that is snatching away their future

To  

Capt Richa Sharma Katyal – The Principal  Salwan Public School, Mayur Vihar, New Delhi

Lt Gen Arun Shahni – Director General Indian National Association for The Club of Rome

Dr Ajay Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India

Prof Rishikesha T Krishnan – Director IIM Bangalore

Mr Graeme Maxton – Climate Change economist, former Secretary-General of Club of Rome, Author of Resetting Our Future: A Chicken Can’t Lay a Duck Egg: How Covid-19 can solve the climate crisis

Prof Mattias Desmet – Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent Univ. Belgium,  Author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism

Prof Rangan Banerjee – Director IIT Delhi

Mr Ashank Desai – Chairman Mastek 

Prof Shishir Jha – Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies IIT Bombay

Dr Vishal Massey- Chief Executive Officer / Secretary Indian National Association for The Club of Rome 

Friends in the International Relations community

From: Chandra Vikash – Convenor – Gaia Earth Sansad , Founder-Mentor MaaS Movement, Alumnus IIT Kharagpur, IIM Calcutta

Monday 8 April 2024

Subject: The Climate Clock, Global Metacrisis & Intergenerational Injustice: Saving Our Children from Greed Selfishness and Apathy that is snatching away their future?

Dear Mme/Sir, 

Season’s Greetings!

I write this mail to all of you with earnest hope for timely collective action to stop what was unthinkable about the world in which we grew up, in the ’80s and ’90s. 

Our parents and their generation then, to the best of their abilities, protected us. Many, like my parents, made huge sacrifices in their lives for our education and the opportunity to grow up on a livable planet sustainably. Frugality, back then, at least in my part of the world, was a celebrated virtue. Simple living and high thinking was a powerful influence, from great souls. 

The same however, the Right to Life, is being snatched away from our youth and children, mercilessly. Somewhere down the line, in the years following economic liberalisation in India and the ‘dotcom’ boom in the late ’90s, Greed is God mantra began to take over. This set the agenda for Development fueled by shameless and callous hyper-consumerism and a diabolical disregard for ecology and social justice. In the first two decades of the 21st century, globalisation made deep roots, destroying the traditional value system alongside the marauding onslaught of what Dr S Jaishankar Hon. External Affairs Minister of India calls as ‘weaponisation of everything‘. In the past 4 years since the Covid Pandemic, this has rapidly devolved into a full blown global metacrisis, with ugly and murky wars in Ukraine and Palestine and flare ups in several other hotspots.

To the best of my understanding, this global metacrisis calls for us to lead the formation of a Civic Society led World Government within the next 2 months, by or before 5th of June, 2024. 

This ‘deadline’ is set as an Emergency Response to save our children’s future, even as for most people sleepwalking on the climate data, this might seem too ambitious and even impossible. The governments in India or elsewhere cannot do this on their own, because as this article points out, they are trapped, locked into and practically paralysed by the Destructive Global Competition without a CSWG to act on their own.

This was reconfirmed to me in my hour-long video conference with Lt Gen Arun Shahni, two days back, who shared how the Chinese side is bullying India to keep the national territory issue out of their bilateral discussions, and India must therefore further beef up its economic muscle. This is a surefire agenda for Mutually Assured Destruction through DGC intertwined with military warfare, compounding the Global Metacrisis. Lt Gen Shahni is Director-General of India chapter of Club of Rome. We discussed we should next meet with Padma Bhushan Mr S Ramadorai, who is its Chairman. 

I have known many of you for more than two decades and thanks to your moral support, I have survived and thrived to further grow in my conviction, to sail against the tide of selfishness, greed and apathy that was sweeping across the globe.

I write to all of you, with great hope, at a critical juncture for humanity as a whole.   

Hope, as Vaclav Havel, statesman and global visionary said and I quote, ‘is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” Havel has been one of my key inspirations for the World Government alongside Tagore, Einstein, Gandhi, HG Wells and Sadguru Sadafal Deo Ji Maharaj, founder of Vihangam Yoga who wrote Vishva Rajya Vidhan in 1952 (a vision and principles for world state).

My firm conviction for a Civic Society led World Government comes from a deep-dive understanding of a highly complex scenario based on a multi-disciplinary approach that this is the only way we can reset the Climate Clock to safety and sustainability. This has been bolstered over time from having practiced an ‘ultra-low carbon living’ since 1998 that I preach, with great support from my wife Alka, without whom, this would never be possible, with a family with 2 teenage daughters in a status conscious milieu in Delhi.

My long struggle and a strenuous schedule over past 15 years as a multi-disciplinary researcher, strategist and activist has taken a toll on her health (she is presently recovering from air pollution and stress-induced bone density deficiency) and my urgency for the mission also comes from the need to relieve her of the economic burden at the earliest. She presently runs the household with her earnings as a Music Teacher. Many would judge this as too harsh on my family but probably our collective sacrifices will not go in vain.

Magically enough, our two princess, who will be 21 and 16 this year, turned this adversity to their advantage and have been a great motivation to get through the rough and depressing times, when almost all seemed lost. 

I first tried this with the older IITs – IIT Kharagpur, IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi most recently, IIM Calcutta, AIIMS Delhi but they are already deeply entrenched into the Destructive Global Competition just like the national governments and mainstream media. They cannot do it alone. We need to ‘catch them young’ in their formative years at the School stage.

Meeting with Capt Richa Sharma Katyal

I had the pleasure to meet Capt Richa  for the admission of my younger daughter Parnika Chandra for Class XI in Arts & Humanities. I am thankful to her that unlike some of the other schools in the area we visited, my daughter’s choice for Arts & Humanities was respected and the school did not try to sell her a complementary coaching package for the IITs and other such ‘Cash Courses’. 

These schools are woefully unaware of how the job placement market at IITs is crashing (with nearly one-third students not finding jobs) after their unplanned and mindless expansion has beaten the famed IIT system hollow and put them on a collapse course. My recent visits to IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi along with other sources confirm this. In my daughter’s case, at the Principal’s behest at Salwan, she now has the choice of studying Psychology and Mathematics, which was not in the regular choice list, as I recommended her. (Prof Mattias Desmet, who is recognized as the world’s leading expert on the theory of mass formation hypnosis as it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic, is a good example to follow.)

My elder daughter Akarshita Chandra, who studied Science for her Class XI-XII at the same school, wrote this widely appreciated poem Denial in August ’19, a scathing inditement of the intergenerational injustice. She is now studying B. Design in 3rd year at Delhi Technology University. In May that year, few months before, I made this presentation on behalf on the #FridaysForFuture climate campaign team in India, led globally by Greta Thunberg. 

Greta, who is 21 years now, a few months older than my daughter, can be seen in this recent picture from 6th April 2024 in The Netherlands, a telling commentary on how we treat our ‘outspoken’ youth who refuse to be muzzled, after such astounding progress of human civilisation. Many eminent scientists, philosophers and the last remaining humans are beginning to call out this f%&%ry in no uncertain terms.  

​
Just a day earlier, to my presentation on Greta’s story on May 16, 2019, this young girl, then 16, had proudly tweeted this pic: 

To that perhaps, her compatriot Akarshita, ends her poignant poem with these lines:

If you ask me, I will tell you
The human race is flawed
It can only see half of the world at a time
Philosophies well spun that revolve around threats

Conceal the threat itself
With a gratifying chime.

.

It is a cycle that goes on –
We take an intelligent step ahead
For mankind

Then take two back

In the interests of our

Selfish minds.

Perhaps, teachers, who teach children on good moral values, know better.

 The Climate Clock 

What also struck me about this school is that it is one of the few schools in Delhi NCR that has a Climate Clock. At the time of writing this email, this clock shows, effectively, how long can the planet we call Mother Earth sustain human life, at least for most people in the cities, where the school is located. 

​Source: https://climateclock.world/clocks

Fact check: Based on most recent climate data, we have already crossed 1.5 degrees for the past 9 months and at present, the 365-day running average is at 1.58 deg C above pre-industrial levels of 1850-1900. Unlike what the Climate Clock projects, even the 3-year running mean which is used as yardstick, will happen much earlier than 5 years. At the same time, countries are far from reaching global consensus to phase out fossil fuels. It has actually increased in the past 9 years since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Time is running out.

‘The science is clear: The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out – with a clear timeframe aligned with the Paris Agreement goal. The fossil fuel industry – the giant behind the climate crisis – is finally starting to wake up. But recent promises from several oil and gas industry members clearly fall short of what is needed. There must be no room for greenwashing.’

– Address by António Guterres Secretary-General of the United Nations on December 6, 2023 at the #COP28 of UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

I call out upon all of you for help. I would request Capt Richa Mme to convene a meeting with all the people addressed on this email. To build a shared understanding and chart out a plan of action, I would like to meet you at the earliest possibility to together save the future of our youth and children, as our solemn responsibility.

Best Regards,
Chandra Vikash
Convenor GAIA Earth Sansad
w: chandravikash.wordpress.com  
e: gaiasansad@gmail.com

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

There is the true joy of life; to be used by a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; to be thoroughly worn out before being thrown on the scrap heap; to be a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that life will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

Reference:
1. Why We Need A Civic Society-led World Government?
2. Delhi World Government Conference 2024 – Concept Plan 1.0
3. Filling up vacuum of global governance to stop injustice with Palestine as Focal Point
4. Sleepwalking into catastrophe
5. Denial
6. Countdown to the Global Strike for Climate in May 2019