GQ India’s Open Letter

A monthly back-of-the-book column that signed off each issue of Indian GQ from launch in 2008 until 2011. Here’s one following COP 2010.

Dear Mother Earth,

As an 8,000-mile-diameter planet you probably don’t get around to doing a lot of reading. But, if you could read, we would want you to know that we’re really very sorry.

We live in a country where the average person burns about 14 times less carbon than the average American – but some of us have not exactly been average. Yes, we bought that SUV with the fuel economy measured in metres per litre. Yes, we took those stupidly extravagant weekend shopping trips to Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong.

Yes, all that imported food we’ve bought has, together, racked up enough air miles for a free first-class flight to LA (although the Spanish oranges would have trouble at immigration). We’ve stomped around the global village leaving a trail of size-13 carbon footprints, and, Mom, we’re sorry.

We can’t help but think of you as a woman – aging gracefully, getting a little rounder in the equator maybe, but still fantastically beautiful – and increasingly pissed off: a sort of cross between Malaika Arora Khan and the Unabomber. Your problem? Us. A bunch of smart-mouthed, worst-case-scenario teenagers constantly raiding the fridge, playing music too loud, emptying the drinks cabinet, tapping you again and again for money – and steadfastly ignoring the fact that you’re in dire need of someone to help take out the trash.

We were hoping that by the time you read this (if you could read), the COP15 summit would have sorted everything out. Beforehand, the meeting in Copenhagen was billed as our last chance before we all plunge off a cliff. After, it was billed as “an important step forward”. We think taking a step forward when you’re on the edge of a cliff sounds like a bad idea.

What worries us most is that it’s getting too late to change; it feels like maybe you’re now just sick of us. Is it possible for a mother to fall out of love with her kids? Every new record-breaking flood, heatwave, hurricane and drought feels like a long-overdue tantrum. All we want to say is: Mom, we are changing. We’re growing up. We’re getting to the age when we realize that we’ll have to look after you, just like you’ve looked after us.

So, if you could just stave off a little longer the higher temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, deforestation, intense floods, frequent droughts, groundwater depletion, desperate food shortages, migrations of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees, massive plant and animal extinctions – not to mention all the wars likely resulting from the above – we’d really appreciate it.

Sincerely hoping our grandkids won’t have to evolve gills like Kevin Costner in that really bad movie with Dennis Hopper,

GQ India