Like the USA, India too has decided to reject the upper limit on the greenhouse gases emission at a summit meeting of the world’s leading economies next month because stricter limits would affect its GDP. I wonder who comes up with such arguments. Global warming is a serious issue and no vote bank politics is going to shoo it away. It is not something we can sweep under the carpet. For instance, Mumbai is India is financial capital. Where will our GDP goes if Mumbai goes under water in the next 30 years.
I think the best way to tackle this problem is that people living in the areas prone to submergence should put immense pressure upon their respective governments. For instance, the citizens of Mumbai should make it a priority that no economic activity takes place at the cost of their city.
Technorati Tags: greenhouse gases, global warming, pollution, india, mumbai
A group of zoologists have have spotted a new species of limbless lizard in Orissa. The zoologists claim that such a lizard is not found anywhere else in the world. Although both lizards and snakes are reptiles and somehow snakes got rid of their limbs and learned to maneuver without them, these limbless lizards are not snake although they look like snakes and prefer cool places with soft soil.
I wonder when they stopped using their limbs despite living on rocks. It must have taken them hundreds of thousands of years of disusage to evolve limbless. With technology helping us do all the things, may be in a few thousand years we too will lose our arms and legs and will just exist as a thinking mass. And if we don’t destroy the earth and eliminate our race, some day may be we’ll just exist as an intelligence, without even requiring a body. Now that will true existentialism.
Technorati Tags: limbless lizards, lizards, reptiles, science, zoology, india, orissa
It has to be nasty when “Hindu” organizations get involved. These bloody fascists need to be taught a lesson, even if for that you have to cut your own arm. Our progressive central and state governments are planning to demolish the Ram Setu to make way for the ambitious Sethusamudram project that is going to connect the Bay of Bengal with the Indian Ocean (Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay). A ship canal will be dug, I think somewhat similar to what they did when they created the Suez Canal. This will significantly reduce the shipping time, as right now all the ships have to come round Sri Lanka.
It’s irrelevant how much money the canal is going to save. It is also irrelevant that the vanar sena (the monkey army of Lord Ram) laid the millions of stones so that they could reach Lanka and rescue Sita from the demon king Rawan. What’s relevant is the ecological, geographic and oceanic effect the project is going to unleash. This is what some of the experts say:
Retired marine scientists and experts claim that if the Government persists with the project in its present form, India could be inviting an ecological disaster. They cite the 2004 experience of the coastline protected by Ram Setu escaping the fury of the Boxing Day tsunami.
Destroying the setu, they point out, citing tsunami expert Tad S Murthy, “Opens up serious potential damage to the entire Kerala and Tamil Nadu coast when the next tsunami occurs.” The project does not factor in measures to protect the coastline from tsunamis after the existing barrier is destroyed.
Experts have pointed out that as a consequence of dredging and opening of Ram Setu, fragile coral islands will be “destroyed by sediments and turbulent tides of Bay of Bengal entering the tranquil Gulf of Mannar.” They have suggested that the channel should be realigned towards Pamban and, like the Panama Canal, locks could be provided at the Palk Bay end and the Gulf of Mannar end to prevent disasters like tsunamis.
And this is where religion gets involved:
It is ironical that a government which changes the metro rail route to protect the Qutub Minar, built with the material of destroyed temples, stops a corridor to protect the Taj Mahal’s surroundings and spends crores of rupees to showcase ancient potteries and jewellery in heavily guarded museums, is destroying a unique symbol of national identity and an icon well preserved in our minds since ages. Even a child knows that a bridge was built by the friends of Lord Rama using floating stones and Rama’s army marched over it to Lanka to rescue Sita and destroy the evil regime of Ravana. [link]
This is sad. I’m not saying the monuments and historical artifacts belonging to the “great Mughal period” shouldn’t be protected — of course they should be protected because they are a part of our heritage — but then why be so callous about the Ram Setu, which officially the government calls the ”Adam’s bridge”? Just because the bridge bears Hindu connotations, it doesn’t mean it deserves no protection. So I fully support the VHP campaign to save the bridge – sometimes the end does justify the means. It’s disastrous that destructive organizations like the VHP is doing something that the civil society should do.
Here you can find more information on Ram Setu, or Ram Sethu.
Technorati Tags: sethusamudram project, ram setu, ram sethu, vhp, hindutva, hindu
Reports like these tend to confirm it. The USA is the biggest hurdle in the way of our generations having a cleaner, safer world. It pollutes the most, and it compensates the least, and on top of that it is arrogant. I think the other countries should impose sanctions on all the countries polluting the earth, whether it is China, or the USA.
And this Washington Post report claims the US have outrightly rejected the recommendations of the G8 summit.
Technorati Tags: global warminng, environmental change, pollution
In the Krugar National Park, South Africa. Please watch the whole video.
Technorati Tags: animals, nature, lions, buffaloes
China wants the Indian government to lift its 14-year-old ban on the sale of tiger parts. Now who in his or right mind would do that? Here in India we are already running short of these magnificent cats and I think every kid in the world knows this. I hope the Indian government — the kind of sissy government we have these days — doesn’t relent under diplomatic pressures.
The link above says:
India is home to over 50 per cent of the world’s tigers, whose body parts go into the making of traditional Chinese medicines, constituting a market valued at over $4 billion annually. Its dwindling tiger population, despite 35 years of conservation efforts, has been a cause of serious concern. Illegal poaching and smuggling into China is recognized as among the most significant factors.
Although the killing of tigers was banned in China 1993, meat dishes, and other medicinal products sell like hot cakes in the illegal market. Some restaurants even advertise wines that are said to have been made by dipping tiger carcasses in rice wine.
Wildlife organizations say illegal trade in big cat skins and body parts is worth about $8-billion a year and the stupid Indian poachers get as little as $20 per tiger killed.
According to the WWF 95% of the world’s tiger population has perished and three sub-species are already extinct. There is another species that hasn’t been spotted for the past 25 years.
Although the Chinese want the ban to be lifted only on the trade of captive tigers’ parts, it’ll surely trigger a chain reaction because the tigers raised in captivity are not considered healthy.
Technorati Tags: tigers, tiger conservation, tiger medicine, china lifting ban, ban on tiger products
When you cross the Yamuna, at least as far as Delhi is concerned, you can see that it is already dead. From a magnificent, historical water body it has been reduced to a decaying corpse of an entire ecology, mauled by the automobile of progress (if that’s how you view progress).
They say Ganga will be gone in 50 years and the polar bears will cease to exist in the next 15 years. Thousands of species will go extinct within a few years and major costal cities will be under water soon due to the rapidly melting ice caps. There will be flash floods, inexplicable droughts, locust attacks, new global epidemics will appear and the old ones will re-appear. Many US areas are already facing regular cyclones and twisters. The point is, global warming is no longer a fictionalized doomsday scenario; it’s knocking at our doors.
Leading climate-change experts gathered in Bangkok to attend the third session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s leading authority on global warming, in a 1000-page report the global warming can be contained but we have only got 8 years to set things right. The UN panel says that, contrary what many claim, the technology to control global warming is easily available, and it shouldn’t cost the earth. The most heartening aspect is, the earth can still be saved.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said temperature increases that began more than a century ago could be capped at 3.6 degrees if nations level greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade and then reduce them between 50 percent and 85 percent by 2050. Source.
Of course, as expected, the US reaction is more about the GDP. The Bush administration has repeatedly said that a full-scale attack on climate change could cripple the economy. Someone needs to tell these clueless souls that if we don’t have a planet we don’t have a GDP to talk about. No matter how much money you have, when the earth goes warm, when the tsunamis come rushing in, when the twisters kick your butt, your money is not going to save you.
So what can we do, as citizens? I think we can make the greatest impact by choosing leaders and administrators who recognize the gravity of global warming. Global warming is the biggest threat the inhabitants of earth have ever faced. This should be the most important election issue at least for the coming years. Forget caste, forget religion. We’ll have centuries to rue over them if we remain alive.
Technorati Tags: global warming, un report
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