Monkeys go on Hunger Strike to get Human Status
“Should Developing countries be imposed to take carbon trading norms while developed countries are the major cause of the augmentation of carbon-dioxide levels?”
VIEW
The view that some countries are more obligated to cut the global emissions than others distracts us from the more important and just cause i.e. to come together and save the planet. Of course, some countries are more responsible for climate change but the problem can be solved only if each and every country puts its wits and resources fully behind the crisis. Developing countries like India and China are responsible for nearly catastrophic population growth. This is one of the biggest contributing factors to global warming, as developing nations industrialize and the means to pollute disseminate rapidly and broadly across massive populations. India and China are two of the worst polluters on the planet. Compared to 2005, China’s emission have increased by 9% in 2006 while that of US decreased by 1.4%.Scientist warn that if China continues to increase its GDP by 7% per year, it will be emitting as much CO2 per year as the whole world emitted in 2007. So, China has a unique obligation of cutting its emissions. Some might argue that most of the world’s production takes place in China and India. That definitely is no excuse of exempting them from emission standards. This would mean that all the nations that outsource to China/India would get an exemption which would be unfortunate. The world should not allow for such a loophole, and must act to fully constrain emissions in developed countries without exceptions.
Kyoto protocol exempted developing countries from meeting certain key emissions standards. The problem is that the new emissions from China would offset all emissions cuts by developed countries. So, “what’s the point?” for which there is no reply. India, Brazil and China are the most notable large developing nations in the G-20. Because of their economic power and emissions (both now and in the future) they are equally responsible in applying their leadership role in their respective regions to lead the fight against climate change. If they don’t, surrounding countries, fearing loss of competitiveness, will not take strong actions to combat climate change. In the end, I would say that developed nations were not even aware of the consequences of their emissions through most of the industrial revolution. Therefore, they were certainly not aware that the consequences would disproportionately fall on poor developing countries. So they are not culpable for these consequences and should not be disproportionately obligated to fight global climate change on this point. - Sameer Khurana
COUNTER VIEW
India is now regarded as a potential superpower in the near future. With the evolution of technology, we have wittingly or unwittingly also depleted our natural resources at a much faster rate. One cannot deny the fact that our present environmental conditions are changing from bad to worse. However this, by no means justifies the fact that developing countries be imposed with carbon trading norms while the developed countries continue enjoying the privilege. Measures to mitigate carbon emissions are indeed indispensable but are not something that can be achieved single- handedly.
Statistics reveal that carbon emissions of India are twenty times lesser than that of US, in fact poisonous emissions from US has increased by about 21 percent in the past seventeen years. It seems that they have not yet taken notice of the fact that even slight increase in carbon emissions hereafter can have serious repercussions in the future. Facts and figures make it apparent that most of the developed nations are responsible for boosting such carbon emissions, owing to their rapid industralisation. By simply curbing emissions of striving economies, while the developed countries continue to gloat about their monopoly, shall definitely not fetch anything worthwhile. The environment crisis will persist until stringent actions are undertaken by the economically forward nations. It is imperative to impose such norms according to the amount of emissions a country makes. It is bizarre to anticipate emerging economies like India to preclude their economical and social development for assuaging carbon emissions when developed countries have already dealt with such socio-economic hurdles and are way ahead in every aspect. Issues like hunger, poverty, lack of education, inflation and terrorism are still deeprooted in developing nations. Environmental issues are certainly not on their priority list in the present hour. The situation of inflicting carbon trading norms on just the developing countries is like creating some kind of an environmental apartheid. Even under Obama-era, US has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol wherein it was asked to cut down on its emissions by a tremendous amount. Ironically, many of the developing nations have approved of such international agreements of mitigating emissions without much agitation especially when the industrialized economies are to be primarily blamed for causing environmental deterioration. It is on the part of the stable economies to set an example before all those who look up to them for prudence.
In a nutshell, the objective is not to deliver the idea of complete noncooperation of developing countries towards abating carbon emissions, rather it is to object imposition of any kind of biased norms on such nations. A unified effort is requisite to combat environmental issues rather than few countries dictating the rest.
Aditi Varma (3rd Year, Civil)
Nature calling! Good morning!
At some point of time in our lives, each one of us has been a part of conservation movements. We have painted posters, composed jingles and even written essays to ‘Save the Earth’, ’Save Tiger’ or ‘Save Electricity’. We have pitied our villages and marveled at our malls. We have laid out a ‘green carpet’ at an award function and probably forgotten what it was all about. Year after year, we have drifted passively through existence, not life; calculated the Rupee’s rise against the dollar, not the increase in the global mean temperature. There are just a few of us who have actually taken an interest in working for the environment and making a small difference in whatever way they can. The phenomena of ‘Global warming’ brings along with it unseasonal rains, excess snow in the tropical areas, warm summers in the temperate zone, hurricanes, droughts and all the other global warming related happenings like the melting of ice- caps, floods in the glacial- fed rivers and eventually a rise in the global sea levels. The trigger to these catastrophic happenings is very much in our hands. Every time you leave your bike idling for no specific purpose or don’t get your automobile serviced and emissions checked, or don’t car pool, or burn garbage, use a tungsten bulb, every time you use an air conditioner, dump sulphates and phosphates through detergents into a nearby lake, or simply refuse to acknowledge the fact you and me are as a much part of the problem as we are a part of the solution- YOU ARE TRIGGERING GLOBAL WARMING!
Any change in our ecosystem not only has geological or climatic consequences but serious effects on the economy as well. Keeping this aspect in mind, the world has seen a number of summits and protests in the past. In light of the havoc that the humans have played with the environment, the G- summit took place recently in Copenhagen. The Copenhagen Accord was agreed upon by 26 most influential countries in the wee hours of Saturday, 19th December, in the snow drenched capital of Denmark. The US led the pack of the architects with the BASIC four- China, India, Brazil and South Africa- working as sometimes reluctant and sometimes willing, but always key, partners in framing the agreement. Demanding an ambitious climate change deal that required deep emission reduction commitments, financial or technology transfer obligations from the rich countries would have to put the emerging countries in direct conflict with the recalcitrant industrialized powers.
But with the stakes too high and the rich countries making abjectly clear that they were not playing to the rules but to change the rules all together, the four emerging economies decided to instead scratch up a low-ambition deal- a pact that would lower the pressure on them by lowering the demands of the rich countries in parallel. Finally the Copenhagen accord did take morphed form of the US- backed schedules approach of ‘pledge and review’. After a 20- hour huddle, this is what emerged: The final draft after the Copenhagen summit has agreed to cut the emissions and hold increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. A proposal attached to the accord calls for a legally binding treaty by the end 2010. Developed countries will provide adequate financial resources and technology to support of the developing countries. A goal of $100bn a year by 2020 will be met to address the needs of developing countries.
The accord also provides positive incentives to fund afforestation with financial resources from the developed world. Carbon markets are mentioned in the accord, but not in detail. The deal promises to pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets to enhance the cost- effectiveness and promote mitigation. The details of the emission mitigation plans are included in two separate annexes, one for voluntary pledges from developing countries. The non- binding Copenhagen Accord agreed at the climatic summit, is disappointing and did not meet the expectations of other developing countries. However, the West failed to jettison the Kyoto protocol, as the BASIC group did well to save Kyoto from being murdered. The important topic now is that, will this summit will be successful, or will end up facing the same plight as the Kyoto Protocol. We need to understand that the human wellbeing is inextricably linked to that of the natural environment. There is a ubiquitous, underlying soul, which bonds each living being to another and to nature itself. Hence whatever befalls nature, will ultimately have an impact on humankind. Life is very vulnerable to environmental change, particularly when the change constitutes degradation.
Already, human transformation of world’s natural environment due to population growth, conspicuous individual consumption, industrialization, haphazard infrastructural development, poor agricultural practices and resource distribution, hint at the fragile environmental balance. We all need to join our hands together to contribute for a safer and greener world. So its time to wake up!! Aprami Jaggi (2nd yr, ENE)
Microgravity and its use in Biotechnology
Microgravity is the term given to this state of weightlessness. This term finds its origin from the effect which is seen in the spacecrafts orbiting a celestial body. The floating things and people give an impression of absence of gravity which actually is a prolonged free fall under the action of gravity. In this sense it is a misnomer, since the gravity in spacecrafts is not zero but it is in the state of weightlessness.
In fact, earth’s gravitational field at about 250 miles above the surface maintains 88.8% of its strength at the surface and most spacecrafts, space stations and satellites orbit around the earth at an altitude of 150 – 360 miles. Gravity, though, in most cases ineffectual, sometimes masks some effects. Therefore, many researchers design experiments to be performed under microgravity conditions.
The different scientific research areas that are studied in microgravity include biotechnology, combustion science, fluid physics, fundamental physics, and materials science. Discussion of microgravity in this study will be limited to biotechnology, particularly to the cell growth but the first part of the project which deals with predicting the trajectory of rotating particles in simulated microgravity (in microgravity reactor) can be used in protein crystallization and tissue culture as well.
Maintaining microgravity conditions on earth is not an easy task because free falling body falling under gravity travels very fast. To maintain this motion for long is not possible. There are some methods like drop towers and free fall in an aircraft (NASA web page) which are used to create microgravity conditions for a few seconds. Biological experiments, on the other hand, take hours to get completed. Thus, NASA designed rotating wall vessels called microgravity reactors. These reactors rotate on an axis parallel to the ground. The effective force on the particle is reduced and it is allowed to ‘fall’ freely under the action of this net force. Since the force acting on the particle is small, it takes a long time to reach the walls of the vessel.
Microgravity reactors are widely used to study the effect of absence of gravity on protein crystallization, tissue culture etc. Proteins and tissues are very sensitive to shear stress and collision with the walls of the vessel. Hence, it becomes important to know the trajectory of the cells (or protein), the shear stress acting on the cells, and the time it takes to collapse to the center or diverge to the walls. This flow between two rotating cylinders is called couette flow. Extensive research has been done on couette flow; most deal with higher Reynolds number where taylor vortices are formed. There is limited material on low Reynolds number to describe the trajectory of the particle in the microgravity reactor. This study throws light on the trajectory and other fluid mechanics aspects of the cells in microgravity reactor.
Change of environment in such reactors in terms of gravity and fluid mechanics aspects makes the cell behave differently. Increase in growth has been widely reported though it has been noticed as organism specific phenomena and some organisms have not responded to this change in gravity any different. Studies on change in metabolite production are scarce though in reported cases there is no particular pattern. Presently this technique is used mainly for tissue transplantation, culturing of several infectious agents, those are difficult to grow and
control in a culture setting. E.g. Cyclospora and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV- 1), get increased amount of protein in crystallize and for several other purposes. Research is going on, which is being carried out me under Dr. Taruna arora (Department of biotechnology). Ashish Jain (3rd yr, BT)