NCERT Book Class 11 English (Hornbill) Chapter 4 The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement's Role

4. The Ailing Planet : t he G r een
Movement s Role ’
Nani Palkhivala

Notice these expressions in the text.
Infer their meaning from the context.

 a holistic and ecological view  inter alia
 sustainable development  decimated
 languish  catastrophic depletion
 ignominious darkness  transcending concern

The following article was written by Nani Palkhivala and published in
The Indian Express on 24 November 1994. The issues that he raised
regarding the declining health of the earth continue to have relevance.

One cannot recall any movement in world history which has gripped
the imagination of the entire human race so completely and so rapidly
as the Green Movement which started nearly twenty-five years ago.
In 1972 the world’s first nationwide Green party was founded in New
Zealand. Since then, the movement has not looked back.
We have shifted — one hopes, irrevocably — from the mechanistic
view to a holistic and ecological view of the world. It is a shift in human
perceptions as revolutionary as that introduced by Copernicus who
taught mankind in the sixteenth century that the earth and the other
planets revolved round the sun. For the first time in human history,
there is a growing worldwide consciousness that the earth itself is a living