Energy -II; Pujya Gurudev

Energy and Environment

=Pt.ShriRam Sharma Acharya

Fossil Fuel —Alarming Risk Today: It took about five million years for the formation of the coal and oil deposits. But we, the ‘fast progressing’, ‘intelligent beings’, have consumed and depleted them so rampantly in the 20 ^thCentury and have continued doing so in the new millennium that the entire oil reserves would be exhausted within the next hundred years only and the coal reserves would not last for more than a thousand years.

We keep hearing and reading this sort of information and keep confronting the rising prices of petroleum products, cooking gas, etc, but nothing changes our careless attitude and extravagant life-style. We continue rushing with our vehicles, even increasing their numbers and congesting the road traffic, wasting coal, oil, water and electricity as long as we can afford to pay for all this. We don’t want to suffer the deadly effects of toxic pollutants and ultraviolet radiations due to depletion of protective ozone layer, but we don’t mind generating pollutions, adding to the pool of plastic waste and enhancing global warming. We hardly realize the magnitude of the energy-crisis and environmental hazards in store because we are trapped in the lure of immediate gains, narrow domains of selfishness and shortsighted view of life.

Potential Solutions: Reforestation is necessary for saving our environment. It will also help reducing the global warming effects to some extent but can’t serve the purpose of fulfilling wood requirement for fuels or energy, as the process of producing coal from it is inefficient and slow. If one tries to do so in some factories, it would add to air-pollution and warming. Moreover, the area available for (re)forestation and agriculture itself has reduced significantly due to the expansion of urban land, infra-structure (including roads) development and industrialization. Therefore alternate sources of energy need to be explored.

The alternate sources of energy successfully tried and also brought in use to varied extents include the non-renewable ones, like the nuclear energy and bio-product energy, and the renewable ones, namely the hydro-energy, wind energy and solar energy.

Thanks GOD, Thanks Sadguru,

Shiv Sharma