Climate Change - Attitude Change

Human induced climate change has taken the spot-light today. Almost every area of our lives are being impacted by this phenomenon. Personal lives and businesses are slowly changing to accomodate the fact that this world is soon going to change as a result of climate change.

The mess created by developed nations has been left around as high carbon dioxide percentage in the air and polluted ground and water resources. Mankind, in his quest of seeking immediate development and amelioration of technology and quality of life went on a fast paced track to develop new technologies. Unfortunately, most technologies that run the world today happen to be the worst technologies with respect to carbon emissions, energy efficiency, energy conservation and promotion of healthy practices. Take power plants for instance: Coal fired power plants constitute nearly 70% of the world's power production and also happen to be the dirtiest, but cheapest and easiest method.

It may be too late now, but western nations have realised that the mess that started with the Industrial Revolution has now come around knocking on their doors with weightier problems. But what seems to be appalling is that many developing nations (even India) feel that they should be allowed to develop and advance their quality of life along the same path that the western nations have done - the quick way, the dirty way. With liberalisation of our policies and opening up our doors to foreign direct investment, most European nations have clamped down on their emission norms forcing their industries to shift shop into third world countries where workforce is cheap and emission norms low - eg. Syngenta in Goa. When the impending doom of Climate Change has motivated developed nations to change focus from personal transport to better public transport, from vehicle corridors to pedestrian and cycle corridors, from increasing energy production to using less energy, countrieslike India and others stand up and demand for their "right" to develop and go about planning bigger roads (which encourages vehicle ownership), bigger power plants, etc.

Although it is a legitimate demand, surely it does not mean we should follow the same path as others. We have a chance to set an example. To start a trend of prudent energy planning and resource allocation; to undo the misdeeds of the west and the so-called developed world.

This calls for an attitude change. We need to aspire to "greener" pastures through "greener" means. Instead of focussing on increasing our energy production, we should advocate lesser use of energy, efficient use of energy. Efficient use of energy would be getting more out of energy than what we currently get - if we could formerly run a single bulb of a particular illumination on 30 kilowatts, we should be able to run 3 bulbs of equally bright illumination on 30 kilowatts - that would be efficienct practice! We would then end up wasting less energy and not having to bother so much about meeting staggering energy demands. What we need in place is an effective energy efficiency programme and a policy that promotes energy conservation and minimal use.

This is the need of the hour today because most impacts of Climate Change like droughts, sea-level rise, storms, etc. are going to be concentrated in the tropics where most of the developing and under-developed nations are. Indians shall face immense stress with sea-level rise and droughts. So apart from reducing emissions, we may manage to postpone the catastrophic effects of climate change with the right attitude, dedication and leadership.