When I visited the RTR09 website today, it was a pleasant surprise to see the donations being bumped up by a $1000 with just one more contribution. I hope the blogging campaign will bring exponential growth in awareness and contributions in the days to come.

There has been a lot of effort put into raising people’s awareness about the issue of climate change. The issue presents itself under many names, global warming, deforestation, carbon footprint, extinction of species, to name only a few. Whatever the name, the aim of all these awareness campaigns is to educate people in what we have been doing to this planet and now, what we need to do in order to keep it in a state of supporting life. RTR09 is one such campaign that promotes ‘sustainably managed replanting‘ of rainforests. Because unless we are able to sustain the regrown plants for a long time, they’re going to be logged for wood and fuel again and again, making all reforestation efforts futile. Also, it is very important to replant the right kind of trees in a given area. They need to be suitable for that particular climate and soil. Therefore, planting economically profitable plants, like palm trees, in place of grazed-down rainforest is not going to be helpful. Well, it might be helpful for humans in short term but definitely not for the environment.

There isn’t much time for us to get our act together and get it right. We must act NOW, which might already be too late for some parts of the world. A study presented at the Copenhagen conference suggests that even though we might be able to keep the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celcius, that will still eradicate 20-40% of Amazonian rainforests! Let us sincerely hope that we learn our lesson NOW and make sure the whole world doesn’t go hurtling along an irreversible path of ecological disaster.

Think green, live green! Lets keep Earth green!