dec 1
energy usage has a huge impact on the earth. the most visible effect of course is in global warming, which appears to be at a potential tipping point, including the disappearance of the glaciers, the rise in sea levels, the increasing amount of carbon dioxide and NOx and methane in the atmosphere.
hydrocarbons are poison, period. coal, oil and gas are all terrible pollutants.
actually so is factory farming, which consumes huge amounts of water -- and hidden energy costs in terms of transportation -- as well as polluting waterways with nitrates. and all this ends up in the oceans, parts of which are becoming dead spots where the coral reefs and the fish are dying.
the biggest problems are automobiles and buildings. we have talked about cars quite a lot, but really a huge amount of energy is used up in energy-inefficient buildings. i suspect that buildings that are well-designed can actually be run on nothing but photovoltaic energy based on the sunlight that falls on them.
and there are horribly ridiculous things that we have become used to: for instance, in california, with its abundant sunshine, it is *actually illegal* in many counties to hang out your washing on clotheslines in your yard! that is, you are forced to use up energy to dry your clothes! i wonder how many other such stupid regulations exist.
2 comments:
Dear Nizhal,
Your main page is displaying ads for evangelist sites.
Should I understand that you have joined in evangelist conspiracy ;-)
(but seriously speaking can you ask Google to stop those ads, their presence is ironical on your site)
Regards
DarkStorm,
Good ideas. Native intelligence needs to be harnessed, who are labelled by the 'labelling prone' as 'ethno-botanists'!Also needed is a healthy synergy of ideas. Lamentably, the motives of the "concerned think tanks" are not always noble.
Eucalyptus and sugar cane plantations are real water guzzlers.Also why turn precious cultivable land into golf turfs for prannoy roys of the world?
All natural(sic) disasters are man made.Remember the casuarina trees stood as sentinels protecting certain areas from tsunami onslaught.The importance of mangroves need no overemphasis.
Necessity being the mother of invention, Israel has done pioneering work and research in "drip irrigation".Many TNAU(Tamizh Nadu Agri
Univ) profs travel to Israel quite frequently.
It is not as if a solitary Swaminathan
alone has all the answers.In fact a professor told me ".....this very same
Swaminathan and people like C.Subramanian(late) very zealously promoted high yield seeds,chemical fertilizers etc,without pondering over
the consequences.....now trot out buzz words like sustainable farming methods ......"!
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