• If you can’t stand up for yourself then you can’t stand up for anyone else.
• If you can’t control your mind, you can’t control your life
• If you can’t be true to yourself, you won’t be true to anyone else.
• If you have a million thoughts at the same time, you’ll have your hands in too many things at any point of time.
• If you can’t keep yourself happy; you won’t keep anyone happy.

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22nd April is Earth Day :
We all know what it signifies, but like any other day, it is just any other day.
I am a part of the same group who like to blame each other and ask everyone else to do the needful but for a change, I want to be different. For a change I want to do something for the Earth that we call home, apart from write, because everyone is reading; everyone is writing; everyone who reads knows what is wrong with the world we call home.

ektitli.org is what I support. The objective is to send money to people within India and encourage them to plant a tree. So far this organization has sent 15 letters in the last 45 days and will be sending more. If you wish to be a part of this, like me, visit the titli at www.ektitli.org and help the titli survive, because the titli needs a tree to survive.
It doesn’t ask you to donate, but it wishes that you leave your contact number and address so that it can send you enough money to plant a tree. read more here at ektitli.org

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On Earth Day, visit National Geographic and also watch the video of Earth Song by Michael Jackson.

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Mumbai witnessed it’s first “No Honking Day” yesterday and it was successful. The effect of the “No Honking day” also brought more discipline into the roads, from both the drivers and the pedestrians. There was no lane cutting, no rash driving, no unnecessary honking and no pesky pedestrians.

Mumbai has also seen another successful campaign. It was the “Mumbai Un-plug” campaign. Citizens were requested to switch off all electricity appliances for an hour on this particular day.

Seeing two successful awareness campaigns happening in the city, can trigger more awareness drives. I am listing a few down, which I believe will be as successful as the others.

• No ‘peeing’ day: There’s not a single wall in the city that can boast that ‘I haven’t been ‘pee-ed’ upon!‘
• No spitting day: ditto
• Walk on footpaths day: But for that, we need to get rid of all the hawkers, vendors, garbage who happily call these footpaths their homes.
• No Newspaper day: I am sure this will be a pain for so many people who rely on the newspaper first thing in the morning. It helps them drink their morning tea, finish with the loo, etc but above all it will help the environment. So many Trees will survive.
• No Smoking day: If this actually happens, many Mumbaikars will die of hypertension and stress!mu Many believe that Smoking is the best way to kill tension, stress, viz.
• No email day: If this happens (why should it?), it will be back to the “Morse Code” days.
• Say Hi with a smile day: Mumbai is one of the loneliest cities to live in. Saying Hi with a smile to a stranger will make so much of a difference to this reputation that Mumbai has earned.

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The Batti Bandh or the Mumbai Unplug campaign has been a success, even if 10-20% of the Mumbai population participated. I am sure that the figures will be different if this campaign is done again in the future. It only shows that people are interested and want to help in combating Global Warming, because agree or disagree we are causing it.

The remainder either weren’t aware of such a movement (where on the 15th of December, all electrical appliances and consumers had to be switched off from 7:30 pm IST for an hour) or they had this to say, “How Does it Matter?”

Such people are apprehensive because we humans are always pessimistic about a change or trying something new.

Humans believe that they always need a leader to perform a show, it talks about our dependency. It’s sad to say that they/we have forgotten the power of ‘I’
For the fight against Global Warming we don’t need leaders, we need ‘I’s. It has to be you, me and our contemporaries joining hands not to follow someone but working together to fight it.

You may be the one who said, “How does it Matter?” but remember it’s the thought that matters because a thought becomes a habit; a habit becomes your nature; a nature your character. And it’s this character that creates Revolutions.
So, don’t kill the thought by saying “How does it matter?”

Related Tags : mumbai unplug batti bandh global warming mumbai

This Post got featured in Mumbai Mirror on the 17th of December.
[To view the epaper of the article click here, to see the article on Mumbai Mirror.com, click here]
Thankyou

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Finally todays Sunday Times has something to write about;

• Will males get redundant ?

It seems so, probably in another 1,25,000 years as Dr. Bryan Sykes (Dr. DNA) postulates it to be. Due to the deterioration of the Y chromosome (the male chromosome) and researchers and scientists able to successfully create the male sperm, the need for a male will only be subjected to ‘personalized toys’.
This means that the ancient Indian art of Kamasutra will only be ‘affordable’ for a privileged few.
And also that the society will comprise of only three kinds of people: In the minorities we have the ‘personalized toys’ and ‘women who were men’ and in the majority, Women (Wo-Man : the new super hero).

But fear not oh brave men, the way by which we are degrading the environment this world won’t last even one-thousandth of the years that Dr. Dna has predicted and to solve this “little” problem of ours… read on !

• It Pays to Go Green

We all have heard of Global Warming and are well aware of the problems that we are facing in our day to day lives due to the impact of this man-made creation. But what about the solutions to counter the growing and disturbing circumstances that we have to live in.

One such solution is bringing down the emissions.
Emissions can be brought down by two means. One can either tweak existing technology to make it more energy efficient or else completely replace the existing technology with a cleaner one. But undertaking such conversions on a large scale demand a lot of capital investment. Hence, the world community came up with a novel market-based plan called the Clean Development Mechanism or CDM also known as Carbon Trading.

An industry in the developed world, which has a target to reduce emissions from its production process, would fund the conversion of an industry in the developing world (at a cheaper rate of course) and take credit for the carbon dioxide saved. A win-win, as the industry often mentions. The developing world would get cleaner technologies, the rich countries would meet their targets and the world would be a colder place.

The measure of improvement would be the tonnes of carbon dioxide not released. And for each tonne of carbon dioxide that any developing world industry saves by changing or tweaking its production, the UN body on climate change gives a certificate called Certified Emissions Reductions (CER). The company can then sell this certificate to any entity from the developed world which has targets to meet at a mutually agreeable price. The developed world entity gets to offset its targets against the certificate. To be pithy, a market to trade in carbon is what CDM is.
Indian enterprises have already committed investment to generate more than 379 million CERs. Worldwide investments have been made that will generate 1.9 billion CERs by 2012. These investments would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.9 billion tonnes. Indian CERs are selling in the international markets right now at a range of 5-10 dollars each which are priced lower than some other countries.

So, oh humble human beings, I call upon thee to take the initiative to transform the world into a cleaner and a greener place because it’s not everyday that the world pays you, and pays you well, to come clean.

source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1935746.cms

To download a step by step guide to how you can be a part of the energy [r]evolution, click here

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