My shade of green

It seems like green is the newest color to be seen in! How else do you explain green you-name-it? Everything and everyone wants to go green while I am still stuck trying to figure out what green is.

Now as I understand, going green means sustainability and eco-friendliness. The green revolution started with bio-fuels, using cloth diapers instead of disposables, paper bags instead of plastic grocery bags, so on and so forth. We all saw what happened with the whole bio-fuels thing. I already wrote once about cloth vs disposable diapers. I fail to understand how using paper bags is sustainable compared to plastic ones. Arent the same people also advocating less printing to save paper? How safe really are the white light bulbs? Doesnt the mercury in those bulbs effect us in anyway? The more I read about green revolution, the more it seems like a staged drama. While sounding cynical, I feel like there is really nothing we could do to either damage or save the planet.

Cynicism apart, what happened to the good old way of plain reducing and reusing? Growing up in a developing country like India, it seems like we followed a environmentally sustainable lifestyle without even realizing. There was no wasting of water because of its scarcity. Everyone in the family had a rationed quota of one bucketful of water for bath every morning. During the summer we could use more water if we did not mind pumping it out of the bore well ourselves. Horlicks bottles were washed and reused to store groceries in the kitchen. Newspapers were reused to serve afternoon snack, to line shelves and to wrap sundry grocery items. Even our garbage was rummaged through to recover all the recyclables and reusable.

To make things simple, may be we should just stick to simplest things like turning lights off when not in the room, trying reduce the amount of garbage we generate, reusing as many things as we can. In essence, to me green revolution means reducing my footprint on the planet as much as possible instead of driving my car around with a "Go Green" sticker on it.

Switch it Off

There has been a recent campaign doing rounds about switching off all electrical appliances for an hour on a certain day as part of conserving energy. Now it is a great idea for us to completely switch off all lights and electrical appliances for an hour and I have no doubts what-so-ever about how much energy can be saved in the process. There have been a lot of blog posts advocating this and spreading the word and a few have even taken it a step further to suggest interesting activities while we completely switch off.

The Mad Momma had one such post and says

Take a walk in the park, go for a drive (which once in a while is, I assure you, better than taking the car to work when you can take the metro, not carpooling and using it to cross the road to the grocery store!!) light up some candles on the terrace/balcony.

Now I fail to understand how driving a car is better than using electricity?

About 65% of electricity in India is generated from coal-fired power plants. Power plant emissions are known sources of Oxides of Nitrogen which have a direct consequence on ambient Ozone levels. Motor vehicles are major sources of known carcinogens like Benzene. Between Benzene and Ozone, I would rather have Ozone in the air than Benzene, exposure to which can be avoided by staying indoors during the peak Ozone levels. Benzene being non-reactive stays in the atmosphere much longer than Ozone. I am not qualified to and will not compare the health effects of exposure to Benzene vs Ozone. But as a lay person, to me a carcinogen seems deadlier than a chemical that has pulmonary effects which may or may not be short term.

My entire logic of comparing emissions is to prove my point that driving your car when you turned every electrical appliance off at home is not going to help your cause in any way!!. Even if my understanding of emissions was wrong, isnt it just simple cost-benefit analysis that you dont really save a lot when you switch off one thing and switch on another? Besides, which car checks to see if you are on a joy ride with your family or you are driving to the grocery store and adjusts its emissions accordingly!!?

I have a similar problem with all the environmentalists advocating the use of cloth diapers versus disposable diapers. How 'green' are the cloth diapers really? What about all the hot water you use to wash them? What about all the extra detergent used? What about the additional Phosphorus loadings on your waste water system from the fecal matter? When you think about it, may be disposable diapers are better.

The other problem I had with this post is not just the fact that it advocates a cause without checking facts but the fact that an alternate point of view is angrily squished. It is okay to have a strong opinion but it is important for us to stay open to an alternate opinion and adjust our beliefs as and when new information is made available. This Bayesian approach is the fundamental step in decision making!! Again, while it is great that more and more people are picking up environmental consciousness, it is also important for us to verify facts from myths. Especially so if you are advocating something to public even if it is on your private domain!!

PS: Sorry Mad momma, but I have no choice. You ran out of your generosity before I could finish all what I had to say!!