Step 1: Address local environmental problems such as unsafe rural water supplies, kerosene consumption for lighting, indoor particulate pollution due to smoke from fuelwood stoves, and urban vehicular pollution due to two-, three-, and four-wheeler personal transportation.
Step 2: Tackle regional environmental problems such as acid rain or river pollution.
Step 3: Focus on national environmental problems.
Step 4: Turn attention to global environmental problems such as greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere.
Such a step-by-step approach will be more a better strategy in our country. This is because zeroing in on global environmental problems right at the initiation of environmental awareness is often viewed as succumbing to a stratagem of the industrialized countries to get the developing countries to fix a mess that the rich countries created. In addition, the equity pay-offs from this approach are substantial, because those who suffer most from environmental degradation become the first beneficiaries. There is also historical justice in this step-by-step approach because it demands that developing countries first address the problems that they themselves created and only then become environmentally altruistic by turning to problems that the industrialized countries created.
Finally, an emphasis on the initial step/s very often yields as a bonus environmental benefits corresponding to subsequent step/s, in particular global environmental benefits. Thus, a reduction in local urban vehicular pollution caused by two ( Two Stoke engines)-, three-, and four-wheeler personal transportation also results in a reduction in CFC accumulation in the global atmosphere.
On the basis of this analysis, a four-pronged strategy for resolving India's oil crisis and advancing the country's development has been suggested.³ It is based primarily on reducing demand for diesel, kerosene, and gasoline. The strategy consists of:
Prong 1: implementing efficiency improvements in the use of petroleum products.
Prong 2: shifting passenger traffic from personal vehicles to public transportation.
Prong 3: shifting freight traffic from road to rail, through the removal of subsidies on kerosene and diesel once homes have been electrified and kerosene replaced as an illuminant.
Prong 4: replacing oil with alternative non-oil fuels, particularly biomass-derived fuels.
One way of achieving a compatible solution would be to extend the synergism between the agricultural and transport sectors to include the domestic sector, in two steps.
The first step is based on the fact that, if alternative high-efficiency fuels were provided for cooking, or the efficiencies of fuelwood stoves were radically improved, then the resulting drastic reductions in fuelwood consumption could free a vast fuelwood resource base for the production of liquid fuels for the transport sector.
In villages, either biogas stoves, or fuelwood-efficient stoves, or a mix could be introduced. In cities and towns, the LPG option could be adopted because there is considerable scope for the expansion of LPG supplies.
Once the pressure on forests as a source of cooking fuel decreases, conditions become established for managing the growth of forests and dramatically improving their fuelwood yields. In other words, silvicultural practices - agriculture in the general sense - can be implemented to increase fuelwood availability. This is the second step in the extension of the synergism; it consists of including agriculture in the domestic-transport synergism.
The provision of high-efficiency cooking fuels and/or devices in rural and urban areas would make available large amounts of wood provided that all the firewood being used today for cooking can still be collected. This saved fuelwood could be converted into methanol. If diesel fuel in trucks and buses were replaced with methanol, then the only diesel demand from the transport sector would come from the railways, and this demand would be quite small.
In the case of India, therefore, it appears that the country has been engulfed by a grave oil crisis because it has ignored two crucial basic needs of poor households: efficient energy sources for lighting and for cooking. The oil strategy proposed here shows that, by providing electric lighting and efficient cooking fuels/devices to all homes, India could move towards a virtually oil-free road transport system and drastically reduce its dependence on oil, which in turn would accelerate development.
Lost in the middle of these antagonistic positions are those who see environmental pollution as a serious issue that affects people cutting across class lines but also recognize the unfairness of the existing order in which the earth's resources and benefits of modern technology are monopolized by a minority of the rich on this planet. For them, issues of environmental degradation must be tackled on a war-footing, but they reject solutions that preserve the unfair distribution of the world's products and natural resources. For them, fairness and justice - the idea that there must be progress for all, cannot be sacrificed in the name of "saving the environment". For them, environmental concerns must be integrated into the general class struggle, and against the tendency of private interests to violate and exploit both people and the environment. Their world-view is in sharp contrast with those environmental elitists who wish to enjoy all the fruits of modern industrial development while denying those same benefits to the proletarian masses who must struggle and survive under the most primitive of human conditions.
What is our possible Individual Contribution !
We need to reduce global warming and pollution by reducing fossil fuel usage, increasing the number of trees, and improving the availability of safe drinking water. We have already lost half of our forests and over 80 percent of illnesses globally come from polluted water. Wind turbines can now provide over half of our electricity and reduce global warming and pollution. Water can be boiled or pasteurized using inexpensive solar cookers. 1. Write legislators to encourage them to replace use of fossil fuels for urban electricity with efficient wind turbines and, for coastal areas, wave energy generators
2. Support projects to help villages to replace use of wood for fuel in cooking with solar cookers
3. Develop projects in your own community, and with villages in other countries, to plant trees to reduce global warming, reduce pollution, increase oxygen, improve soils, and conserve water
4. Talk / write to decision makers to ask them to support systems for conversion of cars and trucks to less polluting fuels , such as Hydrogen fuel cells for electric vehicles, CNG. Also encourage use of sulfur-free diesel fuel with use of catalytic converters for diesel trucks. Support legislation requiring cattle and sheep to be vaccinated to REDUCE METHANE in the atmosphere.
5. Along with your family, friends, school, and neighborhood, assess YOUR PERSONAL INPUTS INTO ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION and LATER OF COURSE your contributions to the Global cause.
6. Reduce Peak Hour Usage of Electricity. We are starting to have a shortage of electricity during peak hours (7AM to 10PM). At the same time, we have surpluses of electricity available at other times (10PM to 6AM). Legislators need to help reduce peak loads. For example, incentives could be provided for power plants to invest in fuel cells to store electricity during off-peak hours. Incentives could be provided for home owners and businesses to use fuel cells to store electricity during non-peak times.
By distributing the availability of existing electricity throughout the day (and night), we can reduce the need for new fossil fuel based power plants. Hydroelectric, solar, and wind sources can then play a much larger role in meeting our energy needs, even now. We can reduce pollution, global warming, and the cost for electricity, all at the same time.
7. Encourage governments (at all levels) to invest in renewable power sources rather than fossil fuel power sources. There are at least five reasons for not investing in additional fossil fuel power plants.
a. It is mathematically impossible to meet our needs with oil as a fuel.
b. Oil reserves will probably be insufficient soon, even with a large increase in drilling. If we invest in oil, rather than real solutions for the future, we are headed for a disaster.
c. Use of renewable energy sources can solve our problems now and for the distant future.
Building additional fossil fuel plants cannot solve our problems now or for the distant future.
d. We use oil (petroleum) products thoughout our lives, not just for fuel.
We use petroleum to make electric equipment, vehicles, appliances, plastics, paints, tires, lubricants, containers, coatings, building materials, and much more.
Are we ready to use up our supply now and lose these uses forever?
Dr.Shishir.V.Mandya
M.E PGDFT.DHM. MISHM
11/701, Brahmand Phase V, Azadnagar, G.B.Road, Thane (W) 400607
email ID
smandya@gmail.com, smandya@operamail.com, Ph :09322530405, 9821040304 
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