yes we can

Earth Hour is about taking simple steps everyday that collectively reduce carbon emissions – from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.

Here are 10 different ways to spend Earth Hour and reduce your carbon footprint:

1. Attend a local Earth Hour event or organise your own by throwing an Earth Hour street party with your neighbours
2. Gather family & friends for a night picnic in your local park and look at the stars
3. Enjoy a family dinner by candlelight
4. Organise a treasure hunt in the dark
5. Take the dog for a night walk
6. Have a candle-lit bath
7. Sit in the dark and share stories
8. Organise a family night playing board games
9. Share a romantic night in with your loved one
10. Upload your ‘on the night’ photos and videos to flickr and YouTube respectively, and then add them to the Earth Hour flickr group and the global YouTube Group.

There are no hard and fast rules surrounding participation in Earth Hour. The only condition is that you flick that electric switch and have fun doing whatever you choose to do during that time.
courtesy: http://www.earthhour.org

welcome to a new world

a newsitem in today's indina express. Welcome to the new world order. we are worried about Indian culture where the very existence of Indian and the world is at stake.
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With a severe dust storm raging in Guwahati, airlines including Air India, Jet Airways, Kingfisher and Indigo, were unable to land here on Monday. The situation was compounded as the Instrumental Landing System was not functional at the Gopinath Bordoloi Airport.

“Nobody had ever imagined that dust storms would throw air traffic in Guwahati out of gear. And it is now happening almost every day,” SK Borthakur, a professor of Botany at the Gauhati University, said. With Guwahati reeling under the impact of duststorms he is worried that the government does not have a contingency plan to tackle this new disaster.

The dust storm follows a six-month long dry spell in the Northeast which has also led to rampant forest fires in the region. The fires have caused large-scale destruction in Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim over the last few weeks.
“Increasing incidence of forest fire is an alarm bell for the Northeast. Forests are becoming dry and thus more combustible. But I think some of them are also man-made fires, with the intention of encroaching land by destroying forests,” Borthakur added.

The dry spell has also resulted in a severe water crisis. With most of the residents dependent on tube wells, depletion of the ground water table has only made things worse.
Scientists at the Assam Science, Technology & Environment Council (ASTEC) are worried about the impact of climate change which is behind these alarming developments. “Wanton destruction of forests and hills has added to the woes in the Northeast. “ said Ranjit Barman, a senior scientist with ASTEC.

Officials at the Regional Met Centre here have described the dry spell in the Northeast as unprecedented. DK Handique who currently heads the Regional Met Centre said that there had been a time when not a single day went by without it raining in some part of the Northeast. “But except for a few showers in the Upper Assam districts and parts of Arunachal Pradesh, there has been no rain at all,” he said.

The solar powered rickshaw

A lot of people criticise the cycle rickshaw as an inhuman colonial legacy. Delhi authorities banned them from Chandni Chowk in 2006, saying that they clogged the streets. Others feel that the cycle rickshaw provides cheap, eco-friendly transport for hundreds of millions of Indians every day.

My friend Rozita sent me an article on “The Soleckshaw” which was an eye-opener. I often wonder that in a country where science and technology date back to the ancient times (archaeological evidence from Mehrgarh (7000 BCE) shows construction of mud brick houses and granaries, Farming, metal working, flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and dentistry while the more advanced Indus Valley civilization yields evidence of hydrography, metrology and sewage collection and disposal ) we still seem to be lost and grope for solutions which stare us in our face.

On the one hand we delve into history to thump our chests for our past (and lost) greatness and on other, we ignore devices and everyday ways of living that have stood the test of time. We want to import new systems from other countries just because they look grand or have succeeded there. Little do we understand our own country and its diversity.

Well this Soleckshaw is the humble rickshaw we see everyday just about everywhere in India. The prototype seats three persons and has electric lights, a maximum speed of 12½ mph, and extra frills like an FM radio and four separate mobile phone chargers(!!) It can also drive uphill. It is designed to ease the physical burden on the rickshaw-puller, of whom there are an estimated eight million, and who are mostly migrants from the poorest states.

The Government, which is backing the project, hopes that it will help to reduce air pollution and wean the country off fossil fuels. It will serve as the natural migration route from the manual rickshaws (autoricks work on fossil fuels, therefore are undesirable). If successful, it will be used during the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi

The Soleckshaw was developed by the state-run Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in conjunction with Crompton Greaves, an Indian company that designed its electric engine. To introduce it nationwide, they are now working with the Centre for Rural Development (CRD), a non-governmental organisation that has been assisting cycle rickshaw pullers for years.

The most important thing is that it will reduce the drudgery for India’s rickshaw drivers and give them some dignity as well as reduce effects of global warming by reducing greenhouse gases.

The Soleckshaw costs Rs 22,000 compared to Rs 8,500 for a traditional one. That should come down to 20,000 rupees once mass production of 200-300 a month begins in two to three months time, officials say. CRD also plans to guarantee loans for the Soleckshaw drivers so they can purchase their own vehicles and then pay back the loan in daily installments of Rs 30-40. At the moment, most of them pay a daily hire fee of Rs 30-40, sometimes for several years, but never get to own their own rickshaw.

The project’s backers also hope to raise money from carbon credits and advertising on the back of the Soleckshaws.

It is still unclear who will pay for the charging stations — the four test vehicles require 28 small solar panels to charge their batteries and five spares overnight. Nor has it been decided whether drivers will pay for the electricity. This, I guess, is a small issue which I suppose will get sorted out as numbers increase.
So let us salute this desi improvisation and the desi people who thought out of the box and beyond the conventional wisdom of importing videshi technology working somewhere on this planet, spending millions only to find that it was a misfit in Indian conditions.