Even though the warmth was a little exorbitant, the day was wonderful. The atmosphere was luminous all around, the sun did not skimp on scattering its rays. Everything appeared clear cloudy through the transparent glass of my car. It's been several months since winter, there's no chance of getting the weather foggy. So why is it so dark all around despite the intense sunlight? Although a little late, I comprehended that such weather disorder is not for the fog; a layer of dust has been formed up to a certain point in the sky, which impedes the sun's rays to reach to the ground. Now I could discern the justification, few days ago I saw a news that recently Dhaka city has been ranked number one position in terms of air pollution. So this kind of weather is not unexpected.
I always like to hear anecdotes from the old days. So I sometimes hear from my father about the past history of this city. There is a lot of difference between living sixty years ago and today's modern Dhaka.
My father was quite young then; he was crossing the Gulistan area in a rickshaw with his mother. Due to religious constraints, the entire rickshaw was covered with a piece of cloth that no one could see them from outside. Even after that he became quite enthusiastict to see outside beyond the boundaries of the cloth. At that time motor driven vehicles were quite less, you could find few rickshaws with the passengers and limited private vehicles for the elite class people. At that time this city was in a very small region, the main city centered on Gulistan and its surrounding areas. Even though it was a small city, there were many trees around it. As a result, air pollution was less. But now in this city the number of trees is less and the abundance of buildings is more. Added to this, the black smoke from vehicles and the dust created by the increasing construction work has made the environment polluted. So now the air here is so polluted that it has become difficult to breathe.
Those of us who live in this city are passing the days with an extreme health risk. Many of us may not even realize how serious this risk level has reached. Most importantly, this air pollution will not make the city dwellers suddenly sick, but it will gradually make people feeble, which could be like slow poisoning. This is plopping people at health risk which can lead to various lung diseases including shortness of breath. In addition, the constant black smoke coming out of cars where there is a harmful metal called Lead(Pb) which is capable of causing cancer in the human body. So we are moving towards a long term health risk.
This type of air pollution may be a little higher in my city but many metropolia around the world have other deterioration including this type of air pollution. Every year a climate conference is held in the presence of the world's great leaders to confer the world's climate. The outcome of this meeting is not visible sometimes, we often observed that the corrective actions taken by the leaders of the participating countries are not satisfactory. So in my viewpoint, to save the world's climate, we have to make some strict decisions and put them into practice. If this step is taken then a greedy group may be hurt but there is no objection to sacrifice small interests to big ones. Because we have to make this world habitable for the next generation. And if we can't do that, the new generation will never forgive us.
