Buried but not Erased

A friend texted me from India, “Its like Diwali here. People are lighting lamps and setting off fireworks”.

Diwali is months away, but a new festival it seemed was being added to the Hindu calendar by the powers that be.

A temple was being inaugurated in a corner of India, and a whole nation was called upon to celebrate. Not just Hindus, but Christians, Muslims and all minorities were asked to take part in what the prime minister called “a symbol of peace, patience, harmony, and maturity of Indian society”.

While the temple is still not complete in its construction, January 22nd was chosen as a date for its consecration. After all, an election is upon the nation, and what better way for a political party to announce the completion of its most vital populous project, that saw its rise to power and rule with majoritarian might.

An election promise sealed and delivered decades later, is still a powerful draw, in a nation steadily becoming more and more fundamental in its religious make-up.

There was no expense spared in making this event a spectacle. Not just for the edifice, put for the person who delivered it.

All roads leading to Ayodhya and the temple complex were decked in saffron and gold. Images of the bow wielding Lord Ram, Prime Minister Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were inescapable, no matter where you turned.

Eight thousand dignitaries were plucked from elite India to be present to show their support and feel as the chosen few.

The common folk were asked to show their appreciation from their balconies, yards and terraces.

A BJP spokesman on BBC pointed out that “Katrina Kaif (a Bollywood celebrity) a Muslim” was present, showing how inclusive the event actually was.

Movie stars, industrialists and politicians, all those who live in the admiration and support of the masses were glad to be seen mingling in the temple complex. All arriving in their private jets and limousines in their colorful shiny devout best, as though it was awards night.

Also selectively invited were Kar-Sevaks (Hindu foot-soldiers and supporters) from groups who had fervently supported the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

Now Ayodhya, once a sleepy town with deep mythological significance for Hindus, is slated to become a major tourist hub and a major pilgrimage destination.

Billions of dollars of government funds have been earmarked to make it a Disneyland of sorts.

An international airport, wide roads and an expanded railway station are underway to bring pilgrims from around the world to witness what many are framing, as the resurgence of Hinduism via a temple, in a Hindu majority nation.

At a nearby open ground allotted by the courts, 13 miles away from the city center, a grand modern Mosque housing the world’s largest Quran is also supposed to be built at some point in time.

In 1991, I was in college in India, enrolled in a masters program studying journalism and documentary filmmaking. These were formative years which led me to my current profession which I deeply cherish.

A film that probably had the most impact on me as a student, was a documentary made by the eminent filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, titled Ram Ke Naam. This film sealed my fate and propelled me on a career path that I am fortunate and proud to say I have managed to hold on to.

Ram Ke Naam lays bare the communal poison that was being injected into the country by right wing Hindu groups on a mission to demolish the Babri Masjid and build a Ram Mandir in its place. A desecration they claim, they have been patiently waiting for 500 years to set right.

The Babri Masjid is said to have been built over the remains of a temple demolished by the Mughal Emperor Babur in 1528. It is also considered by many as the site of Lord Rama’s birth. The dispute over this structure is as ancient and complex as the land itself, with no clear or conclusive answers.

Via verite filmmaking, narration and interviews, Anand Patwardhan takes you into the skin of India, with visceral imagery and candid conversations with the people in Ayodhya who were being impacted by the communal unrest and those who were being called upon to accomplish a task sanctioned by their overlords, for political gain.

A few months after the film was released to national and international acclaim, the deed was done. The Babri Masjid was demolished by a vile marauding zealous mob, with saffron and yellow bandanas and pickaxes, as the nation watched in horror.

The demolition sparked Hindu-Muslim riots across the country claiming thousands of lives.

Thirty two years later, that mission was complete, with the consecration of the temple.

Along the way, a fringe party called Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power with massive support from the electorate. And one of the architects of the temple project has ruled India for the past ten years with dominance and adulation, like not seen in any democracy.

In 2018, I screened my film Salam — The First Muslim Nobel Laureate at the Mumbai International Film Festival. My film is also about religious intolerance that permeates India’s neighbor Pakistan, and how it slowly eats away at the fabric and soul of a nation. Anand Patwardhan was in the audience, my day was made.

In August 2019, a screening of Ram Ke Naam at the university where I studied filmmaking, was interrupted and the organizers were detained by the police. In that same year the screening of my film Salam, was abruptly cancelled as militants had attacked a military convoy at Pulwana, Kashmir. The organizers felt it was too risky to screen a film about a Pakistani scientist in Hyderabad, India.

A day before the temple inauguration, four people were arrested for organizing a screening of Ram Ke Naam at a film club in Hyderabad, the city of my birth.

Ram Ke Naam is now freely available on YouTube, but begins with bold white letters on a black frame warning “The following content may contain violent and graphic imagery. Viewer discretion advised”. The Indian censor board gave the film a U Certificate. Meaning, suitable for all audiences.

I highly recommend it.

History can be airbrushed, but can never be erased.

Mythology is not history.

It is what it is.

Madness in the Middle-East

CNN and BBC called it a “terrorist attack”. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya News called it a “military operation”. Therein lies the contradiction and tragedy of what this hundred year old tribal war has come to define. Two different narratives, two opposing viewpoints and the mangling of history.

What happened here this past weekend was unadulterated barbarism. A kind of brutality this part of the world is much too familiar with from the time of the Crusades.

President Biden defined the act as “pure evil”. Someone else called it “Israel’s 9/11” and compared it to the Holocaust. Senator Lindsey Graham asked Israel to level Gaza if they needed to, to get rid of Hamas. Republican Niki Haley said Israel needs to do whatever it takes to eliminate Hamas from the earth. Obama said we must squarely stand alongside our ally, Israel, as it dismantles Hamas. Secretary Blinken said Israel would have all the weapons it needs to deal with the situation including warships in the Mediterranean on stand by. And Benjamin Netanyahu said the middle east would never be the same after Israel did whatever it needed, to eradicate Hamas.

No sooner did these statements make the news cycle, bombs were being unloaded from an American airplane at an Israeli airport as Hamas fired rockets from rooftops.

So yet again the war cries were loud and clear. Bombs were being seen as the solution.

Two million Palestinians who live in poverty and deplorable conditions, as refugees under UN protection and have been dealing with a siege for sixteen years, were again made to run as bombs rained down. Gaza, the bleak prison camp that it has been for so long, has now been pushed into further despair as all supplies have been cut off. Doctors Without Borders declared the situation a “collective punishment” inflicted on innocent civilians, which amounts to a war crime. Hospitals without power are on the brink of turning into morgues.

The Israeli families and others who have lost loved ones, are distraught in their grief. Many want revenge. The politics of the land needs to respond, and the only way to do that is with overwhelming force. Which has been the norm here. And so madness has taken root. The end of Hamas, if that is even possible, is the only answer before many. This, as everyone knows, can only come with more blood shed and more death of women and children. Many of whose faces will not be seen on CNN, in feature stories by Clarissa Ward.

To the right wing populist leaders in Israel, who have been emboldened the last few months, this moment may be the one they have been waiting for.

Many have been openly wishing and hoping Palestinians would miraculously disappear from their land. Now it seems like they have found a reason to push them into the sea by effectively cutting them off from civilization.

For many Israelis what is happening is something the Palestinians have brought upon themselves by supporting an infernal enterprise. But for many Palestinians, it is a choice they never had. When you are occupied, oppressed and denied freedom, your options are limited.

Hamas to many in the Arab world, is a resistance group. Much like the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) from the early days of the struggle. The PLO was designated a terrorist organization by the west then, but in the Arab world, they were freedom fighters and their leaders are still worshipped.

In the first nine months of 2023 alone, Israel has killed at least 230 Palestinians, a level of violence that has already exceeded the total death toll during 2022. It is also the highest recorded number of casualties in the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians since 2005, according to the United Nations. This rise in Israeli military and settler brutality signifies an unprecedented level of violence across all the Palestinian territories, fueled and encouraged by a troubling sense of impunity and a lack of accountability for those responsible.

Recently Benjamin Netanyahu showed a picture of Israel at the UN which sent shockwaves through the Arab world.

He showed a map of Israel which did not demarcate Gaza and The West Bank, effectively sending a message, that this was the ultimate aim.

The normalization of the siege of Gaza by the international community, had become something many Arabs and Palestinians could not tolerate. The indefinite detention of Palestinian political prisoners without due process was another violation that had gone ignored for much too long. And the many incursions by the IDF at Al-Aqsa mosque has always riled up tensions and Hamas gave that as one of the reasons for their latest carnage.

This tribal war that started more than a century ago seems to have no end in sight. It certainly escalated to an appalling level this time, fueled by the drip-drip nature of the conflict and generation after generation, accumulated deep-seated traumas.

When the people in power cannot broker peace it is the innocent who pay with their lives, and often they are the young. Like the ones who were celebrating life at the music festival and were butchered by those who came from beyond the wall. From a place where there is no future but only hate, despair and violence. Where the young have no festivals to attend and are ripe fodder for those who want to kill and cause pain.

In 1993, Yossi Beilin, the Israeli deputy minister of foreign affairs, recruited two college professors, Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak, for back-channel negotiations with the Palestinians to find a viable path to peace. He specifically told them, “if you get caught you will be charged with treason and espionage and I cannot protect you.” They took the cue and decided to dream the unthinkable.

The 2018 HBO documentary “The Oslo Diaries” takes you on an intimate journey revealing how close the negotiators came in achieving the impossible.

Told through the diaries of the chief negotiators and interviews of others involved, the documentary charts the journey to the Oslo Peace Accords and shows how Yitzak Rabin and Yaseer Arafat agreed to set aside their deep mistrust and hatred to bring an end to decades of bloodshed.

Through secretly filmed footage and news archives from the time, the film tells a gripping story of how peace was within grasp before it was wrecked by an assassin’s bullet. The hardliners won by killing Yitzak Rabin and quashing the dreams of millions of Israelis and Palestinians who wanted to live side by side in peace.

As ground realities shifted Benjamin Netanyahu came to power defeating Shimon Peres by a slender margin. The Oslo Accords were abandoned. Hamas became a formidable force and more than 16,000 people have lost their lives since. This number spiked this week all over again.

The people who dreamed of peace are still around. But the audacity of hope seems to have vanished.

At the end of the documentary, Shimon Peres, who was one of the chief negotiators of the Oslo Accords and later became Prime Minister after Yitzak Rabin’s assassination and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, is asked if he is optimistic about peace. He says,

“I don’t think there is an alternative, neither for the Palestinians nor us. The only alternative is an ongoing war. In war there are no victors, only victims. No war is ever finished. Unless it is being replaced by peace.”

This was his last interview. Shimon Peres passed away in 2016.

America has Israel’s back, as it should. But it needs to know that the world is watching and a double standard does not bode well. In Ukraine an occupation is being responded to, by providing military support to the underdog. In the middle east, Israel is seen as the occupier and aggressor, virulent under the current regime.

Hamas’ butchery is inexcusable and abhorrent to anyone with a conscience or an iota of humanity. But dropping bombs and destroying civilian infrastructure, plunging millions into darkness and not opening humanitarian aid corridors, also goes against the Geneva conventions and the laws of humanity.

The ones with the bigger guns always have the greater responsibility in the eyes of the world.

It is what it is.

A Dystopian Nightmare

A text popped up on my WhatsApp group. My wife’s cousin asked, “Is it a safe area”. He was referring to a neighborhood around Columbia University where his daughter was coming soon to start an internship from UC Berkeley, California.

New York is still the big bad city from a distance, even though it was rated the wealthiest and safest city of its size in the world in some recent poll.

The question about New York being safe is both warranted but also irksome. Having lived here since the mid-nineties, I somehow end up taking it personally. Partly because I have escaped any incident so far, and feel the question a racially motivated as people in the suburbs disproportionally see more black people arrested on their TV screen than any.

There was a time when crime in New York high and neighborhoods of Harlem, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick and East New York were considered dangerous. But they have long been gentrified beyond recognition.

This does not mean, that the city of nine million is rid of crime, but then again, there is no place in America that is safe anymore, anyway. Probably the manicured suburbs are far more dangerous than they seem.

As I was having this discussion with my wife in the car, the news of an active shooter in a suburban mall in Allen, Texas, sounded an alarm on the radio.

By the time this all too familiar American horror was over, there were eight dead and several wounded and others fighting for their lives in a hospital near by.

Over the years I have written extensively about this uniquely American terror. I had decided never to write again on this topic as the despair it causes has become unbearable.

I felt I had said everything there is to say in this matter, and had seen it from every angle to find reality infuriating to fathom. The needle does not move as people keep dying like clockwork and statistics keep revealing the American cancer that it is.

This recent carnage in Allen, Texas, hit a bit close to home. One of the victims was a twenty seven year old girl from my city back home in India.

Aishwarya like I, had come to the United States to attend graduate school. She had completed her studies in India from my alma mater, Osmania University, and had gotten her masters degree from East Michigan University. She had started her first job in Texas and all that is good this country has to offer was in her destiny.

Her parents probably would have spent a fortune sending their daughter to this land, with hopes that she would make her place in this world. They were hoping she would get married next year and start a family. She was at the mall shopping for her birthday, which was later that month.

A few days before the Texas bloodshed, there were two mass shootings in Serbia. A thirteen year old had opened fire in a school, killing eight and two days later a lunatic went on a rampage in two villages, killing eight and wounding twenty. A nation which is no stranger to violence, having experienced a dreadful civil war in the nineties, was nonetheless shaken to its core.

Serbia like the United States is deeply divided, awash in weaponry, where war criminals are glorified and memories run deep of years of horrors of war. But this kind of carnage was unfamiliar and deeply disturbing to the entire nation. Two mass killings in two days. Seventeen people dead and 21 injured, was just too much to handle.

The whole nation felt scarred. A week later tens and thousands poured into the streets of Belgrade demanding that top government officials resign, and newspapers and TV stations that promote violence to be shut down. Crowds marched through the center of the city behind a banner that read “Serbia against violence”.

Serbia has the highest rates of gun ownership in Europe. A 2018 survey suggests there are 39 guns for every hundred people in Serbia — the vast majority unlicensed.

In the wake of the shootings, President Aleksandar Vucic swiftly announced what he called a “general disarmament” of the country. He declared a month-long amnesty for illegally-held weapons, with a warning of harsh consequences for anyone who held on to guns without a permit. He also announced a moratorium on new weapons permits and a review of current gun licenses.

The amnesty has been mostly positive and by the second day, more guns and ammunition had been handed over than in the previous three amnesties put together.

In America, we changed the channel and the Allen shooting was history. There were no protests. The usual Republican talking points were on garish display. The Texas governor labeled gun violence a product a mental health problems plaguing America and not gun infestation. The president expressed sympathy for the victims and said more should be done to reduce gun violence and blamed the Republicans for stalling any meaningful measures.

And so on and so forth and the news cycle moved on in anticipation of the next mass shooting which is imminent.

This is the dystopia Americans live in. A state of apathy and numbness has set in. The statistics around gun violence is jaw dropping. And yet politicians go around saying its a mental health problem, which means America also has the most amount of mentally ill people in the world. The politicians, judges and gun owners are probably at the top of the heap.

In a dystopian society, common sense does not operate like it should. As reality begins to take shape that is so far from the norm, that one cannot frame it in any civilized terms.

The Vietnam and 9/11 memorials are powerful and speak to you when you are in their presence, because the names of the dead are etched in stone and metal for you to touch and feel. The sheer magnitude of the tragedy is expressed by the multitude of names that stand framed before you. You cannot touch and not be moved by the glaring fact that there was a person behind each embossed name whose life was cut shot by violence.

A similar national memorial for the people who have died from senseless gun violence is long overdue in this country.

Maybe, this will help the people of this nation realize the dystopian world they have created, by hiding behind an archaic sentence in the constitution and allowing carnage to continue unabated. And just maybe, this will start a conversation towards change. At least that is the hope.

With thousands dying from gun violence every year, the memorial wall would have to be endless, until there is an end.

People, who want to send their children to this country seeking a future, need to think long and hard, about the dystopian nightmare America has become.

American Carnage 2021

The day I watched in horror, a marauding mob storm the Capitol building, I expected to see smoke rise from its windows. I expected to see carnage on a scale never seen before. Watching the frenzied attackers make their way into the building breaking glass and spilling blood, I was more than certain something devastating was to come. As I saw congress members hunker down, I expected bullets to fly.

No serious response from law enforcement was noticeable other than the severely ill equipped outnumbered Capitol Police doing their best. The great mighty American military machine which is often equipped to launch wars in far off places at a moments notice, was nowhere to be seen. This convinced me that a coup was in progress.

When the person tasked with keeping Americans safe and democracy sacrosanct, was the one setting it all alight, I was certain the unthinkable was underway.

A democracy that was supposedly ingeniously designed by the founding fathers centuries ago, had found a loop hole it seemed. The checks and balances had failed and the day of reckoning was here after four years of open defiance of all rules of engagement.

The institutions miraculously held. Some carrying these institutions followed through with their promise to the constitution. Despite the chief architect of the insurrection calling his detractors traitors, many were able to come out of their stupor to recognize who the real seditionist was.

Now more than a year later a congressional committee is trying to lay bare to the American public what really happened that day and the planning that went into its culmination. While to many, what happened was so obvious and open that it needed no elucidating, for the purpose of democracy and transparency all is being revealed after an arduous and contentious investigation, in an attempt to prevent such an abhorrent act from ever occurring again.

But to a vast majority, this is only political theater as an election is on the horizon. They still believe the insurrectionist is the legitimate president and the current one serving is an imposter. What happened on January 6th was just a “dust up”, and the circus taking place in Washington does not deserve attention, as Fox News thinks it is just the third impeachment of a man who has already been absolved of his alleged crimes. To the party that insidiously peddles this narrative, power by any means necessary, is all the matters.

This goes to prove that this nation is now divided on the idea of democracy.

Many often ask, especially after a peaceful transfer of power did not take place for the first time in its history, was America ever this divided?

In her 244-year history, the U.S. has endured deep divisions between its political parties. The Civil War, immigration in the late 1800s, women’s suffrage, whether to enter the first and second world wars, civil rights and anti-war protests in the 1960s, gay rights, abortion rights and numerous other issues have divided people right down to their gut and they still do.

But such deep division over the idea of democracy and what it means is relatively new. The internet and social media has had a large role to play in how America has arrived at this stage in its discourse, where its citizens cannot even seem to agree on its founding principles.

Across America today, especially in the south and mid-west, a vast majority still embrace the last president as their leader. Many candidates that he is endorsing are winning primaries and probably will be elected to congress on the strength of his name. While he goes around calling the January 6th hearings a “Kangaroo Court”, his power remains unchallenged in vast pockets of America. With the current economic situation being dire, his lure is even more enticing to many.

Whether the January 6th hearings will amount to anything more than just another fat document, is anyone's guess. The likelihood of the person behind the insurrection ever being indicted or standing trial for treason and sedition is a long shot. The political cost of such an action could be grave.

But the act of not doing anything when the evidence speaks for itself also puts America’s standing in the world at a crossroads. If the Insurrector-in-Chief is not held to account, then the prospects of the mob returning becomes very present and American democracy weakens beyond repair.

In his inaugural address, the last president promised he would end what he called “American Carnage” as the leader of this “great nation”. The carnage he was referring to, was the so called erosion of American values and the economic devastation brought upon by previous administrations. He also famously said as a candidate, that he could shoot anyone on fifth avenue and would not have to pay a price for it. His actions killed people at the Capitol.

True American Carnage was visited upon on January 6th.

Can America survive and heal, is anyone’s guess.

It is what it is.

Great Dictator - The Russian Edition

War is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capitulation, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil. — Pope Francis

A Ukrainian friend of mine in Brooklyn, texted me yesterday, saying her aging parents and her brother and his wife and children were in a bomb shelter spending the night as bombs exploded all around. The previous day the children were at school.

War returned to Europe after a very long hiatus.

This time threatening to spill over borders which were once thought to be secure and stable.

As bombs fell on Kyiv and people sought shelter in subways and bomb shelters, and a mass exodus ensued, the all too familiar scene harking back to a time no one wants to remember even as their faintest dreams, seemed to emerge in the middle of Europe.

This time the dictator is different, but the tactics are the same.

Create a narrative, brain wash your population with propaganda, control the media, arrest and kill dissenters, get the generals and oligarchs in line, blame another power for provocation and then unleash fear and terror.

In recent memory the two cold war enemies, have invaded nations with impunity. Fighting proxy wars and playing geopolitical chess games with the lives of innocent people.

This round goes to Russia. A nation that has been under a dictatorship for almost three decades.

This dictator wears a suit and amasses fortunes all the while proclaiming himself to be a Russian nationalist and a patriot.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the great dictator sees as an unacceptable blemish on Russian pride, he has been entertaining desires of rebuilding the empire and raising the iron curtain. Hitler saw the collapse of Germany at the end of World War I and the The Treaty of Versailles in the same light.

By suppressing all dissent with poison, bullets and fear, he has turned Russia into a totalitarian police state where his cult is the only one there is to follow.

Now it seems he is entering the final stages of a dictator’s dementia. A state of paranoia.

The attack on Ukraine cannot be seen in any other terms.

The idea that the west is to blame for expanding NATO to his borders and provoking a sleeping giant, is only one small part of the story.

In the decades the dictator has been in power he has dismantled and destroyed all democratic institutions within his nation. He has ruled with the machismo of a thug. And has appointed and supported other thugs in power in his orbit so he can reign supreme. He suspended term limits for his presidency effectively declaring himself president for life.

His thuggery has been on display on the world stage for sometime now, as he used polonium to poison his enemies and disrupt infrastructure and elections in the US with cyberattacks.

He found a friend in Donald Trump, two people cut from the same cloth. For four years he gave his tacit approval of a thuggish man and hoped he would be able to engineer a coup and change the balance of power. Alas, that did not come to pass.

Anyone who sees this war as nothing else than wanton aggression against a neighbor with less power, is standing on the wrong side of history. A democracy is being blatantly trampled upon and if history is to be our guide, dictators do not relent.

The dictator’s track record of invasions and extermination of civilians is long in our modern times.

In the mid-nineties he along with his predecessor Boris Yeltsin lay waste to Chechnya, a break away nation of the Soviet empire. The destruction unleashed was termed “madness” by then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Today Chechnya is ruled by a sycophant thug.

Then followed Georgia, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and now a full on assault to retake the second largest nation in Europe.

Dictators are driven by naked ambition and an ideology whose purpose is to disrupt the world order. Their power play is to trample conventions, discard treaties and undermine human rights and disregard life.

Empire building is always at the back of their mind. The goal is to expand at any cost and the project is to amass power so the world would negotiate on their terms. This is what we see transpiring in front of our very eyes today.

How long this will be tolerated from the sidelines is to be seen. The prospect of a nuclear war is the only deterrent in dealing with a mad man with buttons at his fingertips.

The last great war came to an end when the evil of nuclear weapons was unleashed upon Japan. If Hitler had nuclear weapons in his arsenal, one can only imagine the nightmarish outcome that could have been brought upon the world.

This dictator has more nuclear weapons than anyone in the world. He has already said he has put them on high alert.

The French President revealed that he did not know who he was dealing with, when he sat on the other end of the long white table, as the person seemed isolated and distant. The photo was telling.

Therefore we must tread lightly in order to not provoke a rabid dog, more than necessary.

As long as there are dictators in this world and weapons of mass destruction of all shapes and sizes infesting our civilization, as Mick Jagger says “War, children, it’s just a shot away.”

It is what it is.

Climate Crisis - Cop Out COP26

These days when I drive down a highway or walk down a street, I find my attention drawn to the back of cars to spot if they have tailpipes. In New York City I rarely find one without.

Two months ago I bought my first electric vehicle (EV). I never thought not having to hear an internal combustion engine fire up and not inhaling gasoline fumes, would be such a refreshing change. With petrol prices at record highs and the world screaming foul at fossil fuels, I get an extra kick out of traveling in a machine that makes a strange whirling sound when it idles and charges like my phone. I also feel less filthy.

As more companies enter the market and the supporting infrastructure is expanded, owning an electric car in America is becoming more and more affordable. While ownership is growing, many are still hesitant to make the transition.

At the end of 2020, I installed solar panels on my brownstone in Brooklyn. The power I generate every day from it is fed into the electric grid making my meter spin backwards. The power I consume is offset by the power I generate, a concept called “Net Metering” in the renewable energy world. Since the day I got my panels working, I consume less energy than I produce. My electric bills are negligible.

The installation cost will breakeven in over seven years, thanks to federal and state tax credits. The app on my phone that monitors my power generation says I prevent inordinate amounts of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere everyday, placating my conscience as the planet barrels towards some kind of an apocalyptic future.

So I feel I am doing my part in this moment in time where a climate crisis seems to be at the top of every nation’s agenda and adds to the anxiety of many, already exacerbated by the pandemic.

Whether I am really making a difference is something very difficult to assess. If the power I use to charge my car is being produced from fossil fuel, it defeats the purpose. But for the moment it makes me feel I am doing something for the greater good, just as taking the vaccine felt in a pandemic.

Leaders, diplomats, activists, scientists and bankers from 200 countries met in Glasgow, United Kingdom this month to acknowledge the calamity facing the planet. At the COP26, global warming was a reality and not a rhetorical argument between the left and the right, or science believers and the lunatic skeptics. The reality of global temperatures rising above 1.5 degrees centigrade is a real threat facing humanity and there is no dancing around this fact with fringe theories and beliefs, as glaciers shrink and polar ice melt right in front of our eyes.

And so they flew in on private jets to hash out a plan to tackle this global threat in earnest. The speeches sounded promising and there was hope that a robust agreement would emerge in response to this seemingly insurmountable menace.

What emerged after days of negotiations was a watered down agreement that does very little to combat the peril in the urgency that is needed.

The rich countries wanted more sacrifices from the poorer countries. The poorer nations blamed the rich ones for causing the catastrophe. While acknowledging this, the rich ones agreed to pay the poorer ones to rapidly cut their green house emissions. While India, home to 17% of the world’s population and host to 20 of the globe’s 30 most polluted cities, wanted to keep burning coal and promised to reach net zero by 2070, two decades later than most nations.

So in the end, while there was an acknowledgement by everyone present that something needs to be done on an accelerated pace, the hard sacrifices that need to be made were a bit too tough for humans to swallow. Politics as always got in the way of real progress.

And so everyone went home on their jets looking forward to COP27, and the agreement that got drafted promises to do very little to change the trend of how we live with nature and devour resources like they are limitless.

The pandemic has taught us many lessons. It is now teaching us another one. Global supply chains are hampered and the insatiable human appetite for consumption is being irked.

As global inflation and an energy crisis looms, America is feeling the pinch. Reports of new cars being in short supply due to a microchip shortage and sticker shock at the grocery store and the gas station dominate the news. Black Friday and Christmas shopping could be hampered by less choice, and that is far more troublesome to many than global warming.

Americans are having to pay more for petrol, pork, eggs and milk and this could bring down the government in the next election is the speculation.

Recently a report on television talked about how average Americans are feeling the pain and as a result the President’s approval rating is plummeting. The reporter concluded the story by talking about a consumer who normally fills “premium gas” in his car, is now having to make the hard sacrifice of filling “regular”. An indicator of American suffering.

While I feel fortunate to be driving an electric car at a time when fuel prices are at a record high, and hope that this will push consumers away from heating the planet, I am aware there is a lot more fossil fuel to burn before anything substantive can occur, in the way of helping mother earth and rescuing the human race from calamity in any pointed way.

The inability of the human species to act as one to combat a virus was revealed in the current pandemic. While it is important to be hopeful and optimistic about the future, it is hard to pin one’s faith on human unity when faced with an impending apocalypse.

It is what it is.