Climate Copenhagen: My Tree

I could see a piece of sky from my window. Its 10 am. Its cold and windy outside. There is hardly any SUN. Well it's not because of pollution, but its like that. We hardly get any sunlight during December. I was surfing through the internet and a piece of news caught my attention. It was the climate forum in Copenhagen. I had heard about similar type of forum back in 1997 something in Kyoto. I was just curious about this and started looking for more details on it. What exactly is meant by climate change? Does it mean that the naturally occurring phenomena in the environment could be/will be /might be altered to cause an unnatural phenomena in the coming future? This change in the environment will kill us all? I don’t know.

I like soy sauce especially when it is used in WOK. I browsed with the help of ''dr google'' about soy sauce. If there is anyone who knows everything other than GOD then its ''dr google'' he he he… So dr google gives me an answer stating that soy sauce is made from soya beans. Well, its so simple. My curiosity would not stop here. I looked again and again. Soy sauce is the main ingredient in Asian cooking and its spreading in the western world too... They use this for literally everything. Why not? I pondered. Its such a good sauce and mixes with every known vegetable and meat like ice in an ice cream. Hmmm….

Well, I just got more curious about this little soya beans. I mean how many people consume it around the world? I looked for it again. Dr google gives me an answer: A huge number hundereds of millions of them. I said WoW! So many. I am not the only one! Just for the sake of curiosity I went to the nearby supermarket to find out if they have soya sauce. They had it! I went to another one. They also had it! And another. They had it! That proves it! Its after all what makes the food eatable and also it flavours very well, so well that we get addicted to it! Ahhh… this human senses. To start again from where I left: So there are hundreds and millions of them who are consuming the soyasauce. But how is it possible to feed these many? Is it because of the diligence efforts made by the supermarkets and companies to procure this item no matter what? But how is it possible to produce so much amount of soyabeans to make so much soysauce? My curiosity took me to another level. I started to look for the countries who produced the most soyabeans. And there you go it was U.S! No wait.. its not! Its brazil No way! I could not get a clear idea of what going on. So I consulted some experts in economy. This is what they had to say. The consumption of soysauce had increased so much in china in the past decade that china is no longer able to produce the required quantity of soyasauce to feed the population. It outsources the production of soyabeans to Argentina & Brazil and brazil in turn becomes the largest exporter of soyabeans to china. Also the biggest grower of soyabeans, the US supplies the soyabeans to Mc Donalds... Hmmmm….. there you go. But why brazil? Is it because they have lot of land for growing crops! I asked the expert again. He said the soyabeans need hot summer and fertile land to grow, ideally river basins and need continuous flow of water for nitrogen fixation. India is not a big consumer of soya sauce and also the river basins are used for growing paddy and wheat and other crops. Also India is able to produce enough to feed its people with the available land. Hence it will not allow its land to grow other types of crops. And US is now growing crops for exporting it to Mc Donalds and other crops for making biofuel! I wonder if the people will eat burgers drink fuel in the near future… Anyways, so that makes brazil a good alternative for China!

Good. Now brazil is happy to produce soyabeans for the Chinese and the Americans as long they are stuffed with currency. But at what cost? At the cost of the rainforest! Enormous amounts of lands are being cleared to produce this single crop. The rainforest is thinning down every minute, the insects are disappearing rapidly. Animals are pushed to a very small area. Species are being extinct in this process. Trees which maintain carbon dioxide cycle are reducing day by day. So what? As long as I get to eat my WOK with soya sauce, I am happy. Do I need to get alarmed simply because one species of insect which is neither a distant relation of mine nor my ancestor gets disappeared on the face of the earth? Or Do I need to get alarmed because of my action of consuming soya sauce that makes the insects and species disappear? Well, insects’ play a very vital role in the ecosystem. They have a very special place in the ecosystem. They keep the balance of this ecosystem by pollinating plants which inturn bears fruits. Which means the soya plants can produce soya beans because of these insects! There you go…

I sit in my cosy sofa: a leather covered quilt stuffed thing, with my laptop in hand, typing this little piece of article which no one will read. I tend to imagine few things. Things about my future, about my childrens future and their childrens future. How will my children live without soy sauce, could they adapt to tomatoes instead? Few happy and shiny people will get together in Copenhagen to decide how the soyabean plants have to be grown so that I still get my portion of soy sauce without affecting the insects, animals, plants, water, CO2, etc which in turn will decide my future and my kids future and their future. Oh! My God. Our forefathers should not have put these happy and shiny people into this mess! It’s a huge burden.

May be we should start thinking about how to grow soyabeans in MARS!

/Gatty