Hurtle.

Hurtle on Google 

Would there be any other way to describe the growth and resulting damage to the environment. 

Here are some things which I wonder if I should be doing more - 

1. Flying less, using a train more, especially for personal travel.

2. Driving less, using the metro more

3. Walking 

4. Eating less meat, wasting less food. (Apparently, 18% of CO2 comes from cows belching. That's a lot of CO2. It is a good thing that Indian's don't eat cows. Another billion of hungry mouths to fee would mean a lot more cows)

5. Eating local (not low cal, but maybe that as well) 

6. Going out less, eating in more

7. Using greener computers and ACs

8. Planting a tree (you can do that here for India and here for the Brazilian rain forests) 

9. Reduce the heating on your water heaters and room heaters by just a notch (don't tell your wife or mum - they will immediately think the water is too cold). During summer, insist on sleeping at 25 degrees with a cotton bedsheet and not at 21 degrees with a quilt. 

10. Shift work times to a slightly earlier time (in India) to get into the office when the traffic is less and the office is cooler. (Why don't more organisations do this is beyond me?)

11. Change your car and your TV less often. 

12. Buy smaller or more fuel efficient cars. Use CFLs.

 

All of these things will save you money. That's something to think about! 

A logical extension of point 1 is that one should not travel abroad for holidays. 

The fantastic arc of instablity (Pakistan, Afghanistan etc) and India's terrain ensure that foreign travel means hopping onto to flight (unless you want to check out the origins of Balti cooking in Dacca). Does that mean all travel should be avoided? I think that travelling inside India is also something we need to do more. Also, when travelling abroad, try to use trains more after maybe the initial flight.

So that's that. 

Tips to save energy!

I went through some information on energy saving on a US website here, and have contextualised it for an Indian audience below:

The energy we use at home accounts for quite a bit of India's contribution to global warming. As incomes rise and consumption increases, this energy and co2 will only increase.
This means making smart choices at home matters, not only for saving on utility bills, but also i helping reduce global warming.

Heating and cooling
This is a top home energy user, with the average household producing about four tons of heat-trapping pollution a year (in the US, data for india not available) . It is heavily influenced by weather. Warmer summers increase greenhouse gas pollution from heavy air conditioning use.
Even as the weather varies, your choices can help spew less global warming pollution.
• In summer, keep shades drawn to keep the cool in.
• In winter, open shades to let the sunlight to help warm rooms.
• Use water coolers in the first few months of the summer when the humidity is not high. An air cooler is much more enery efficient than an air conditioner and it saves you electricity bills as well
• Buy air-conditioners whic have an energy star rating only
• Buy air-conditioners which can be programmed to be at a particular temperature.
• Temperatures of upto 28 degrees are comfortable. Every degree higher will translate into energy savings, less electricity consumption and Co2 reductions.
• Clean or replace the air filter on your air conditioner.
• Plant trees around your house to cut cooling costs in summer if you can. They help the local water table (which can reduce the cost of water pumps)
• Insulate your walls and ceilings.
• In case of a house, use a light-colored or reflective paint on the roof.

Appliances
After heating, refrigerators and freezers are generally the home's next two big energy eaters. Other appliances follow closely. Together, these items account for nearly eight tons of heat-trapping emissions per household per year.
• Upgrade to Energy Star products. Not all appliances are equal. Whether you're in the market for a new fridge, toaster or air conditioner, look for Energy Star choices, which offer the best energy savings.
• Size counts. When in the market for an appliance, make sure you buy what suits your needs. Items too large or too small waste electricity and your money.
• Unplug. Your electric meter is often adding up kilowatt hours when you don’t think you’re using an appliance. Unplug toasters and cell phone and other chargers when they’re not in use.
• Use power strips and switch off the whole strip: Cable boxes and video game boxes, and to a lesser extent TVs and VCRs, use almost as much energy when they're off as when they're on. Make it easy to turn them all the way off—plug them into a power strip and turn off the whole strip. Consumer Reports also offers more detailed ratings and green buying guides for appliances, from vacuum cleaners to laundry machines.

Lighting
Lighting accounts for about fair amount of enery consumption after heating and cooling have been accounted for. In terms of heat-trapping pollution, that means the lights in the average household produce just over a ton of carbon dioxide each year. Here are a few steps to lower those numbers.
• Use energy-efficient lights. Changing just one 75-watt bulb to a compact fluorescent light cuts roughly 1,300 pounds of global warming pollution(Again a US number, but I think that apart from power cuts, the number woul be the same in India). They also last up to 15 times as long and save you money.
• Turn off lights. A good chunk of lighting expenses is from rooms that stay unnecessarily lit.
• Use natural light. Open shades and use sunlight to help light rooms.
• Install motion-sensors so that lights automatically turn on when someone is in the room and turn off when empty. (A very US oriented tip, however, such technology is now available in India and is cheaper than you think!)
Other energy efficient choices for your home
• Use the energy saver cycle on your dishwasher and only run it when full.
• Wash clothes in warm or cold water, not hot.

And a really big one:
Raising animals for meat is more co2 intensive than using the piece of land for crops.
Going vegetarian helps the environment as it cuts out the middleman (Meat!). This one will be a tough nut for me to crack.

The Heat is On

I saw the trailer of "an inconvenient truth" a few weeks ago and it has been nagging me. I will watch it as soon as I can get the time... In the meantime, there are a few questions which I wanted to put to paper .

1. How bad is Global warming? Is it really happening or is it periodic/episodic?
2. Can normal people like you and me make a difference?

I guess that short answers to the questions above would be:
1. Very. Yes it is happening. Does not matter if there is something periodic. We are definitely hastening it.
2. YES.

I think saving power, water, gas, fuel, food all add up in a big way. I wish I had numbers to show this, but this is the example which I can think up of -

Imagine the water that flows from the tap while you brush.

It has been sucked out of the ground, filtered, treated, pumped into the mains and then onto the supply and then to the overhead tank to the tap. And I let it flow. It then heads back through sewage, pumped again to be filtered and treated on its way to the river/sea.
Each of these verbs - sucked, filtered, treated, pumped has a carbon footprint because of energy needed to do them. The energy required per litre of water might be quite small in absolute terms, and CO2 produced might sound even smaller.
However, multiply that number by 3 times day, a lifetime of 25000 days and 3bn people, who live in urban areas and the factor is not ignorable any more.

The above example is something which people fail to realise. Given the number of people and the innumerable conveniences of modern living, there is a lot of energy being used up. By being careful and smart and just a little more responsible, it all adds up.

1. Saving water (look at above) by using the sun to dry clothes, using the dishwasher only when it is completely full (or better, cleaning them in the sink). My score - 4/10.
2. Saving electricity by not keeping gadgets on standby, tubelights or LEDs instead of bulbs, climb stairs instead of a lift, motion sensitive lighting in offices. My score - 2/10
3. Eliminate waste and recycle (this is something I do not do at all and need to work at). My score 0/10.

(By the way, whats with keeping shops and offices lighted long after business hours. Have a look at here and here. This is something we as consumers should make businesses realise - that a dark carbon neutral store would shine out more. always. I am proud to work for a firm which encourages recycling at the workplace and the lights are switched off at night, I would be proud to shop at a shop which does the same.
In Delhi, long long ago, they started charging for shopping bags at the cooperative stores. That made people reuse polythene bags. The trick was to price the bags high enough for it to matter to people.)

Update - Read another post about the same, hits closer to home- about developing countries and climate change here

Unrelated comment - Life continues to be more like some light with a tunnel fast approaching!