Thursday, December 31, 2015

कालचक्र

हे 2015,
तेरे कुछ दिन हँसा गए,
तो कुछ रूला गए,
कुछ मुस्कराहट में हुए नशीले,
तो कुछ आंसुओं में हुए गीले,
कुछ दिन मैं पर्वतों पे खेला,
तो कुछ ने रसातल में ढकेला,
कुछ ने गुलाबजल में भिगोया,
तो कुछ ने काँटों को चुभोया,
कुछ ने गैरों से मिलवाया,
तो कुछ ने अपनों को पराया बनाया,
यूं तेरे हर दिन की अपनी अलग कहानी है,
कही-अनकही, सुनी-अनसुनी, जानी-अनजानी है,
अाज तेरी हर कहानी इतिहास में दफन हो जानी है,
जाते-जाते हर साल की तरह,
तू भी दुनिया का दस्तूर सिखा जाएगा,
इस जमाने को आईना दिखा जाएगा,
कि कभी दिल खोल के जिसको प्यार देते हैं,
एक दिन उसे भी दफन कर देते हैं।

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Global Warming--is future of earth in safe hands?

In last few years the world has witnessed erratic weather patterns including extremes of draught and floods, hot waves and cold waves. Global warming is seen as the major culprits behind such unpredictable phenomena on "climate change". Experts have predicted that temperature of earth is going to rise by somewhere between 4-5 degree Celsius at the end of twenty first century due to green house gas effect. Many questions arise in the light of above facts. What is Global Warming? What is Climate change? What are its impacts and ways to prevent it? And the most importantly, why should we worry about all these at all when none of us would be alive at the end of this century? Let us try to answer above questions.

Continuous endeavor to make human life comfortable has been the story of human civilization, let it be discovery of fire, wheel; domestication of animals, settled agriculture etc. In the above series industrial revolution marks the transition into modern era of mechanization. Industrial revolution and subsequent developments caused exploitation of natural resources on large scale. major source of energy has been fossil fuel. Also forest lands have been cleared to accommodate the needs of increasing human population. In this race of development "nature" has somewhere been left behind. As Gandhij has said "the world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed ;" the nature started reacting to our actions through "climate change".

Climate change is result of increasing temperature of earth's atmosphere that is global warming. Green house effect of various gasses released mainly because of fossil fuel consumption is cause of rise in temperature. Also, clearing of forests have diminished the natural sequestrates of carbon di oxide, the major green house gas. Apart from climate change global warming has potential to cause melting of glaciers, rise in sea levels and subsequent flooding of coastal regions. These physical phenomena have grievous effects on human civilization.

The climate change has resulted in increased frequency of disasters in the forms of floods, cyclones, draughts, hail storms etc. Precious human lives are lost, costly infrastructure is damaged and large amount of finances are needed to restore the normalcy. Increasing spells of draughts have caused failure of crops especially in regions exclusively dependent upon rain water for agriculture. Further, with increase in temperature, many tropical crops are feared to fail as resultant temperature will be outside the physiologically acceptable limits for the concerned species. Thus climate change poses challenges towards food security.

        Reasonably large populations are in coastal regions and small islands. Rising sea levels due melting of glaciers because of global warming threaten submergence of these regions. There is risk that these parts will be wiped out of map if global warming is allowed to progress at current rate. Along with affecting human civilizations, rising sea levels and temperature pose risk towards marine flora and fauna due to change in osmolality and temperature of water.

     Apart from long term effects of global warming and climate change, irresponsible exploitation of nature poses many short term and imminent threats. Pollution, especially air pollution is one such threat. Worsening quality of air has caused increase in prevalence of breathing problems and increased the risk of lung cancer. Soil, noise and water pollution are also posing threat for human civilization and nature. Further since fossil fuels are limited, their exhaustion is another threat we have to tackle.

Global Warming should be seen as global warning and urgent steps should be taken to dampen the rate and reverse it in future. We can not despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings. Climate change may not affect badly during our life time but we need to protect the earth for our future generations, because they have equal rights over it as we do. We are the last generation with real opportunity to save the earth.

        What are solutions to the problem of global warming? Solution lies in shifting away from conventional sources of energy, increasing forest cover, increasing energy efficiency etc. This is not the responsibility of an individual, a country only but of the whole world. Recognizing the responsibility, the all nations have agreed to take appropriate steps under aegis of United Nation Framework Convention on Climate change. Under UNFCCC negotiations Kyoto protocol was finalized and entered into force in 2005, and developed countries had pledged to bring down their emissions of green house gases by five percent of nineteen ninety levels by 2012. Many conferences have taken place but no desired, satisfactory roadmap has been agreed upon. Divide between developed and developing nations is the major roadblock towards such agreement.

      Historically, developed nations have reaped the benefits of industrial revolution and thus share major responsibility of causing global warming. Developing nations want developed nations to bear the burden of mitigation of climate change while developed nations want equal sharing of burden of such actions. Mitigation efforts incur reasonable burden on economics as clean energy mechanisms require capital investment and research and development. Further alternative sources of energy like solar, nuclear, wind are costly to start with as compared to traditional fossil fuel. Developing countries lack enough resources to finance mitigation technologies. On these premises of historical responsibility and economic burden, developing nations want developed nations to adopt major role in reversing global warming.

     Recently concluded agreement at Paris gives some hope as the world leaders have agreed to common responsibility of capping the rise in global temperature by less that two degree Celsius. Diplomatic efforts of developing nations and efforts of environmental activists have compelled developed countries to understand the adopt differential responsibilities. Under Paris agreement every country is supposed to finalize national emission targets and external monitoring mechanisms to verify national efforts. There is hope that national leaders will make reasoned decisions with respect to national targets.

    Developed countries should help developing countries with technology and resources to shift away from conventional fossil fuels. Also efforts should be made to increase forest cover. Research and development should be promoted in increasing energy efficiency and international collaborative efforts should be made in this regard. Technologies should be developed to sequester carbon di oxide into rocks and utilize it for industrial purpose.

     National and international leaders may debate and discuss and finalize broad roadmap for mitigation of global warming. However, individual is the ultimate unit of nation, human civilization. Every individual will have to understand the responsibility towards environment. Every individual has a role to play. We should use energy very judiciously as it will reduce strain to certain extent. Further we should contribute in increasing forest cover by planting trees as much as possible. We need to refrain from luxurious facilities like ACs, private cars as much as possible. "We belong to earth, and future of earth belongs to us". Our behavior today will determine survival of our future generations. If we understand our responsibility then definitely future of earth is in safe hands.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Sale

देश में लगी है सेल,
जहां सब सामान बिक रहा है,
बिक रहा है इंसान,
इंसान का इमान बिक रहा है,
बिक रहे है नेता,
नेताओं में बेईमान बिक रहा है,
बिक रहा है गरीब.
गरीबों का सम्मान बिक रहा है,
बिक रहा है प्यार,
प्यारा मेरा हिंदुस्तान बिक रहा है,
देश में लगी है सेल,
जहां सब सामान बिक रहा है l