The Fever of the Earth

Manoj Kumar D. Girish  

      The Earth’s temperature has risen. The Earth has a fever. We must take bold steps to cure this illness, or else this world will not survive. We will not survive. The Earth has a fever, we know this. The temperature has increased significantly. Scientists have informed us of this. As pollution continues to rise for various reasons, the Earth’s fever gets worse. This is now common knowledge. Once, newspapers used to mock the idea of creating a ministry for the environment, but now those same papers prominently discuss environmental issues. That is very good, encouraging news. But how true and effective these words are remains unclear. Because it is seen that while the newspapers talk about the environment, they earn huge profits by printing countless advertisements. Paper is made from trees, so to make paper, trees are cut down, harming the environment—everyone knows this, and so do the newspapers. Yet they recklessly waste thousands of tons of paper printing advertisements.

       In this modern era, when hundreds of advertisements are broadcast on TV and radio, it is not right to destroy paper—and thus trees—by printing advertisements in newspapers. Everyone knows that this is making the Earth’s fever worse day by day, deepening the planet’s crisis, yet it is hard to understand why this is allowed to continue. The government must take measures in this regard. There should be a cap that newspapers can have a maximum of eight pages. On weekends, two extra pages might be allowed. They must publish their advertisements and other content within this limit; they cannot increase the number of pages whenever they wish.

 
       In addition, there should be a maximum limit set for how many copies a newspaper can print. Let’s say that could be one hundred thousand copies. The days of disseminating news to people exclusively through printed papers are over; modern electronic media or TV do that job much more effectively, providing real-time visuals and immediate commentary. Therefore, in this age, there is no need to publish newspapers—meaning, to cut down trees and harm the environment—for news. When news from around the globe can be heard and seen in mere moments from the other side of the planet, why hold on to this outdated medium of print and publish stale, old news, causing unnecessary ‘backwardness’?