February 25, 2010

ACs, selling like hot cakes!

The AC dealers are the most happiest lot this summer (Summer is still ahead!). Media reports about long q to buy air conditioners!

The days are definitely hotter. Fans, air coolers and ACs are working overtime. The heat wave is upsetting people's biochemistry as well. Other organisms are worried also, I am sure. I know a bitch and her newborns nudging around the wet spots in my garden.

But, ACs usage not just pinch holes in your pocket. They also raise your carbon foot print. They contribute to global warming, by emitting unwanted gases.

Let us think of natural means to ward off the heat. The first step is to protect the soil from building up heat. Provide a green cover (Umbrella) to the soil. Let us plant a tree, shrub or herb and provide the soil with cover. Let the trees grow up and spread it canopy and provide shade to the earth and to all of us.

Let the trees open up their branches, spread their leaves and stand up as "Green umbrella" of Earth.

Sorry, AC dealers.

Kerala, hottest place in February

Yes, the 'GOD's own country", Kerala, recorded the highest daytime temperature (39 degree C) last week. The SUN is really burning down.

Kerala, some time (means 4-5 decades)back had the homegardens-that mixed dense pattern of cropping-trees, fieldrops, animals, birds and human beings co-existing in a single land unit. It was a regular landscape feature of this state. It is gone now.

Instead, we now have the "flat (residential space) culture" -all the vegetation is removed to create concrete jungles. The "Green Umbrella" has been removed from the soil and mind of the locals.

We hardly notice that the SUN is really heating up all these concrete jungles. That umbrella cover, that shade, the trees provided, is no longer there. "The land of coconuts" has become bald now. All our homes and offices are exposed to the sun from 6 am to 6pm. No wonder they become hot air ovens by noon. It is only by 2 am or 3 am that our buildings really cool down! it is only then that we are able sleep peacefully.

Can this trend be reversed? I think, it is possible. We have to bring back the "Green Umbrella". Let us first establish tree cover in all the vacant, wasted lands in Kerala.