A perfect October morning. The air was cool and crisp and without the din and hustle of the daily chores. As I walked my way towards the institute I couldn’t help admire the surrounding beauty. But my joy was short-lived. As soon as I entered the campus, I could see a cloud of dust rising in the horizon accompanied by the shrill whining sound of a motorized machine. Being a sinus-troubled person, it was an ominous sign for me. As I approached the “crime scene”, the picture became clearer. Another early-riser was diligently performing his duty of cleaning the campus library area of fallen leaves and dust and was using the latest mechanized tools to do this noble task. I somehow managed to cross the area without sneezing myself to glory. As I approached my lab building another event caught my eye. The pedestrian walkway was being watered. Watered!!! And that too in a water-scarce region of the country!!!
Not only did these events cause a rude awakening from the ethereal experience of the surroundings but also left me thinking about the success of ameliorating the adverse climate change and water scarcity on this planet. As long as people substitute raw manpower with fossil fuels for their daily and trivial chores and use scarce resources to make their surroundings aesthetically pleasing, all efforts to curb global emissions and conserve water will fail miserably. If the events mentioned above can happen in one of the most eco-friendly places in the world then I cannot fathom the possibilities in other regions of the world.
Instead of wasting precious resources in organizing concerts to save the planet that only a select few can attend, money would be wisely spent in educating people across all strata and making them realize their stake in helping sustain the only habitable place in the universe.

What if the US had been geographically located near the equator and was doomed to face the worst effects of climate change? Would its attitude towards global warming be different than what it is now? Would it have taken the lead in developing eco-friendly and energy-efficient technologies as soon as the possibility of global warming were raised?

Very likely. The tropics (spanning from the tropic of Capricorn to the tropic of cancer) are home to a significant percentage of the total 6 billion earthlings and is the least developed latitudinal zone on the planet. The countries in this zone do not contribute significantly to the global CO2 emissions (as compared to the US, EU) but yet these countries will face the worst consequences of global warming. And guess which regions of the world might “benefit” from this change in the global climate pattern? Countries located north of the tropics.

Can’t imagine anything more ironical than that. The culprits are the ones to gain the most from the damage they have done!

California is one of the places on this planet that is taking the charge to control emissions and reduce the deleterious impact of industrialization. The extremely strict emission norms of the state have helped maintain a constant emission per capita for the past 20 years (3.8 metric tonnes carbon equivalent in 1990 and 3.7 metric tonnes in 2002). This is a remarkable feat considering the fact that the population increased by ~50% increase in this period.

I have been in California for almost 8 months and I could see their environmentalism in action and deed. At the Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, there is a car share program that is sponsored by the institute. The idea is that all the members of the UCSB can rent a car from the institute for 2h at a stretch. The concept is framed around the idea of conserving as much fuel as possible by catering to short duration driving needs (e.g. for groceries, for doctor's appointment etc).
This is an extremely simple concept that works wonderfully well. The public transport system in the Santa Barbara region is average but good enough to commute daily to and from the campus. By having this car share program and a decent public transport system the incentive to drive to work is drastically reduced.

The very simplicity and effectiveness of this program makes me wonder why this concept has not caught the attention of other institutes or corporates. After all, once at work, you only need a car to drive back home or to do some chores during office hours.

I would advocate all the offices/institutes in the city of Los Angeles to follow this model. Not only will this reduce emissions but will go a long way in reducing traffic along the freeways. And anybody who stays in this part of the world will do anything to achieve the latter.

Climate change is now almost a universally accepted phenomenon. We all have come to realize

that the change in the seasonal patterns is for real. The underlying reason is a combination

of both the natural warming cycle of the earth and human activities. It is the latter that

is aggravating the situation.

The change that we are seeing right now is not a result of an year or a decade of

industrialization. The early onset of spring, less snowfall in the arctic and upper

latitutes of the northern hemisphere are a result of the unchecked growth of

pollutant-belching industries since 1751 when the modern industrialization started. Now, the

chickens have come home to roost. The ill-effects of the yester years/centuries are being

felt now. Yes, what has been done cannot be undone easily but what are we doing now to delay

if not avoid, the impending disaster?

We are continuing with business as ususal. Barring the European Union and California, there

is no concerted effort from any other nation/state towards pollution control. We are already

in unchartered waters in terms of atmospheric CO2 levels and going by the trend, by 2050,

the CO2 levels will reach levels unseen since the past 20 million years!.

The main reason for the inertia is that there are no "immediate effects" of climate change.

There is a lag between cause and effect. Our present actions will not be felt till a few

decades have passed. But once that happens, once we have crossed the tipping point, there

is no stopping the juggernaut.

The fruits of our present actions are invisible to us. That is nothing new but when the very

existence of our planet is at stake, that is scary.

I confess that the fundamental basis of my religious beliefs has changed over the past year or two. Not that I have turned atheist or a born-again religious person; it is just that I have found a better (and perhaps a deeper) reason for believing in Supreme Being /intelligent design/God. I owe this new found religious faith in science.

My earlier impressions about science and religion were that they cannot cohabitate one's intellect. I believed that where the limits of scientific explanations end, the domain of religious beliefs begin and that what we consider mysteries/miracles today will be solved by advances in science and technology over a period of time. Just as we no longer consider lightning to be a sign of irate Gods, I believed that centuries down the line we will relegate most of today's unknowns to scientific text.

However, this view of mine underwent a sea change as I encountered the complex and yet so elegantly beautiful solutions nature has come up with for all possible problems. I feel quite overwhelmed just by the human body and the myriad of complex systems it is made up of. For me, to think that at one stage in the history of the earth the immune system, the nervous system, the sensory system developed and started working in harmony just by the process of evolution is difficult to imagine. Even if we were to analyze the simplest of all living species (if at all it may be termed "living"), the HIV virus, it is beyond imagination that this species, located at the bottom of the evolutionary tree, has acquired an ability to evade as complex and efficient a killing machine as the human immune system just by evolution.

I confess that I am totally biased towards the human immune system. Of all the fields in biology, this field has attracted my attention like no other. A lot of research is going on in this field and scientists are trying to find out how this system actually works. But whatever is known is by itself enough for any person to take a step back and just appreciate how beautifully the system has been designed.
To give another example, the other day I was watching Blue Planet documentary on the Animal Planet channel. The documentary was about deep sea animals; animals that survive in the deepest trenches of the oceans where there is no light and almost no oxygen (since no photosynthesis occurs in the absence of sunlight). The animals that live in these remote areas of the planet have developed bioluminescence (i.e. they glow by themselves). I wonder how and why they acquired this ability but again that might have some scientific explanation that I am unaware of yet. But the point is that it appears that nature has decided that no place on this tiny planet of ours will be inhospitable. There is some life form in all terrains be it the frozen deserts of the poles or the scorching sands of the Sahara or the bone-crushing depths of the Mariana trench. Each of the terrains presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities and just looking at the way nature has designed species that thrive in these conditions makes me believe that there is God.

Religion is a highly personal matter. I always have been a religious person for most of my life. Earlier, I believed that religion and faith provided guidelines for a civilized society and provide solace in times of need and despair. I still do but now I feel that my belief and faith in God is rooted in awe of his grand design and a hope to achieve nirvana someday by simply unraveling one of the small mysteries he has neatly woven around us.