NEW DELHI: We live in a world where the indicator of success is how much wealth we have and how much we consume. The bigger the house, salary, size and number of cars, these are what determine the worth, success, and largeness of our lives. Throw in foreign holidays and envious titles on visiting cards, and there’s the benchmark for success and happiness. This aspiration for wealth and consumption is drilled into children from the day they enter school.Global research shows there is no correlation between possessing more things and happiness. But in a society driven by materialism, this fact is hard to accept. Having said that, living a less materialistic lifestyle doesn’t mean becoming a monk. Indeed, one requires a certain amount of wealth to lead a decent life. But beyond these basic needs —food, comfortable house, healthcare and education — wealth is not equal to happiness and fulfilment. We never teach this vital lesson to our children.And here is why we need to do so. Unsustainable consumption is the fundamental cause of pollution and ecological destruction, including the climate crisis, facing the world today.Since the industrial revolution in the 1850s, our energy use has increased 25 times to feed our consumption, freshwater use 10 times and land under cultivation and habitation has expanded threefold. In the process, we have destroyed 30% of tropical forests and wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. We are, in fact, in the midst of the greatest species extinction in the last 60 million years.The web of life is in peril because we are exploiting the earth’s resources to the breaking point. We now have the Earth Overshoot Day to mark the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what the planet can regenerate that year. The day in 2019 was July 29. Which means that from July 30 onwards, our eating into earth’s resources couldn’t be replenished. We now need two earths to feed our consumption, but we don’t have this luxury.The climate crisis is the most consequential impact of this greed. It is not something that will happen in the future; it is happening in front of our eyes. From mega forest fires to intense cyclones to extreme floods and droughts, we are witnessing the worst impacts of climate change at a much lower temperature increase than predicted by scientists. Yet this has not stopped us from burning more fossil fuels to meet our unending energy needs. Both fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions hit an alltime high in 2019. At this rate, the global temperature increase will touch 1.5°C. Beyond this mark, hostile climatic conditions will render large parts of the world inhospitable. The seas will swallow coastal areas, deserts will encroach on fertile lands, glaciers will melt, and extreme weather events will destroy lives and livelihoods.The climate crisis exemplifies how we are cutting the branch on which we are sitting. To meet our short-term greed, we are jeopardising our long-term future. So, how do we to save the planet and ourselves? Simply put, we will have to learn to live happily with less. This is not going to be easy. Our social mores and economic system are geared to ever-increasing consumption. Only fundamental changes can reverse this trend.So can we do about this? We waste a lot of food, energy and water that can be easily curbed. Changing from a private car to a bicycle or public transport will reduce our environmental footprint considerably. We can also reduce our ecological footprint by resisting buying things that we don’t need, seldom use and discard quickly. This use-and-throw culture is costing us the planet.We can do all the above things with little or no consequences to our lifestyle. But this will not be sufficient and we have the difficult, but important, task of bringing about changes in society and economy. To provide decent living to 10 billion people (the likely population in 2050) on a finite planet, we will have to change the social and economic values, most importantly the education system that supports these values.Our education system must be redesigned to bring up the next generation that will tread lightly on the earth, imparting new social values in which ‘success’ is defined not as wealth and consumption, but in terms of how much we contribute to bettering our community, country and the environment. Likewise, it must teach our children the ‘new economics’, which promotes nurturing the earth rather than overexploiting its resources.Ultimately, our education system must help a child connect with the environment and perceive the beauty of the earth and sky, the joy of hearing the wind whistle in the tree leaves. If one if open to the beauty of living things, there will be no destruction. These are difficult changes, but our children must be taught these hard truths to save our home and hearth.(Author is CEO, iFOREST)