Global Warming: Pressing the Panic Button

I want to share an insight with you. Pardon me for for my abruptness and oversimplifications if any, because of my effort to keep it very simple and brief.

Statement of Our Grave Situation

For millions of years, nature has been taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere -- taking carbon out of circulation -- and stashing it away, not only as trees, but also as enormous coal and crude-oil reserves under the earth. But since the discovery of the steam engine and the industrial revolution, mankind has been taking these carbon and hydrocarbon reserves and burning them. Every passing year, we thus undo the work of a few thousand years of nature. Humankind is now a rampant force of nature.

Our GDP and per-capita consumption is rapidly rising at close to 10%, and so the carbon footprint of each individual human-being on earth is doubling every 20 years or so. [Very brief explanation: Each extra shirt we buy and stash in our cupboards or each apple that we eat that has been flown in from Australia or China, or even lorried in from Himachal Pradesh, represents an unnecessary load of carbon in the air that we have contributed.]

As our population grows at a galloping pace -- rising as much in 10 years as it did in the entire millennium between 1 AD and 1000 AD -- the collective carbon footprint of humankind doubles every 10 years or so. In other words, the 'weight' or 'impact' of humankind on earth is doubling every decade.

The upshot of having more carbon-dioxide in the air than ever before in the last 650,000 years is: All that carbon dioxide is storing solar heat in the atmosphere. This increased heat energy will transform, and is already transforming into more kinetic energy as (i) more rapid evaporation and precipatation (ii) more frequent, widespread and powerful hurricanes (iii) a higher water-level in the oceans as the polar ice-caps melt, stronger waves and tidal movements, which will over the next decade require every human settlement and activity on the coastline including fishing villages, metros and ports to be relocated further inland.

I don't know if remedies are available. Personally, I think we are already in deep shit and blissfully unaware of it, like a guy who is falling to his death from a skyscraper, but is heard saying as he whooshes past the 10th-floor window, "So far so good! Everything feels great!"

Still, because of our human nature, we like to believe that it is never too late to mend.

Statement of One Possible Remedy

Our economies, which depend primarily on combustion, need to be urgently unhooked from combustibles and hooked onto alternative sources even if they are uneconomical at first. Energy from combustibles seems economical only because it does not take into account the environmental cost; in other words, such energy is environmentally 'subsidized'. However, such subsidies are no longer sustainable, and there is an enormous 'natural deficit' that has built up that needs to be balanced.

So we need to learn to consume solar energy, wind energy, tidal and hydro-electric or human-generated energy, even if it seems terribly uneconomical at first. Simultaneously, we need to learn to live with drastically lowered energy consumption.

Immediate measure 1: We need to impress on decision-makers (and not just general public) at various levels the urgency of our situation. We must make presentations before people in the government and administration at all levels, as often as possible.

Immediate measure 2: We need to show that we ourselves believe in our message. It is not very convincing for us to continue to go around in our big air-conditioned cars and sit in air-conditioned offices, air-conditioned homes and air-conditioned chambers of commerce. We need to show our willingness to step down into less-stylish cars, or maybe even scooters, public transport etc. We need to send out a clear message by (1) scaling down our own usage of electricity by opening our windows and using ceiling-fans etc, (2) walking and bicycling as much as possible instead of taking motorised transport and (3) depending on non-energy consuming forms of recreation such as going for long walks or playing cards together.

Immediate measure 3: To make a dent on the public consciousness, send out a clear message, and set off a mass movement, those of us who are aware of this problem and deeply concerned about it need to do something emblematic. How about something like dressing very simply and riding a bicycle to work (and everywhere else) one day of every week – something that is directly opposed to our increasingly ostentatious lifestyle?

Footnote: I do realize that these ideas are not exactly "civilized", and they make me sound like I urgently need a shrink. But maybe taking such drastic measures will show that we clearly understand the gravity of our situation. Our collective existence depends on this sort of response.

To Stop Global Warming, Stop Credit Cards & Consumer Loans

Today, we have an affluent economy, with only a small fraction of our economies' output devoted to basic needs. Environmentalists say that we are reaching the limits of growth due to ecological constraints. Here in our cities, we have not only reached the limits of human needs but overshot them many times over. What we currently have in our metros is largely overconsumption or unnecessarily luxurious consumption which has many adverse consequences on us, on our economies and on our planet.

Economic growth is no longer improving our well-being. The extra time and energy that we must spend on healthcare, children's education, commuting and just keeping pace of changes are on the rise. The quality of our surroundings -- our neighbourhood, roads, civic infrastructure etc. are deteriorating even as more and more goods flood the supermarkets.

We have reached a point of counterproductive growth; additional growth now brings diminishing benefits while causing increased social and environmental costs.

As we urban Indians have become more prosperous, we have moved from consuming necessities to consuming conveniences to consuming luxuries. We are now driving to work one-per-car and spending many hours per week in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

This has severe environmental consequences. India's phenomenal economic growth of 9.5% per annum comes at the cost of farmers being deprived of electricity, of countless creatures of all shapes and sizes being deprived of their natural habitats and their food, of countless rivers and groundwater resources being both overexploited and polluted. Due to the continuous expansion of factories for manufacturing everything from cement to SUVs to cream-biscuits expand to meet the burgeoning demand, we overdraw on planetary resources and disrupt the fine web of life by cutting its strands.

But how can we stop? How to stop so many billion people from doing all the things they do in daily life?

In my mind, I keep searching for key points that are causing our present situation. I keep trying to identify places where the cancerous tumour, so to speak, can be clearly isolated from human flesh. Because these are the places where we can start cutting away surgically, methodically, without hurting too many people.

1) Consumer credit -- loans extended by banks for purchase of new vehicles and consumer appliances -- is one of the major arteries of this cancerous tumour. Easy loans affect our purchasing decisions. How?
Two calls from an aggressive marketer of car loans is all I need to make me feel that I NEED to step up from my family car to an SUV. I start believing that it is high time I bought a bigger car. "You can afford it, Sir," says the loan agent, sleazily massaging my ego into a full-blown erection.

I think about my employee who drives the same brand of car that I drive, thanks to the same loan agent's persuasion. Then I think about my neighbour's shining new Scorpio and think about how insignificant my own vehicle (read phallic symbol) looks standing next to it.
Some advice from my friendly chartered accountant reinforces this feeling: New SUV = more tax-deductible depreciation. Also, interest on loan installments is tax-deductible.

I reason: if I trade in my present vehicle, it brings down the price of the new one a lakh or so. Then I only need to afford the reduced EMIs (Equated Monthly Instalments) on the load. Can't I afford an EMI of Rs 12,000? Of course I can; what kind of man am I if I can't afford to pay a small installment like that?!

Besides, business is looking up; that new client who I have been pursuing for six months is almost in the bag. So what if he hasn't actually signed on the dotted line? His word is as good as gold.

That decides it: I just WANT a brand-new fuel-guzzler, and I want it NOW! Never mind the price, I can afford the EMI. Of course I can... Case closed!

2) Credit cards: Visa Power -- you've got it! If you have a credit card or two, you know what it means to be a really wealthy person, because you are able to securely carry large amounts equivalent to many months' earnings in your wallet.

And when you do that, you are potentially able to do all those wonderful, beautiful, generous things that you see in TV commercials -- things that can make your wife's heart go flutter-flutter, and that will make her give you that million-dollar smile. How about buying her that diamond solitaire? Or taking her out to dinner at the Taj Princess? Or booking the Presidential suite for your wedding anniversary? Or, better still, surprising her with a couple of air-tickets to Paris... Wow, that would be such a PRICELESS moment... just like they show in Visa commercials!

Credit-card bills? What's that? Oh, just a minor detail, that's all. Stuff that happens in the background, inconspicuously, as part of routine life. Life goes on, bills get paid... they always do. So let's not waste time talking about bills. Those airline tickets are one phone-call or one mouse-click away.

The point that I'm making here is: Consumer credit and credit-cards are the hot air causing the great big Economic Growth balloon to go up... and up... and up at the current rate of 9.5% per annum. Thanks to this banking 'reform', all of us are learning to increasingly live in perpetual debt, just like the Americans whom we all adore so much that they can do no wrong, not even in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thanks to easy consumer credit, we are all borrowing from the future. We aren't only borrowing economically, we are borrowing ecologically. As the previous article points out, "Globally, we are demanding 1.3 planets to support our lifestyles this year, and yet we only have one planet earth. Each year, we as a global community place demands on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries that goes beyond their capacity to generate resources and absorb wastes. We are using more far more than the planet can regenerate in a year."

Conclusion: At an individual level, we should stop buying things with credit, and stop using our credit cards. It is worth cutting up our credit cards. Let us stop borrowing for the future.

And as a community of concerned citizens, let us lobby for a clampdown on consumer credit. Let us write to the government, to Reserve Bank and to individual banks and bankers.

Let each person in the banking industry be targetted with this message: Cap and roll back. Let us ask for a freeze of consumer credit at current levels this year, and a 50% reduction in the amounts of credit given each year. This would give the economy about three years to adjust to the changing scenario. (Three years is 36 months -- far more time than the economy and its stakeholders get for adjustment when the stock-markets crash or a bank collapse which happens within a few weeks time.)
Do you think there is truth in this argument? If so, please help by spreading the word.
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Satyam Eva Jayate: Let the Truth Prevail.

My Journey of Faith

Since the mid-80s, I was of the opinion that the activities of humankind were transforming the world in an unsustainable way. I had researched about this view and found it validated in a lot of writings. I wrote newspaper articles about it in 1988. I discussed a number of alternative courses of social action with my Dad for dealing with it... but I ended up doing nothing other than imposing a sort of penance, subsisting largely on uncooked foods for many months in 1999, and adopting a monk-like dress-code in 2002.

Seeing Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, in July 2007 was for me a vindicating experience. Here was someone with great credibility saying everything that I had been wanting to say all along, and saying it with style and effectiveness. It triggered me with a sense of urgency.
The film, screened at our chamber of commerce, was like a gas lighter's spark to a gas stove; already combustible, I needed that spark to ignite me into action.

The first task that I undertook, with the support of my chamber's anti-global-warming committee, was a mundane one: show the film to a lot of people in my city. And so I began to show the film around on my laptop, editing it down with fast-forwarding to about 55 minutes, delivering a short talk, fielding questions, clairfying, discussing alternative courses of action.

Here is a list of these meetings:

1) Screening at CCI's C K Naidu hall, Churchgate, on 26th July for 120 persons from the financial services sector , in coordination with Tata Mutual Fund, which then independently showed the film five times before audiences in Delhi, Bangalore and Calcutta.

2) Screening for 300 children of New Era School, August Kranti Maidan, on 26th July, Standards 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th.

3) On August 5, Sunday, 80 persons (25 families) at Railway Officers Club at Byculla watched this film before lunch.

4) On 5th September, 40 railway engineers at the Parel workshop saw the film and discussed Climate Change and viable responses.

5) On 10th September, 90 high-school students of Ram Ratna Vidya Mandir, a boarding school at Bhayender, watched this film and discussed lines of action with me over lunch.

6) 19th September at St Xaviers Boys Academy, New Marine Lines. 300 students watched intensely and 20 of them participated in an intense discussion held afterwards in the vice-principal's office.

7) 28th September at USV Limited, Govandi. 75 pharmaceutical lab technicians and their bosses, including their vice-chairman, watched the screening.

8) 18th October at Bombay Management Association. A high-quality audience of 40 persons raptly watched the screening. Two of those present there -- Prof. Bhavna Motwani and Mr Tejus Coulagi -- went on to become intensely involved with this cause. Soon afterwards, we formed an informal group called Children of the Earth. This group has organized two screenings at colleges subsequently, and has held three internal meetings. We are now attracting more members.

9) 14th November at Rotary Club of Navi Mumbai Hillside. An audience of 30 yielded a couple of very promising contacts. The vice principal of a very large college in Navi Mumbai is organizing a full day conference of teachers, besides other 2-hour seminars for students.

10) 26th November at Saraf College, Malad West. Prof Motwani and I addressed 300 girl BCom students for an hour, with a 20-minute screening of An Inconvenient Truth. It was my first experience of a mofussil audience. I became aware that Al Gore's film alone could not reach out to all audiences; I needed to weave oratory and humour into the mix.

11) On 8th December, I was present at a seaside amphitheatre at Khardanda where an awareness programme had been organized by some concerned citizens along with Greenpeace. Without meaning to steal the show, I turned out to be one of the main speakers there, and also facilitated the screening of Greenpeace films.

12) 11th December at Somaiya College, Vidyavihar. Prof Motwani & I addressed 100 students of BSc, along with their teachers, Principal and Vice Principal.

13) On 18th December, for about 90 minutes, I addressed 80 boys and girls of Std 9 at Colaba Municipal school, without screening the movie. It was an demanding job, engaging the mind of this audience without going into scientific abstractions of global warming.

Other activities:

1) Two weeks back, while travelling by train, I entered into a conversation with a peddler of books, who turned out to have a flair for scripting and directing street plays. Our discussions threw up a lot of ideological common-ground. Yesterday afternoon, I addressed a small gathering of slum youths near his chawl in Vile Parle. Many of these youths will act in a street play that we are scripting, and shall enact before slum audiences organized jointly with Rotary etc. For the first time in many months, I am experiencing a need to raise funds to keep this street play going.

2) In the last two months, I have emailed hundreds of members of Parliament, Central Ministers, students of IGIDR, Sardar Patel Institute, Management Institutes, IITs, bankers and economists, administrators, activists etc. I am carrying out a concerted campaign on the internet, through blogs, emails, comments to others' blogs, message boards etc.

3) I have designed Tshirts with slogans and attractive visuals, and am working at circulating them, enabling people to 'Walk the Talk and Wear the Talk'.

4) I have handed out a large number of DVDs and CDs with data on global warming, and xeroxed pamphlets of different kinds.

5) I have attended several meetings organized on Global Warming, at the British Council and other fora. I continue to network with activists and intellectuals, while also working with a more ordinary strata of citizens. All of this activity continues to happen on a day-to-day basis, several hours a day.

Upcoming Events:

1) I shall address a Rotary Club in Kala Ghoda, South Mumbai on 10th January, and another in Borivli on 11th January 2008.

2) Prof. Motwani and I will orient around 30 teachers on Global Warming on 21 st January at a state-sponsored seminar in Navi Mumbai. We shall speak on Corporate Social Responsibility and Citizens' Responsibility in the context of Global Warming.

3) Meetings are being fixed up for slum audiences and mofussil gatherings in coordination with Rotary and others. For such audiences, we have to structure our message differently. The street plays being produced are part of this effort.

Please don't take this as a boastful statement about how much I've done. What I'm trying to say here is: I'm dead serious, and this is a fascinating journey. Is there anybody else on the iland who would like to join me in spreading awareness or organizing some form of action on this problem? Please let us join hands and earnestly work on this problem.

Fighting global warming (or indeed taking on any such problem of similar magnitude) needs several leaps of faith, and then it needs to become a journey. I'm hoping that a few thinking people here on the iland will make these leaps of faith and run shoulder-to-shoulder with me.

Global Warming: What do we do?

I'm thrilled at the amount of awareness and concern there is on the issue of Global Warming. (And by the way, I am delighted that Al Gore and Dr R K Pachauri won the Nobel Prize. I know very little about Dr Pachauri, but Al Gore has brought an enormous amount of global awareness to this cause with his movie, An Inconvenient Truth.)

However, I'm also alarmed at how much our thinking gets tripped up by petty technicalities, political ideologies and ego tussles.

Some of us seem to believe that this entire Global Warming thing is a scare, a shibboleth, an urban myth motivated by faulty science, bad politicians, crackpot activists and sloppy journalists who don't check their facts. This particular post is not intended for people who hold this opinion.

This post is intended for those who believe that our collective burning of hydrocarbon fuels has brought us to a grave situation, and are wondering what mitigating responses would make a meaningful difference without being too painful to implement.

For those of us who accept that there is indeed a problem in terms of our collective burning of hydrocarbons, I want to propose an approach which may be broadly stated as:

CONSUME WHATEVER REQUIRES MINIMAL
MANUFACTURING & TRANSPORTATION.

I am detailing this approach with five points each as to what we can do at three levels or spheres of influence.

INDIVIDUALS:
Be aware of your carbon footprint, and make choices that minimize it.

Watch what you eat and drink. Serve your guests home-made lemon-sherbet instead of the contents of a PET bottle of coke to save money and reduce your carbon footprint. The manufacturing process of PET bottles and soft drinks involve combustion of large amounts of fuel, and so does the transportation from the bottling plant to your grocery store. Similarly, an apple imported from China involves air transport. It is more eco-friendly to consume fruits grown in Nasik or Mahabaleshwar. Anything that is home-made and does not come out of a bottle or can is more eco-friendly.

Watch what you wear. Imported clothes brought to your neighbourhood store through a complex distribution chain involve large amounts of transportation. Choose clothes that have been produced geographically as close to you as possible. Also, every additional set of clothes lying unused in your wardrobe is a wastage of global resources involved in manufacturing them. For every new dress that you buy, discard an old one so that someone else gets to wear them and does not have to buy new ones.

Watch how you entertain yourself. A walk in the park, talking with friends at home or in the neighbourhood, playing a game of chess or cards etc. involves no external energy sources, and is also good for health. Listening to music, watching television, phoning a friend is also relatively low on energy consumption. Compared to these, driving to the multiplex, the shopping mall, the bowling alley or the restaurant involves consumption of large amounts of hydrocarbons. Please minimize environmental cost of your enjoyment.

Watch what you drive. Avoid buying or driving oversized status-symbols. Step down to modest vehicles that have better fuel economy. Also, use public transport during non-peak hours, and walk or use a bicycle over short distances.

Watch your power and water usage. Switch off lights and air-conditioners when you are leaving the room. Avoid recessed or concealed light fixtures that absorb rather than emit most of the light, or cast light at the ceiling rather than directly. Minimize heating bathwater in summer, and do not waste water by leaving your tap running unnecessarily.

CORPORATES:
Play a leadership role in mitigating the problem.

Organize employee commute programs to minimize costs.

Reduce business travel emissions. Consider combining trips, and the taking the aid of technology (video conferencing) to create virtual meetings.

Set your A/C thermostat as high as you comfortably can (around 24 degrees C). Instead of air-conditioning, open the windows of offices as often as you can and enjoy fresh air. While designing office interiors, choose openness over enclosed settings, ceiling fans over air-conditioners, and some natural lighting over a complete dependence on artificial lighting. Minimize having light fixtures for aesthetic rather than functional reasons. Avoid recessed light fixtures that absorb rather than emit most of the light. Avoid installing ‘caverned’ fixtures that direct light at the ceiling.

Assign a department to audit your company’s energy and transport (including flight) kilometers etc, and devise ways to achieve a 2% reduction in these costs every month.

Incentivate junior staffs to walk, use bicycles and scooters. Also, encourage all employees to choose the stairs over the lift as often as they possibly can.

MUNICIPALITIES:
Legislate and regulate for lower fuel costs.

Reduce motorized transportation within residential neighborhoods and office localities. Vehicles, including public transport, must be discouraged from entering neighborhoods and office localities. Passengers should be dropped off at well-planned nodal points with large parking lots. People should be encouraged to walk the last half kilometer to their destinations. This will improve the air quality in work and living environments, give people peaceful zones for walking, bicycling etc and improve people’s health overall. It will also considerably reduce traffic jams and reduce per capita petroleum consumption.

Maximise the facilities for pedestrians and cyclists. Wide, continuous footpaths unobstructed by clutter, parked vehicles and hawkers, should be a norm to encourage walking. Create a bicycle lane for at least two kilometers on roads near schools. Children who enjoy walking or taking the bicycle to school will not have to be dropped to school by car or scooter.

Dim the traffic lights between midnight and 5 am to save electricity. Also, switch off the lights on advertisement hoardings after 10 pm.

Meter the water usage of individual flats/apartments rather than entire buildings in order to encourage more thrifty utilization of water, in order to conserve both water resources and the power used for pumping them to the taps.

Incentivate vehicle owners to reduce the size and number of vehicles they own. Road tax on households owning two or more four-wheeled vehicles must be fixed at disproportionately higher rates. Road tax on luxury vehicles that occupy more space and give a low mileage should also be hiked up. On the other hand, tax on smaller vehicles and two-wheelers should be slashed, and purchase of bicycles should be cross-subsidized.


Implementing these measures would have some side-effects on the economy, and on some sections of people in particular. I welcome ideas that are more painless and more easily implemented than the ones proposed, provided their effectiveness is not much less than the ones proposed.

Time is of the essence. Let us act now!!!