Climate Action: Why Governments Keep Resisting || Acharya Prashant, NIT Goa (2025)

Acharya Prashant

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00:00You talk about Operation 2030, which is just five years away.

00:02So, do you think we should focus more on policy change other than individualistic actions?

00:07Yeah, but who will change the policy?

00:10Yeah, you see, we focus on ourselves within, right?

00:12In the ministers, the MLA's.

00:14Yeah, I get it. But who will change the policy? Just come to that.

00:16We will change.

00:17And who elects them?

00:19You allow them to get away with manifestos bereft of any mention of the climate.

00:23Even if you say 8,000 people came together to sign this document or in a protest march,

00:29aren't all of them acting as individuals, first of all?

00:32That's a big ask.

00:34If you just rely on a Masihah, on some great saviour who will do it for you, sitting in power,

00:40that's never, never, never going to happen.

00:43That's a big ask.

00:45We say we want honest politicians.

00:47If you do get an honest politician, will you allow him to function? Please tell me.

00:55Sir, recently you got the award for the most impactful environmentalist.

01:00And I've been following you on the issues of climate crisis and environmental activism.

01:06You also wrote a column in the Pioneer about greenwashing.

01:11So with regards to that, I was wondering that is the climate crisis discourse shifted

01:16emphasizing more on the individual responsibilities that I should be vegan,

01:21I should recycle, and it is my responsibility to help the climate.

01:25And in your book, okay, can you give me the book?

01:29In your book, you talk about this inner disease.

01:33It is in...

01:34About this disease you talk about.

01:38Man's hunger is not in the stomach.

01:42It resides in the mind.

01:43That hunger, blind, restless, insatiable, has destroyed everything it could touch.

01:49Climate change is only the latest, the most devastating,

01:53and perhaps the final symptom of this inner disease.

01:57This inner disease has also been manifested in industries.

02:01You see, they have their own negligence, recklessness.

02:03And you talk about Operation 2030, which is just five years away.

02:08So, do you think we should focus more on policy change rather than individualistic actions?

02:16That's my question, sir.

02:17Yeah, but who will change the policy?

02:20Yeah, see, we focus on ourselves within, right?

02:23This disease is also in the ministers, the MLAs.

02:26Yeah, I get it.

02:26But who will change the policy?

02:28Just come to that.

02:29They will change, right.

02:30And who elects them?

02:33So, it's about individual responsibility.

02:35We can vote out for that.

02:37But you see, in the manifestos,

02:39rarely any politician talks about climate change.

02:42You allowed them to.

02:43You allowed them to get away with manifestos,

02:45bereft of any mention of the climate.

02:49That's your individual flaw, is it not?

02:54How can you act on behalf of the other, when you say, individual action?

03:02Right?

03:03The word individual is redundant, because action has to be individual.

03:08Even if you get together in a group, you get together as individuals, with individual consent.

03:14So, all action, if you seek closely, is going to be any way individual.

03:24Even if you say, 8,000 people came together to sign this document, or in a protest march,

03:30aren't all of them acting as individuals, first of all?

03:32And if they aren't individuals, then they are robots, they are conditioned machines.

03:41I have my individual understanding.

03:45Right?

03:46And if I see it is aligned with that of the six of you,

03:52then we say, fine, the seven of us are together in something.

03:54But we have to be together in something,

03:58that we all of us, each of us, first of all, individually, agree to.

04:06So, the individual has to be targeted.

04:09The individual has to be awakened.

04:12No?

04:12Yes, and as students, what can we do for that?

04:16For that systemic change?

04:17Awaken the individuals?

04:20Obviously, what else?

04:21There is no option.

04:22If you think you can do it at the policy level,

04:25that sounds very tempting.

04:29But means nothing.

04:32Because you are trying to defy the very law of existence.

04:35You are saying the minister will do it.

04:36Why will the minister do it?

04:38The minister is there,

04:41because he has been voted to power by those who want no climate action.

04:46He will carry out their mandate.

04:49Why will he listen to you?

04:50So, at most, he will pay some lip service.

04:55He will say, yes, yes, yes, we must do something about the climate.

04:58Fine, fine, fine, fine.

04:59And nothing else.

05:01Yes, sir.

05:02So, what if I voted for a political leader that was advocating for climate change?

05:09But, because of democracy,

05:11the party, which does not really care about climate change, came into power.

05:17Then, his question really makes sense.

05:19Because on the individual level, what do I do?

05:22Democracy rotates the party in power.

05:25Again, you will have to awaken the individual,

05:27so that the one in power listens to you.

05:30Yes, but like,

05:32That's a big ask.

05:33You want to smile at it, right?

05:34It's a big ask.

05:35You don't want to do it.

05:36It's impractical.

05:37It's a big ask, and that's what is asked of you.

05:43Now, pick up the gauntlet.

05:48If you just rely on a Masihah,

05:51on some great Saviour,

05:53who will do it for you, sitting in power,

05:56that's never, never, never going to happen.

05:58The ones in power have the least interest in any climate action.

06:05Because they are the ones with the minimum stakes there.

06:09What does an old minister stand to lose?

06:14He would anyway be dead 10 years from here.

06:20And most politicians across the world are old people.

06:24The most powerful one,

06:26is probably the most oldest president also, ever.

06:29Think of him.

06:30The one, the one who is trying to kill the entire climate discourse.

06:36He's a very, very old man.

06:39And that's part of the explanation.

06:41He has no future.

06:42And great selfishness doesn't allow you to care for even the interest of your own kids.

06:52You say, I would be dead and long gone.

06:55When the climate effects will intensify,

07:03I'll anyway be no longer here.

07:05So, why should I worry?

07:09Or, I'm a rich man.

07:10I'm a very rich man.

07:12Temperature rises.

07:14I simply have to reset my AC.

07:19The whole space gets flooded.

07:21I have another mansion to fly away to.

07:25Great populations are displaced.

07:32Billions of them.

07:33I won't be displaced.

07:37There would be great economic loss.

07:40Ah.

07:42Why do I care?

07:44I'm a billionaire already.

07:47So, if you expect those people to act on their own.

07:52This is wishful thinking.

07:55Sir, Sir, but if a minister comes up and he does provide good policies,

08:05many, many a times the voters will pull him down.

08:09Because he won't be providing freebies and such things.

08:12So, if the audience is not awakened,

08:15even if there is a great Masihah,

08:18he'll be pulled down.

08:21Let's say,

08:23a freak of nature.

08:26Hmm?

08:27Some individual rises like an avatar

08:30and enters politics

08:32and manages to occupy a top post.

08:35Will the electorate allow him to function?

08:39If the electorate is not awakened,

08:41he'll be impeached,

08:42dismissed,

08:43brought down.

08:46We say we want honest politicians.

08:48If you do get an honest politician,

08:51will you allow him to function?

08:52Please tell me.

08:53So, similar thing happened.

09:01My chacha is a Pradhan in my village.

09:03So, he saw in our lane the roads were not very good.

09:08So, he tried to make the roads.

09:09Now, someone made a complaint that

09:11if you make the road,

09:12then we'll have to heighten our floor

09:16because in the rainy season,

09:18then water will fall inside their homes.

09:23These are the

09:26petty

09:27things

09:29that are bringing

09:32about a giant catastrophe.

09:35We all care for our little, little, little, little things.

09:39And it is the aggregation of

09:41these petty things

09:43that are resulting in this

09:45massive.

09:49Massive is an understatement.

09:53This is the sixth mass extinction.

10:02Sir, I also have a personal question.

10:04You say you cannot live wrongly

10:06and hope to consume rightly.

10:09I see myself

10:11buying stuff that I don't want

10:13because it's in trend.

10:14My friends are wearing it.

10:16I look cool if I wear it.

10:18So, this is also conditioning as you say, right?

10:22So, how can I personally,

10:23how can students like us

10:24and youth

10:25escape this?

10:26What's the definite path of this?

10:27Have a beautiful place to wisely spend your money at?

10:38You will be left with no surplus.

10:41You won't splurge it.

10:44First question is, why do you have so much money that you can blow it away?

10:47There are great places and great causes and great reasons that demand your money.

10:56Invest your money there.

10:57Spend it there.

11:01Self-development doesn't come cheap.

11:04A lot of things in this world require monetary investment.

11:08If you have money, spend it rightly.

11:12Why accumulate it?

11:13If you will accumulate it,

11:15it will be burnt at all the wrong places, rest assured.

11:19If suddenly, let's say you have 10 lakhs in your account as a student,

11:27what do you think you are going to do?

11:29You will let it remain there unlikely.

11:31Money is a very good resource.

11:40Don't let it rot in a vault.

11:44Spend it wisely.

11:47It is one kind of misfortune to not have money at all.

11:51The next kind of misfortune is to have a lot of money rotting in your bank account.

11:57Why must there be in your bank account?

11:59You are so impoverished, you couldn't find a right place where you can spend your money.

12:08Money is meant to be spent.

12:12Spend it at the right places.

12:14Go enroll into a hobby class.

12:20Get a tennis coach.

12:24All that is expensive.

12:27Spend your money.

12:28If you won't, then you will end up just buying whatever your friends buy.

12:34It hurts the environment too.

12:36Tennis doesn't hurt the environment, at least not in a big way.

12:41No, it does.

12:42I mean, if you will look at the, then there will be some minor carbon footprint that let's say racket manufacturing has.

12:50But once you buy a racket, it lasts several years.

12:53So that's fine.

12:54A clothes can change every year.

12:55Right?

12:56Training rules.

12:58And it's not that you change them.

13:00It's that you buy them, then you also have to wash them.

13:03And that washing itself consumes both energy and requires chemicals and pollutes and does a lot of things.

13:13It's not tennis versus clothes here.

13:14You get the drift, right?

13:16It's not tennis versus clothes here.

13:18You get the drift, right?

13:20.

13:30.

13:34.

13:37.

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