On World Environment Day, young Bollywood actor Bhumi Pednekar, who runs the social media advocacy platform Climate Warrior and COVID Warrior, asks the youth of the country not to use their voice loosely.
She talks to us about what inspires her to do for the environment and more.
How has your upbringing shaped the advocate that you have become for our planet?
I feel that every part of me even the person I am today is a complete sum of all my life experiences, and most of them come from what I have seen at home. I remember when we were children and I was in school and our country was hit by a natural calamity our parents would send us for drives to collect donations so that we could give back to the people affected. I feel that everything we see in our childhood is what we practise in our adult life and I am thankful to my parents for opening up this world to me.
Influential artists like you have the power to bring about positive changes. Is that why you are so vocal about this glaring issue?
Bhumi: Absolutely. I feel like especially when you are in a place of power and when you are in a place of influence, it is your duty to give back. It is not fair to be selfish and keep all that you have gained. I feel that it is my responsibility to give back and I try doing that through various ways in my personal life and also through the films that I do because I feel like my work and my art needs to reflect what I believe in.
We are in a climate crisis today. What do you have to say about this?
I feel that today we are actually at the tip and if we don't start bringing about huge levels of change then things are about to get very bad and the last year has been good learning. In the last two years, we have seen forest fires, cyclones in areas that had never seen one before, drought, floods and now, this pandemic. It really pains me to see how irresponsibly people treat medical waste. You cannot mess with nature because it is going to give it back to you and it really doesn't matter then if you are rich or poor. But unfortunately, I still see people littering, using plastic irresponsibly. The way deforestation is happening, the way we are fishing and hunting I feel as humans we should just change our consumption habits.
What are your goals as a climate warrior this year? What will make you happy as a climate warrior 10 years from now?
My goal as a climate warrior this year is genuinely to see people take action on planet conscious behaviour. I think for me all of 2021 is only going to be about hammering better habits, about hammering and making sure that people actually do something about everything that we have been speaking about right from less consumption of single-use plastics to making sure that individually we all reduce our carbon footprint. What will honestly make me happy is that 10 years from today everything that we and the entire community have been fighting for, to at least see some amount of change.