Archive for the ‘Climate change’ Category
Climate change – India’s role to play !!
Read about the research center National Institute for Research on Climate and Environment to be developed in Bangalore to work on climate change. A Great facility to have. No doubt. Our Union minister for environment says “With this India will demonstrate the whole world that we are serious about climate change”. True. But don’t we have other ways in which we can really show the world that we are acting upon climate change? Yes, we do.
India will have impacts like destruction of coastal areas, agricultural problems etc due to climate change. We are a developing nation and we have not yet figured out ways and established world class systems for immediate help and recovery help during calamities like tsunami. Our per capita carbon emission was somewhere around 0.25 tonnes in late 90s, it was 1.19 tonnes in 2006 and some articles raise an alarm saying our per capita carbon emission will be tripled (around 5.00) in 2030. Though this may be far less than the emission by other countries, the major contributors towards carbon emission, power generation, transport, (especially construction industry) are developing rapidly and we really need to become more serious about this.
But how do we put plans into action? Do we have wait until we develop a research center, send rockets to monitor green house gases, monitor forest cover and Himalayan glaciers and then act on the data and make plans?? No,, that will be really late. What is that we have in hand to execute right now? I don’t think we can change our energy strategy from coal-based to some other energy systems soon. We can put small and effective plans into place like,
1) Enforcing acts to prevent deforestation.
2) Camps to advocate people the effects of climate change
3) Create awareness, support and motivate acts like car pooling – though these are very small savings on carbon emission, but as always single drop makes an ocean.
4) Promote cultivation of wastelands.
5) And shout (literally shout, yes, the government has to make a lot of noise and create awareness) about energy conservation.
And what IS NOT energy conservation : Cutting electricity for 15 hours in villages, not providing them proper water and transport facilities, decrease in supply of fuels for cooking etc.We are a developing a nation and every citizen in the country deserves the right to use all the infrastructure and amenities needed. And we need to strike a balance.
Brown says, if countries around the globe miss the chance in Copenhagen, we may never be able to make it.. lets see what happens..
