"Modern materialist thinking which is linear and which holds that everything is for man's use and manipulation is losing credit. Man is being forced to define his attitude towards elements like the earth, the waters, the air, the sky, the rivers. Are they dead? Or, living? Are they strangers? Or, close relatives - father, mother, brothers, sisters, and friends? Are the oceans, the atmosphere merely great sinks, huge waste-dumps? Are the minerals, the plants, the great animal sister-creation there just for human exploitation? Have they no life and rights of their own. Sanatana dharma takes the view that they have their own rights and we have duties towards them. It says that we should cherish them and live in togetherness. If we violate this law and continue to injure them, we create karmas that will strike back in ways we can hardly imagine."