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The Jains through Time
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trees that are our friends, set fire to the monsoons in India have become green forest and hunted down the wild life. unpredictable. Earthquakes and the shadow The waste from our factories and of famine are spreading everywhere along workshops has not merely polluted, but with new strains of disease. The reason for poisoned such sacred rivers as the Ganges, all this is the destruction of nature. Unless the Jamuna and the Gomati. Exhaust fumes timely measures are taken the whole world and the smoke from chimneys choke the air. will become a desert!" Desertification is increasing, species after species is becoming extinct. Life-sustaining Physicians tell us that oxygen is essential for forests are vanishing. It seems that children life. Its depletion in the atmosphere does not of the future will see birds and beasts, trees merely cause infirmity but also results in the and shrubs, only in picture books. The next multiplication of new, highly resistant, generation will be bereft of the vast wealth strains of virus. In the absence of fresh of nature.
winds, the stagnant air breeds mental
instability. People are highly excitable or Some years ago UNESCO organised a very depressed, and this results in increasing conference in Indonesia in which 150 acts of violence. When violence and scientists, and environmentalists from terrorism prevail, we generally find that it is countries like Australia, Canada, the due to the lack of oxygen in the Netherlands, the U.K. and the U.S.A atmosphere. This is one of the results of the participated. The chairman of the unthinking destruction of the environment. conference, Mr. Vladimir, issued a timely warning regarding the fearsome Plants are the greatest benefactors of human consequences of the indiscriminate razing life. They provide us with plenty of tasty and of forests and cutting down of trees. He said, nutritious foods and give us medicines to " If trees die out, man will die out. cure diseases. They produce oxygen and Tornadoes in America, floods in Russia and absorb carbon dioxide. Men and animals
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