Ban on smoking has gone up in smoke

After crossing lot of hurdles the health minister of India, Mr. Anbumani Ramadoss is finally successful in transforming the law on smoking ban from papers to reality. This was a very tough job for the minister who gathered ire from different sections of the society. Well the anger is true to some extent, especially when the citizens take it as their fundamental right. Who doesn’t smoke? Where you will draw the line? Poor, millionaire, doctors, actors, politicians, govt. officials, teachers, police, criminal, army man, spiritual leaders, women, students and all, smoke to attain ecstasy. Therefore the ban on smoking came over them as a curb on their democracy. Millions in India sportingly avoid standing in queues to vote, but how can they quit smoking?

Annually thousands die due to smoking related diseases in India and the most popular of them is cancer. Interestingly people feel jittery even talking about cancer, but at the same time they are so reluctant about its major cause. Several throw such arguments that ­­­­­--- even smoking is banned cancer can’t be prevented or pollution kills more than smoking. The problem in India is that very few people know little but understands more. To avoid uneasy problem they create their own stories as part of self defence mechanism.

Who cares about the fine? Those who smoke spend thousands or even more in a year on their preferred brands of puff. So only a Rs. 200 fine cannot stop them from smoking in public places. Even the law enforcement body is reluctant. People smoking boldly everywhere, but nobody is there to punish them. Politicians fear that they may lose some loyal voters if they try to become strict. So pretending is the best policy to avoid the situation and let the smoking ban go up in smoke.

Global warming empowered Hurricane

The state of New Orleans would remember for long the day when a Hurricane named Katrina gave them the pinch of global warming.

On 29th August 2005, America faced the fiercest wrath of global warming, when Hurricane Katrina blowing at 145 miles per hour hurled over the state of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 per cent of the city and killed more than 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.

New Orleans is still recovering from the ‘shock and awe’ of Katrina. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. Scientists and environmentalists predict that many more such devastating storms in the states of New Orleans and Miami are in the offing, as melting polar ice raises the sea levels. They fear rising temperatures will melt glaciers and polar ice caps, raising sea levels and harming coastal residents worldwide.

What is unusual about Katrina is that the power and intensity by which it has hurled over the coastline. Scientific studies and experiments are pointing fingers at factors such as global warming and excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as the reasons behind such vengeance. One such important study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had found that hurricane wind speeds have increased up to 50 per cent in the past 50 years.

Environmentalists warned of such a day long time ago, but reluctant US citizens didn’t bothered to pay attention to the warming. The devastating results of Katrina has taught them the lesson that it is the time when CO2 emissions from vehicles and industrial belts should be minimized as our planet is heating up, trapping all of us in an unpredictable new period in history.

Barter with water

Prior to the use of currency for doing various transactions, ancient people were engaged in less complicated system called bartering, where they used to exchange different utility oriented products with each other. With the passage of time people became more refined and choose currency as their preferred mode of transaction. But with the increase in depletion of ground water, in near future the age old barter system is about to revive.

At this moment water is considered as the most precious natural resource in the world leaving behind oil (petroleum) in the race. The world has witnessed different conflicts, political tensions eventually leading towards war over the control of oil. But soon the world is going to witness the mother of all war, which will be over the domination of water. Even one litre of water will fetch thousands of dollars at that time. The socio-economic model of the world will be reshaped considering the amount and value of water in a region.

Presently there is only 3% of fresh water in planet earth out of which 2% is trapped in glaciers and polar ice caps and only the existing 1% is left for the use of humans and animals. In near future abundant water for drinking, sanitation, industry, irrigation, transportation and recreation will become a dream and nightmare at the same time. Looking at the rate of increase in population it is even hard to imagine how critical the scarcity of water will become in the years to come.

It has been predicted that by 2025 around 2 billion people leaving in different countries will be part of a hydrological war to meet the needs of agriculture, industry and households. Lester Brown, president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington based independent research organisation while discussing about this issue once said, “There are substitutes for oil but there are no substitutes for water. Excessive pumping for irrigation to satisfy food needs today almost guarantees a decline in food production tomorrow.”

In future to ease the tension arising out of scarcity of water the world leaders have to look back towards barter system. Adding monetary value to water will bring doomsday for the world. As only the powerful and rich nation in the world will then be able to posses the right to water and the rest will have to fight among themselves for the minimum amount of water needed for survival. Following the barter system the looming crisis can be solved to some extent. Nations with rich water resource can barter water with the other nations that have abundant supply of some other product.

By this system the water starved nation will receive their desired amount of water and the water rich nation will be enriched with the resource they were lagging earlier.

Going black, Blackle saves energy

Blackle.com is generating lots of news these days, when saving energy for a better future and environment is the buzzword. Blackle.com, developed by Heap Media Australia is a website powered by Google Custom Search. It has come up with an unique idea to save energy, by transforming itself into black.

The idea behind this concept is to reduce climate change by saving energy. The creators of Blackle believe that ample amount of energy can be saved by the use of monitors by providing search with a black background. The scientific theory backing Blackle is that the display of different colours consumes different amounts of energy on computer monitors. A study conducted in 2002 by Roberson on a variety of CRT and LCD monitors found that an all black screen consumes less energy than an all white screen.

Heap Media’s fundamental intention in launching Blackle was to spread the awareness of “save energy” among the 500 million (approx.) computer users all over the world. In January 2007, a blog post titled ‘Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year’, triggered the idea, which finally took its shape into Balckle.com.

As an environmental friendly initiative, Blackle encourages every user to set Blackle as their home page. By doing this every time a user loads Internet browser they will start saving a little bit of energy. Search Engine major, Google supported this project because their expand and reach will not only spread the idea of energy conservation but more importantly save energy to a great extent.

Save the park, conserve energy at one go

Today when pollution is taking a serious toll on our health, parks and playgrounds are increasingly looked upon as the lungs of a locality in Kolkata. Everyday, inch by inch of our city is being encroached by the real estate mafias commonly called the promoters. Nowadays it is hard to see the clear blue skies from the tall buildings that has mushroomed every in nook and corner of the city. It is also hard to inhale fresh air from any given locality as large amount of trees are felled for construction purpose.

But, unfortunately even the parks and playgrounds that are looked upon as small land of bliss are also attracting the attention of local hooligans, miscreants and gundas for their unethical and illegal works. These parks and playgrounds generally attract young and old, men and women, mostly during the early hours of morning and evening. These people visit such places either for playing, meeting each other or for physical exercise. But these places become deserted soon after darkness fall and this gives the notorious elements the chance to carry out their illegal works.

Now to safeguard these parks and playgrounds and also to protect the locality from any possible threat from such elements, the local authorities and the KMC has jointly come up with a plan to illuminate these parks and playgrounds during night.

This is undoubtedly a very good initiative from the civic authorities, and in fact this step has encouraged the local people to venture out in the parks and playgrounds even after dark. But in this process the authorities has overlooked that they also have the responsibility of conserving energy. Normally, to illuminate such big parks there is need of big mercury or halogen lights that consume huge amount of electrical energy. Now there are some authorities who would prefer to use more such powerful lights than needed just to beautify the place extraordinarily. Thus in this process they fail to remember the fact that lots of energy is going into waste.

If they had used these lights with little sense then they could have saved lot of energy and in turn could have addressed the larger issue of power shortage in Kolkata. Other than just planting huge halogen lights in the parks whimsically, the civic authorities can consider such lights that save energy and at the same time produce sufficient light enough to illuminate a park or a playground. They can also make use of solar power lights, which are not only environmental friendly but are also effective in illumination.