The Brave Pedestrian

November 30, 2007: [I dedicate this blog to two guys with whom I connect — one on the iLand one offline. The iLander is  Sunshine ,  with whom I disagree on a number of issues including his dislike of stray dogs. But I connect with the genuineness and essential gentleness that shines through his writings as well as his comments to othe people. I dedicate this particular post to him because he has inspired it this morning through his reasoning, which is representative of the thought-process that all of us have. The offline person is  Tejus Coulagi , the guy who named our tiny fledgeling group  Children of the Earth,  and gave it the catch-phrase,  Protecting Our Mother.   Tejus is characterised by his innocence and earnest good intentions, which shines through the name and catch-phrase, and indeed, much of what he says.  He asked me to design this logo for our group-of-three; I hope he likes it.] Something that Tejus said in the course...

November 7, 2007: I’m thrilled at the amount of awareness and concern there is on the issue of Global Warming. And I am delighted that Al Gore and Dr R K Pachauri won the Nobel Prize, as they have brought an enormous amount of global awareness to this cause with the movie,  An Inconvenient Truth,  and the IPCC’s report. However, I’m also alarmed at how much our thinking gets tripped up by petty technicalities, political ideologies and ego tussles. Some of us seem to believe that this entire Global Warming thing is a scare, a shibboleth, an urban myth motivated by faulty science, bad politicians, crackpot activists and sloppy journalists who don’t check their facts.   This particular post is not intended for people who hold this opinion. This post is intended for those who believe that our collective burning of  hydrocarbon fuels has brought us to a grave situation, and are wondering what mitigating responses would make a meaningful difference without be...

For millions of years, nature has been taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere — taking carbon out of circulation — and stashing it away, not only as trees, but also as enormous coal and crude-oil reserves under the earth.   But since the discovery of the steam engine and the industrial revolution, mankind has been taking these carbon and hydrocarbon reserves and burning them. Every passing year, we thus undo the work of a few thousand years of nature. Humankind is now a rampant force of nature. Our GDP and per-capita consumption is rapidly rising at close to 10%, and so the carbon footprint of each  individual  human-being on earth is doubling every 20 years or so.  [ Very brief explanation:  Each extra shirt we buy and stash in our cupboards or each apple that we eat that has been flown in from  Australia  or  China , or even lorried in from Himachal Pradesh, represents an unnecessary load of carbon in the air that we have contrib...

July 1, 2006: There’s a myth that what’s good for your country, your community, your neighbourhood is good for you.  “Hum tho tumhare hi bhalai chahte hain, beta!’,  says  desh aur   samaaj.  And, most of the times, you take it on faith that it’s completely true, because, after all, d esh aur samaaj ka izzat karna hi apni sanskuti hai. I’d like to say that there’s a lot of bullshit in that belief. In fact, it’s at most only 50% true. And here’s why: It is common knowledge that the interests of individuals, even in the same household, often conflict. The grandparents may need peace and quiet for their own wellbeing, but the 8-year-old kid may need to make noise and enjoy jumping around for his mental and physical well-being and growth. The parents of the kids may need some privacy and space, but the children and the aged folk may need them to be available all the time. And some situations pit the individual against the entire household. The adolescent daug...