[Reader-list] Farewell to our Humid Weimar

[Tapas Ray]

Partha,

Although you were writing in response to Kshemendra's reply to
Radhikarajen, I hope you won't mind if I butt in, because your post is 
on an issue I wrote about yesterday, and also earlier.

Your question is straightforward, but I am afraid the answer cannot be
simple or straightforward, and any solution to the problem cannot be a
quick one. Not simple because it lies outside the framework within which 
your question has meaning. Not quick, because adopting a new framework 
is not something the world can do quickly. The situation we see today 
has not developed in a year or a decade. The way of thinking that has 
led to it, has matured over centuries. So, it wouldn't be reasonable to 
expect a solution that would work in a couple of years or a decade.

The framework I am talking about is the "technological civilization" of
the modern world. "Technological" here is broader than what we usually
mean by technological, which is something that has to do with the 
practical application of scientific knowledge. Here it means a 
civilization of fixes.

This is how it works. You encounter problem A, and you find a solution.
You come up against another problem. So you find another fix. So on, ad
infinitum. Your response to problems B, C, D, etc., go the same way. The 
problems are treated as discrete, and the solutions you look for are 
discrete. You may find links between C and D, and work out a solution 
that take care of both, but your overall approach is the above.

Take an example. Air pollution is too bad in Delhi. So they got 
autorickshaws, taxis and buses to switch from diesel to LNG, and autos 
from two-stroke to four-stroke engines. Then researchers saw that 
pollutants A and B went down, but C and D went up. So the government has 
to look for another fix. Then a fix for the unintended consequences of 
that second fix, etc.

At the same time, you notice that the ever-growing number of vehicles is 
canceling out your gains from all these fixes. So you switch to 
electric. Then you notice you need huge amounts of electricity to charge 
all those batteries. But oil, coal, hydel, etc. are scarce resources. 
You turn to nuclear power, which is fundamentally, by its very nature, 
an unsafe technology. You devise safety measures. Then, when you face 
new problems that you hadn't foreseen, you find more solutions. One 
cannot blame the technologists, because nobody can anticipate every new 
type of problem that may arise, or even every kind of failure your 
safety mechanisms may be susceptible to.

In the meantime, the demand for power hasn't remained constant. You need 
more and more nuclear plants until other technologies, such as hydrogen, 
wind, and solar become economically viable on the scale we are talking 
about. That could take a long time. Even if it doesn't, once those are 
used on the scale we need, maybe earlier, you may find problems that you 
had not, or could not have anticipated. Etc.

To find an answer to your question that goes beyond a fix-to-fix 
existence, we need to come out of this way of thinking, and adopt a new 
way, in which energy shortage would not be the problem. It is the way we 
think about comfort, necessity, etc. That would be the "problem" we need 
to "solve". If we had continued to beat the heat in the way our 
ancestors had learned to do from thousands of years of living in hot 
climates, we would have seen our relationship to the weather in a 
different way. Hot weather would not be a problem to be fixed or an 
enemy to be conquered with airconditioners, but something to be lived 
with as a normal part of life, and to accommodate ourselves within.

That would not be difficult: over hundreds of thousands of years of 
evolution (from apes and earlier), the human body has constantly adapted 
itself to its habitat - even in extreme climates like the Sahara and the 
Arctic region. But by changing its habitat in fundamental ways over the 
last few centuries, it has interrupted that adaptive process and turned 
it in a new direction, away from harmony with our natural habitat. On 
the evolutionary time scale, this has happened what would probably be a 
few minutes ago or less on our human time scale. So it is not too late 
to turn back.

As for the ways of keeping cool that people have learned over thousands
of years, one is the simple way of the ancient Roman civilization. They 
would keep their windows closed during the day and open them wide in the 
evening. I have personally seen that it's very effective. But then, 
partly out of necessity, I live with heat, not eliminate it - a better 
word would be expel - from my life. And the Roman method is not the only 
one. Other methods have evolved in different regions and continents. 
Those are being used, as we speak, by the vast majority of the global 
population, which cannot afford airconditioners.

If we were to start thinking in this way - I mean, look at our
relationship with nature not as a matter of conquest or problem solving 
but as a matter of integration and harmony - the energy crunch would be 
a thing of the past.

What I have said so far is nothing new, and many people have been
thinking this way for a long time. But it's not individuals who count
for such a fundamental change. It's the entire human civilization. 
Obviously, this cannot happen in a matter of years. Even if every human 
being were to start today, it would still take decades, maybe a century 
or more, to change the direction, given the momentum human civilization 
as a whole has picked up over centuries.

But we need to start the process now, because every day lost is one more 
day in the wrong direction and a little more momentum in that direction. 
In practical terms, the immediate thing to do is to contain and then 
reduce levels of consumption, and at the same time bring about some kind 
of redistributive justice so that the poor, who have to live in harsh 
conditions, can get some degree of comfort. Apart from the moral and 
ethical side, this also has a practical side.

If the poor do not see an improvement in their standard of living, which 
comes to at least some of them through the trickle-down effect, they 
will say, logically enough, that the new direction is not acceptable 
because it prevents them from even aspiring to even a small fraction of 
the comforts the rich have been enjoying for quite a while. That is what 
India and China have been saying when rich countries press for an 
across-the-board limit in greenhouse gas emissions.

I know this is not a complete answer and there are many complexities of 
the issue that I haven't touched upon. I wish I could write more, but
I really cannot spend more time over this. Maybe later.

Tapas






parthaekka at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think we forgot to look at another issue as well.
> 
> With the growing requirement for power generation which is well below
> par as well as the fact that the hydro power generation is facing
> issues of lessened water flow, and solar and wind powered generation
> not viable for a large volume, what are the alternatives India has to
> generate power for a growing population - given the fact that we do
> not have enough power for current requirement.
> 
> With oil prices going the way they are, oil based generation does not
> seem a sensible route either, as doesn't coal - both non sustainable
> in any case.
> 
> Doesn't seem to be much of an alternative barring the nuclear power route.
> 
> Rgds, Partha
> ..............................................
> 
> On 7/14/08, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Dear Radhikarajen
>>
>> You are lecturing me on everything else but not addressing the simpler
>> issues that would put things in perspective with regards to approaches to
>> IAEA and subsequently the NSG.
>>
>> I repeat, going through the IAEA and NSG routines are stand-alone issues and
>> not connected with or to be clubbed with any "deal with the USA". If the USA
>> helps us with IAEA and NSG, they are to be thanked. Thankfulness is not sale
>> of "National Interest".
>>
>> The (relative) HONESTY or DISHONESTY of Manmohan Singh is also
>> inconsequential to the much more important issue of negotiations with IAEA
>> and NSG being satisfactorily concluded.
>>
>> Kshmendra
>>