Go green -- By Sanket ‘has no hope of conservation’ Kambli

Get out of the holi hangover; I am not talking about the festival of colors. I am talking about nature. Now don’t put this away as another save nature plea, this is not a plea, it’s an observation. Recently I read an article by Thomas L. Friedman; he said ‘Imagine if George Bush declared that he was getting rid of his limousine for an armor plated Ford Escape hybrid car, adapting a geo-green strategy and building an alliance of evangelicals and greens to sustain it. His popularity at home and abroad would soar.’ This made me think why can’t something of this sort be implemented in our country, no not just our country, why not the whole world, why can’t the government vehicles go green. Why can’t we replace all the ambassadors and other government transporters with say, solar cars or electric cars or some eco-friendly source of energy? I think it would not only help to create a better example, but also give much needed support to companies who have developed or are developing eco-friendly vehicles. I think this should start with us, looking at the benefits, our neighboring countries will hopefully emulate us, with the success of this model in south asia, and the success will rub off to south east then to the whole of asia. You may say, why is this necessary; let’s see a bit of statistics from ‘Wired Magazine’ April issue; is states that there are more than 800 million cars in active use and by 2050 it will swell to around 3.25 billion, which is over four times the original quantity and also four times the emissions. And I have every reason to believe that figures will be surpassed very early. Why, take a look at this channel Discovery, at one side they talk about conservation and stuff, while on their sister channel they have a show on cruiser bikes which don’t have a great reputation as fuel savers. Formuala One, it’s so famous around the world, but think about the amount fuel, just burnt away for every race especially in a time when we know that the reserves are not high, maybe they are having fun as long as it lasts. Similarly there are more things that glamorize fuel guzzling vehicles in India than those which even mention an effort of environment friendly vehicles. And as India is the second most populated nation, it’s an issue, which is just waiting to become a full brown problem, or am I underrating it?