A Call to Arms

There is a myth that we all are subscribing to, and this is the myth of UNLIMITED ECONOMIC GROWTH. We all believe that barring a few minor hiccups ('corrections’ in stock-market jargon), a steady rate of GDP growth can be indefinitely sustained even as human population growth can be indefinitely sustained.

In other words, our learned economists really do believe that year after year, the goodies that we consume can grow in volume and quality, and our lives can get better and more luxurious. They base all their projections on this theory. And we ordinary folks believe in this myth propagated by our economists and our governments.
The theory of nuclear energy or solar energy replacing fossil fuels as a source of UNLIMITED ENERGY TO FUEL UNLIMITED GROWTH is a corollary to the previous myth.
Folks, these are myths! Let's face it!

Global Warming is a real emergency! We really must stop hiding our collective heads in the sand, and look at the real solutions. Not just small adjustment-type solutions like 'Let us educate more people, learn to switch off the lights, conserve bathwater and see what happens'!

The key is: WE ALL NEED TO CUT BACK ON CONSUMPTION ON A LARGE SCALE!

And yes, that is defintely gonna hurt. Like the muscle-boys say while working out in gyms, if it ain't hurtin', it ain't workin'.

Cutting back consumption means coming out of our addiction to credit cards, private vehicles, packaged goodies, the mania for owning the 'latest model' of every electronic toy designed for adults -- such as camera-phones, flat-screen televisions and more swish cars.
Of course reduced consumption by all those of us who are overconsuming resources (and putting several tonnes of CO2 into the air every year) will definitely mean NEGATIVE ECONOMIC GROWTH RATES!

But this is a necessary shot of bitter medicine, and we have to take it, like it or not!

It also means PUTTING OUR CAREERS on back-burners. Let us forget our obsession with maintaining a nice gradient of promotions, salary raises and increases in quarterly profits, please!

Can some of us please start petitioning our governments to STOP REGISTERING NEW PRIVATE TRANSPORT VEHICLES, which compete with public transport and lower their efficiencies? We need to cap their numbers and then reduce their numbers every year while swiftly stepping up PUBLIC TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE to enable more energy-efficient movements.
We also need to petition airlines to STOP REWARDING FREQUENT FLYERS. We need to fly around less! Let’s try to make do with internet, tele-conferencing, video-conferencing and email-groups, for Chrissake! We need to benchmark so that the numbers of journeys by flights and all means of transport are brought down.

We need to petition banks to stop rewarding BIG CREDIT-CARD SPENDERS and indeed, to cap the growth of credit cards at existing levels! We need to consume what requires less manufacturing, less packaging and less transportation. For instance, let us replace that bottle of coke with a nice home-brewed cuppa chai!

And last but not least, citizens of developed and developing nations need to take the lead in forcing their governments to ACTIVELY SEEK NEGATIVE ECONOMIC GROWTH RATES for a few years as a way of shaving the head off the CO2 emissions, and reducing the rampant consumerism that we all are habituated to!
I’m looking for thinking people to join me in actively triggering and leading a movement to spread this mindset of cooling down our individual and collective economic habits. (I already have a small group that includes a professor of climatology and a young entrepreneur. I am also on the Global Warming Committee of a chamber of commerce, and I've been talking my head off at all sorts of fora... but we need lots more to generate a momentum for activism.)

I am not talking merely about spreading awareness; there's that, but we need to do lots more, and we need to do it NOW! Please let us stop pretending that this is a problem that we can deal with at our leisure, post-retirement.

People in all cities are urged to contact me, but I really am hoping to network most actively with people who are in Mumbai.

I'm giving you folks my gmail address and mobile number to tell you that I really do mean business, and have no time for pussy-footing around this issue. If you stand convinced that this is an urgent problem that is crying out for action, please contact me now. (friendlyghos@gmail.com, mob:
98215 88114)

Warm Regards,
Krish (a.k.a. Friendly Ghost)
Mumbai