My thoughts on some Nature conservation - Part 1

I am back after a long time with some thoughts that have been churning in my mind since some time. In my spare time, I like to ponder on various topics close to my heart. I like to think of ways to help conserve nature, to think about effects of deforestation, etc. I've not been able to participate in any activity related to this, something that I'd like to change about myself in upcoming years; but I've been passionate about topics like Nature Conservation, Tree Plantation, climate effects, maintaining ecological balance, etc. One of my previous posts too contained some of my thoughts (like water conservation) related to this topic. You can find it here if you are interested: https://orthoboxed-thoughts-sumsmystic.blogspot.com/2016/03/movies-and-real-life-future-part-1.html

First I'd like to start with some thoughts that I've had about water scarcity: We know that the South African city of Cape Town was on the verge of 0 water availability in the past few years. See the news article from 'The Guardian' here . Other cities are not far behind; another article here.

The seeds for these thoughts were sown when I got to know about the 'Rally for Rivers' project. I am not yet part of this project but I think this was such a novel program and information presented there literally touched my heart. But still we might not be able to implement the plans like new tree plantations along the river beds because of land being already now in use or any other myriad number of reasons.

Another point to consider is that although we get ample rainfall during the Monsoons but a lot of that water goes into the sea and turns saline and as of now, we don't have technology to purify that water for drinking purpose in a cost-effective way. We have constructed dams across the rivers to help provide drinking water to the masses in various cities and villages. But considering the rate of population growth, I don't really believe the current model of building dams across existing rivers will be sustainable. Then again, just imagine that due to the 'El-Nino' kind of effects or any other reason, just in case, there is just around 50-60% rainfall for 1 year or for theoretical purpose, if we try to imagine a case where there is no rainfall at all for just 1 year. Our dams almost dry up within 1 year and if there is no rainfall in the succeeding year, it'll be a huge calamity. We pray this situation never happens but are we taking enough steps to help our climate remain stable? Food for thought.

Considering above points and taking inspiration from the 'Rally for Rivers' project, I'd like to suggest that the Govt implement another new project on parallel lines: Creating new rivers!

1. India is blessed with mountain ranges across the length and breadth of the entire landmass.
2. We need to artificially create canal-like channels starting from all our mountain ranges.
1. E.g., we can have the stone quarry companies to dig out stones from mountains in a specific manner that'd create channels for rainwater to flow in a specific direction
2. Then dig out canal-like channels along certain planned paths where enough land is available for use and direct this 'new river water' towards the seas along the slopes of the Deccan plateau or even along the Gangetic plains.
3. Since this will be like laying the foundation for new rivers, we'll be able to plan in advance. 
4. It'll help provide employment to the unskilled / unorganized sector.
5. It'll help increase the green cover / vegetation in India providing better livelihood.
6. We can enact plans like having at least 500m of land all along the new 'artificially' created rivers to have tree cover. Beyond that, farmers will get preference to the land so that they have good water supply close by and also the farms would help support the river eco-system - just like suggested in 'Rally for Rivers'.
7. New rivers will provide opportunity to create new dams, enabling us the ability to make provisions to provide drinking for future generations too.

Some more thoughts related to electricity consumption and sustainable living in forthcoming parts. Stay tuned. If you have any thoughts / reviews / comments to share, please feel free.

Movies and Real Life Future - Part 2

After Earth (2013)

Although this movie didn't do very well at the Box Office, there was something about this one that had struck me as another movie trying to predict our future. In the movie, we are shown that Earth's atmosphere has now become inhospitable and so the 'Earthians' have moved away to some other planets and spaceships. However, when Will Smith and Jaden Smith arrive at Earth, in one of the conversations, Will tells Jaden that Earth's atmosphere changes so rapidly now that during the day, it will rain during some hours, then it will be extremely hot and during the nights, it will be excruciatingly cold and it might even snow during the nights. 

If you notice carefully, we've already started to see the initial signs of such a behaviour. We already see temperature variances of 20Deg in cities like Pune (min temperatures of 20 deg and max of 40 deg in summers, for instance). This phenomenon was surely not present about 20 yrs back when we were all kids. So this surely indicates we are heading towards an 'After Earth-like' scenario. The rate at which we are using up Earth's resources, the rate of ice melting in the polar regions, the global warming, etc, I think such a day is probably not more than 50 yrs from now, which means our next generation is in danger!!!

Wall-E (2008)

As of June 2016, this is the last of the movies that I tried to co-relate with the reality. For those unfortunate folks who haven't yet watched this beautiful cinema, here is a brief summary of the movie along with its correlations with reality:

In the movie, the Earthians have deserted our planet Earth (once again, LOL) and have been living aboard a spaceship for over 2000 yrs. Humans have left autonomous robots to clean up their mess left back on Earth and when the Earth is deemed hospitable again, the humans were to return. However, this never happens. This is because the robots that were left on Earth themselves couldn't survive the gradually worsening harsh conditions and eventually all (but one) of those broke down. So Earth was never revived. And now it only this tiny little 'Wall-E' series robot is still working to clean up Earth. The reason why this robot survived is because 'he' was able to find interesting objects that Earthians used, like the Rubix cube, the TV, video cassette player, etc. He has a whole plethora of such objects as his collection and he hopes to have a human-like life and that is how he manages to 'inspire' himself and work continuously.

The spaceship of the Earthians regularly dispatch a new genre of robots called 'Eva' to Earth in search of life (read plants). Eva ends up finding one such alive plant in Wall-E's collection. Humans aboard the spaceship are shown to be enjoying all things while being 'seated'. They order their food through 'an app' and the food arrives through a robot for them. They move from one place to another using some hoverboards. Humans have eventually become extremely fat and have even forgotten how they were supposed to use their feet!!!

Looking at the extremely rapid de-forestation of our planet Earth, especially over the last 20-30 years, the rapid urbanization, improvements in transportation and the transportation speed. With such rapid automation in all aspects of our lives, even the jobs or work that is prevalent today will cease to exist and new forms of jobs will start to appear*. Also the sudden explosion of the Android and iStore Apps facilitating 'home-drop' services of tasks like 'buying vegetables and fruits' to buying all sorts of gadgets and electronic material. These are things that we are getting so used-to that probably the next generation or may be the one after that will even forget what it was to go to a vegetable market. Not that I am asking you to re-invent the wheel for showing that even we can do the work that our earlier generation did, but I think this is high time we started thinking about striking the right balance between using the modern-day facilities as well as sometimes resorting to the old-fashioned way of work. While it is good to buy the groceries from an app and utilize the time saved there in some other creative way, it is also sometimes a fair experience to walk to the vegetable market and choose some veggies for yourself. While it is good to Facebook, it is sometimes also good call up your old friend.


* I just found these links that show how our future jobs and transportation might look like. Worth taking a look:
http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2014/03/162-future-jobs-preparing-for-jobs-that-dont-yet-exist/
http://www.futuristspeaker.com/2014/03/the-next-bold-step-in-transportation-personal-rapid-transit-systems/

Movies and Real Life Future - Part 1

Some movies may be warning us about the future but are we alert about them? While writing, I realized there are too many examples. So I thought of covering this topic in a multi-part series. A few examples that I have so far thought out:

Equilibrium (2002), Avatar (2009), Hunger Games series(2012), Elysium (2013), Divergent series(2014) and Maze Runner series (2014)

All of the above movies are based on a common premise: There will be another World War in the near future - the cause of the war is immaterial - and in the aftermath of the war, the World will get divided into factions / divisions / districts. The rich and powerful will try to exercise control and even this will work for some time. However, there will always be a revolution. My father always says, 'too much of anything is bad for the human race'. In most cases, it is oppression. BJP's thumping win in the 2014 General Elections in India was one such real-life example where, in the opinion of the masses, the earlier ruling party had exercised extreme corruption / malpractices and people wanted a revolution. Therefore, this is supposed to be a warning for people who rule the others or who are the oppressive bosses in their office. 

Resident Evil (2002), I am Legend (2007) and World War Z (2013)

This is the movie genre that shows that attempts made by scientists to solve medical problems of humanity and the subsequent experiments that have gone wrong in a not-so-distant future. On similar lines, I am sure a lot of people have experienced over the last 5-8 years that a person who catches cold and cough can't recover as fast as the similar person did, probably in the 1990s. Here are some links that depict this phenomenon:

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/whooping-cough-has-evolved-response-its-vaccine

http://www.fiercevaccines.com/story/whooping-cough-mutations-may-be-weakening-vaccine-effectiveness/2014-04-16

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30551093

Then there are the newly emerging types of diseases like Swine Flu and Bird Flu. These are all, IMO, results of experiments that have been going on around the globe. Scientists, in their quest to solve the critical problems of curing incurable, widely spread diseases like Cancer, AIDS, Hepatitis, etc. have been performing experiments and I think this has led to increase in variety and effectiveness of the diseases. 

This is something that I have experienced first hand. There may be many such examples of which we do not know yet. All this just raises 1 question in my mind: How long before we end up being in a situation like World War Z? 

Quantum of Solace (2008)

James Bond is seen travelling to places like Bolivia where it is shown that there is acute scarcity of water. Imagine what would be the situation in African countries, where the rainfall is already scanty. In India too, we are already witnessing string of low-rainfall years for the past decade now. And we know that sea and oceans have salty water that cannot be consumed but we don't even, yet, have a technology to convert this saline water into pure, drinkable water. Just imagine what would happen if India didn't receive Monsoon rainfall for 3 consecutive years? 

We already see the Tanker Mafia (at least in Maharashtra state) who, may be artificially, create shortage of drinkable water and then force us to make use of tanker services. Quantum of Solace depicts exactly this same scenario. It may not be long before we realize that Water has become the single, most-expensive resource that this World ever imagined. We need the innovative solutions like 'water harvestors from air' which is fast gaining popularity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_collection

http://inhabitat.com/mit-develops-advanced-fog-harvesting-material-that-pulls-5x-more-water-from-thin-air/

http://www.fogquest.org/

http://www.gizmag.com/fontus-airo-ryde-self-filling-water-bottle/41545/

Scary, isn't it?

But wait.. there's more to come.. Watch out for my Part 2 on this series!!!