Doomsday comes near

I saw a question in some magazines which i have started reading regularly now. Are development and Ecological responsibility mutually exclusive?

My answer No.

Reason : With development comes the extra responsibility of looking after the environmental and the ecological health of the world. But what we are seeing now is completely the opposite. The most developed nation are the one who are destroying the ecological balance of the world we live in. How do they do it?? Well, they need to burn more fuels and spew out more wastes to maintain their economy and it is these wastes which are responsible for the ecological imbalance.

One example to support this would be the US of A. Now, there were hurricanes in USA and there were tornadoes in USA earlier too. But the amount of destruction caused by the hurricanes in the recent past are far more than the collective destructions till now. An entire island in US is now completely submerged under water. There has been a wide spread debate on the ecological imbalance in the area which affects the environment. The scientists and environmentalists in US are already warning about the disastrous effects the environment will have on US if they don't control the pollution right now. They are also experiencing the global warming phenomenon more than anyone else and there have been warnings that due to the melting of the icecaps in the Arctic region much more land area will be submerged under water. Well, what America did in response is something hilarious. Instead of curbing on the emissions, they are thinking of ways to prevent the suns rays from reaching the earth. I had read somewhere that they are thinking of sending up mirrors into sky, so that some of the sun's rays are reflected off and they won't reach the earth.

But it is not just America which will be affected by this global warming. It has been recorded that there has been a 0.3 to 0.6% raise in temperature since 1860 and by 2100 there will be raise of around 5- 6 degree rise in the temperature. This will eventually raise of sea level and submergence of land area. For a country like India which has a vast coast line this can be even more dangerous, coz : 1 - We will be losing large stretches of land rendering thousands of people homeless and 2 - We will be losing the natural habitat of the flora and the fauna which exists in the coastal regions ( Case in point : The Sunderbans).

Now that we know the dangerous effects of not maintaining the ecological balance, what can we do to set it right. Well, seriously I think we are past the time to think about what to do to set it right. Right now, we need to think about what we can do to preserve whatever is left and more seriously on what to do to prevent us from damaging the environment more.

The straight forward answer - stop using fossil fuels and other things which pollute the environment ( Oh yeah, every problem has a simple, direct and completely illogical answer :-) ). But that is asking to do something which is really impossible. Yes, we need to stop using these stuffs, but before that we need to find alternate sources of fuels and to be more specific, we need to find alternate sources of energy which doesn't pollute the environment. Yes Nuclear energy is one of alternatives, but we need to find safer ways of disposing off the waste. Solar energy is one safest options, but i think there is a need to research more on using this on a large scale.

Oh yeah almost forgot, for the first time in five years, the minute hand of the doomsday clock has been moved closer to the dreaded midnight hour. The clock - a symbol of the perils facing the human race - shifted two minutes, from the current seven minutes to midnight to five. For more info on this read this