Monday, December 24, 2007
Happy Christmas and New Year: make these green
You can grow your own Christmas tree [Statesman.com]
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/gardening/12/08/1208garden.html
Green Cars on the road [Economic Times]
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/2599283.cms
Eco fashion? A world consumed by guilt [Herald Tribune]
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/13/style/13green.php
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
SY future plan: a global community of purpose..join us actively
Thanks for showing interest to be with us at Sustainable Youth Community. as you know, Sustainable Youth is promoting Green Lifestyle among youth and trying to contribute towards Sustainable Development. This is not a NGO rather a Global Community or Greater Family solely based on interest to create a futuristic eco-friendly society with innovative alternatives. To extend the existence of human beings on Earth.
Sustainable Lifestyle does not only mean using eco-friendly products, it's about a healthy lifestyle that is going to fit into our future. In brief within current and future economic set up nuclear families are coming under enormous mental/economic pressures to cope up with various needs and expenditures. Many such families are even broken up in divorce. In this situation, community life is the only way out.
Community like Sustainable Youth will provide services like: medical insurance, legal and financial guidance, logistics transfer, recreation tour etc. Even your children can be looked after by other community members who gets time. However, we need to follow practical steps with enthusiasm to build this dream community.
~*~As the second step of the growth plan, Sustainable Youth wants to
make www.sustainableyouth.org as next generation social networking site with field activities and community support services for paid members (both associate and advisory) who are willing to commit for SY activities. The beta version is already uploaded. The portal would invite visitors for following purposes:
1. investors, financiers and advertisers> information about activities/ projects
2. non-members> information about activities/ projects, topics on forum, sample member's home page, benefits for a paid member
3. free-members>information about activities/ projects, access forum and information database/links, member's home page, benefits for a paid member
4. paid-members (both associate and advisory)>information about activities/ projects, access forum and information database/links, member's home page, registration for community services like medical insurance, financial planning guidance, travelling and logistics booking service etc. registration for activities, submission of report in text, graphic and video format, payment account for honorarium transfer or yearly membership fees submission.
SY Web (beta):
www.sustainableyouth.org
this portal is going to be re-designed by professionals. above 10 people including some web design farms and freelance designers have shown interest and we have received 3 full quotations. the most economical one would around INR 35000-40000 or USD 875-1000 (revised on Nov 28, 07). we are looking for sponsorships from companies or organizations dealing with eco-friendly products and services now. we hope to get generous help from all of you.
~*~however the sub domain with detail reports of our previous
activities will remain available at:
SY Infobase:
www.sycomm.byethost9.com/home.html
~*~Sustainable Youth has opened a News Service through googlegroups.com to mailcast news on environment, lifestyle and sustainability related issues (daily), job openings (as soon as received), community activities (weekly) and member responses (monthly). Anyone interested to have this mailcast is welcome to subscribe at
SY News Service:
http://groups.google.com/group/synews
~*~Sustainable Youth has opened a Blog to publish its Online Magazine. this will contain recent reports of our activities both online and on the field. please visit the blog site and catch the feed.
SY Online Magazine:
www.syinfo.blogspot.com
~*~and till today, we are most active on orkut.com where we originated on April 30, 2006. check our forum and take part in discussion.
SY on Orkut:
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=12663294
The online forum, wiki and shopping mall are still to follow.
our future activities will focused on 5 basic stands:
1. activities should be useful or real time initiatives towards sustainable development.
2. activities should fit into lives of both crazy pupil inside University campus as well as busy professional in the office or field.
3. activities should primarily aimed at changing our own lifestyle to preserve both our joy and natural resources.
4. activities should be innovative and practical enough to change the conventional approach whenever it is required.
5. activities should fit into our long term growth plan.
~*~The community will be registered as trust, will be handled by the core members (comprising committed associate as well as advisory members) and will abide by legal bindings of the location where it's going to be registered.
~*~Sarit is just one of the initiator, along with Arun Murali,Srinivas Cherla and Rahul Bhat et al. and will help this system to run on its feet.
~*~we have our draft constitution comprising vision, commitment, policy and growth plan. the document is attached herewith. please take a look. its only a draft to start with. every member and well wisher has the right to point out fallacies and is welcome to put more innovative thoughts as well as practical planning.
So, join us actively. those who really take part in designing our activities or want to share similar activities, please send your ideas to this id
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Happy Diwali , make it Green

Diwali is the Festival of Lights being celebrated in different parts of India and by Indian communities around the world. It is being celebrated with fervour and gaiety during November first week, just before the winter sets in. The festival is celebrated by young and old, rich and poor, to dispel darkness and light up their lives. The festival symbolizes unity in diversity as every state celebrates it in its own special way. Diwali is common for Hindus, Sikhs and Jain religious communities. Diwali is known in various names in different parts of India like Deepabali, Deepavali, Deepawali etc. These festivals with their own history and origin are very much similar in style of celebration, the motto and obviously relevant questions of sustainability.
For getting more details on history and origin, please check the following links:
http://www.indiaexpress.com/faith/festivals/dhistory.html
http://rumela.com/events/festival_diwali_history.htm
and many more by searching “diwali, history” on any search engine.
Diwali is generally celebrated by illuminating houses with diya or pradeep or deep (a handmade illuminating stuff with small bowl and a lit), candles and chain of tiny lamps along with decorating floor and walls with rangoli (a decoration practice using coloured pastes) bursting fire crackers and distributing sweets and sharing exciting gifts.
For getting more details on celebration in India as well as around the world, please check the following links:
http://rumela.com/events/festival_diwali.htm
http://www.thatsqingdao.com/images/qingdao/chinaFirecracker.jpg
and many more by searching “diwali, celebration” on any search engine.
Diwali celebration brings joy and fun for millions of people around the world. However, the usual way of bursting lots of noisy fire crackers, using excessive packing for gifts as well as electricity for illumination make the festival harmful to human health and environment and wasteful as well. The fire crackers made of a kind of gun powder create noise in the range of 100-150dBA which is well above the human tolerance of 80-90dBA. Such noise can cause hearing loss, increase in blood pressure and even heart attack. The crackers along other fireworks cause smoke with contains high amount of Sulphur di-oxide, Nitrogen oxides and heavy metals like Lead, Cadmium etc. According Government of NCT, Delhi, the air pollution level in the city manifolds upto 10 times during diwali. Exposure to such smoky air, could lead one to diseases like asthma, anaemia with kidney damage. The unburnt parts of the fireworks containing harmful chemicals like lead, copper, cadmium, sodium nitrite or potassium nitrate can contamination to water bodies. The wrapping for gift and other items piles up substantial amount of solid waste across the country. The washout of such mostly non-biodegradable substances chocks the drainage system and create flood like that in July, 2005 in Mumbai.
For getting more details on harmful side of diwali celebration as well as the legal initiatives taken to stop this menace, please check the following links:
http://www.diwalifestival.org/environmentally-safe-diwali.html
http://www.indiatogether.org/environment/articles/diwali.htm
http://environment.delhigovt.nic.in/cm_msg.html
and many more by searching “diwali, environment” on any search engine.
So, can we compromise our joy in Festival like Diwali for environment safety or healthy life? Surely, it’s a difficult choice for most of the common people and may be easy to choose joy for many of the youth despite knowing the harmful effects. Recently Yahoo Answers floated an online question on “How can we celebrate Diwali without harming the environment?” There are over 300 answers have been received for the resolved question. Many were a bit casual in answer, some answered in practical way making sceptic remarks like “Come on! diwali is the celebration of light and sound, if we compromise with fire crackers, then whats the diwali meant for????” Yes, you cannot ignore there voices, but you may look for some practical alternatives which keep the balance between these two sentiments. There are crazy people like the members of Sustainable Youth to suggest some innovative ways. And the best chosen answer has given the following blue print:
“we can have a crackers show for 2 hours in a common place where people can see and enjoy the crackers, instead of each doing at their home in a small way and making the whole city dusty with paper if in a common place
(1)the sound will be only for a particular time
(2) the paper dust will be only in one place
(3) the cost of diwali celebrations can be reduced
(4) no neighbours envy
(5) only a little of air and sound pollution
(6) can be had in a place far from hospitals
(7) safe measures can be ensured in that place
(8) monitoring of the safety of the people is easy
(9) enjoyment can be shared by all at the same place
(10) a get-together is easy”
She is not alone there are plenty of sensitive as well as innovative people out there. Even leading daily new papers in India viz. Indian Express, Times of India have come out with eco-friendly or sustainable way to celebrate diwali with available options.
For getting more details on question related to eco-friendly diwali celebration on yahoo answer and ways suggested in Indian Express and Times of India, please check the following links:
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071021080004AAysxRm
http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/235205._.html
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-251216,prtpage-1.cms
and many more by searching “diwali, green” on any search engine.
Sustainable Youth, being a crazy community which believes in youthful innovation for sustainable lifestyle would like to offer following tips to “Make your Diwali Green” without compromising the level of joy and fun for people in India and abroad:
These tips are applicable for 2007 only, next year we may come up a new breed of fire crackers which produces maximum light with minimum harmful residues and noise to make diwali greener. And we would like to continue our similar campaign during Christmas this year.
Check our community page on Orkut for more discussion on Green Diwali tips:
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=12663294&tid=2564838554463078184&start=1
Sustainable Youth wishes a very happy diwali and requests to make it Green.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
So what could happen if Global Warming continues unhindered?....
A summary of possible effects and our current understanding can be found in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II; a discussion of projected climate changes is found in Working Group I. The more recent IPCC Fourth Assessment Report outlines the latest agreed international thinking.
Scientific and business groups in individual countries are also producing reports on the effects of global warming on their nation, such as in Australia.
Proposed responses to the effects of global warming include mitigation and adaptation.
EFFECTS ON WEATHER:
Global warming is responsible in part for some trends in natural disasters such as extreme weather. Pascal Peduzzi (2004) "Is climate change increasing the frequency of hazardous events?" Environment Times UNEP/GRID-ArendalIncreasing temperature is likely to lead to increasing precipitation but the effects on storms are less clear. Extratropical storms partly depend on the temperature gradient, which is predicted to weaken in the northern hemisphere as the polar region warms more than the rest of the hemisphere.
Storm strength leading to extreme weather is increasing, such as the Emanuel (2005) "power dissipation index" of hurricane intensity. Kerry Emmanuel in Nature writes that hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with temperature, reflecting global warming. Hurricane modeling has produced similar results, finding that hurricanes, simulated under warmer, high-CO2 conditions, are more intense than under present-day conditions; there is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of hurricanes. Worldwide, the proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 – with wind speeds above 56 metres per second – has risen from 20% in the 1970s to 35% in the 1990s.Precipitation hitting the US from hurricanes increased by 7% over the twentieth century . See also Time Magazine's "Global Warming: The Culprit?" and . (The extent to which this is due to global warming as opposed to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is unclear.)
Catastrophes resulting from extreme weather are exacerbated by increasing population densities. The World Meteorological Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have linked increasing extreme weather events to global warming, as have Hoyos et al. (2006), writing that the increasing number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes is directly linked to increasing temperatures. Thomas Knutson and Robert E. Tuleya of the NOAA stated in 2004 that warming induced by greenhouse gas may lead to increasing occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms. Vecchi and Soden find that wind shear, the increase of which acts to inhibit tropical cyclones, also changes in model-projections of global warming. There are projected increases of wind shear in the tropical Atlantic and East Pacific associated with the deceleration of the Walker circulation, as well as decreases of wind shear in the western and central Pacific. The study does not make claims about the net effect on Atlantic and East Pacific hurricanes of the warming and moistening atmospheres, and the model-projected increases in Atlantic wind shear.
A substantially higher risk of extreme weather does not necessarily mean a noticeably greater risk of slightly-above-average weather. However, the evidence is clear that severe weather and moderate rainfall are also increasing.
Stephen Mwakifwamba, national co-ordinator of the Centre for Energy, Environment, Science and Technology - which prepared the Tanzanian government's climate change report to the UN - says that change is happening in Tanzania right now. "In the past, we had a drought about every 10 years", he says. "Now we just don't know when they will come. They are more frequent, but then so are floods. The climate is far less predictable. We might have floods in May or droughts every three years. Upland areas, which were never affected by mosquitoes, now are. Water levels are decreasing every day. The rains come at the wrong time for farmers and it is leading to many problems".
Greg Holland, director of the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said on April 24, 2006, "The hurricanes we are seeing are indeed a direct result of climate change," and that the wind and warmer water conditions that fuel storms when they form in the Caribbean are, "increasingly due to greenhouse gases.
There seems to be no other conclusion you can logically draw." Holland said, "The large bulk of the scientific community say what we are seeing now is linked directly to greenhouse gases."
INCREASED EVAPORATION
Increasing water vapor at Boulder, Colorado.Over the course of the 20th century, evaporation rates have reduced worldwide ; this is thought by many to be explained by global dimming. As the climate grows warmer and the causes of global dimming are reduced, evaporation will increase due to warmer oceans. Because the world is a closed system this will cause heavier rainfall and more erosion, and in more vulnerable tropical areas (especially in Africa), desertification due to deforestation. Many scientists think that it could result in more extreme weather as global warming progresses. The IPCC Third Annual Report says: "...global average water vapor concentration and precipitation are projected to increase during the 21st century. By the second half of the 21st century, it is likely that precipitation will have increased over northern mid- to high latitudes and Antarctica in winter. At low latitudes there are both regional increases and decreases over land areas. Larger year to year variations in precipitation are very likely over most areas where an increase in mean precipitation is projected".
COST OF MORE EXTREME WEATHER
Choi and Fisher, writing in Climate Change, vol. 58 (2003) pp. 149, predict that each 1% increase in annual precipitation would enlarge the cost of catastrophic storms by 2.8%.The Association of British Insurers has stated that limiting carbon emissions would avoid 80% of the projected additional annual cost of tropical cyclones by the 2080s. The cost is also increasing partly because of building in exposed areas such as coasts and floodplains. The ABI claims that reduction of the vulnerability to some inevitable impacts of climate change, for example through more resilient buildings and improved flood defences, could also result in considerable cost-savings in the longterm.Destabilization of local climatesThe first recorded South Atlantic hurricane, "Catarina", which hit Brazil in March 2004In the northern hemisphere, the southern part of the Arctic region (home to 4,000,000 people) has experienced a temperature rise 1 °C to 3 °C (1.8 °F to 5.4 °F) over the last 50 years. Canada, Alaska and Russia are experiencing initial melting of permafrost. This may disrupt ecosystems and by increasing bacterial activity in the soil lead to these areas becoming carbon sources instead of carbon sinks . A study (published in Science) of changes to eastern Siberia's permafrost suggests that it is gradually disappearing in the southern regions, leading to the loss of nearly 11% of Siberia's nearly 11,000 lakes since 1971. At the same time, western Siberia is at the initial stage where melting permafrost is creating new lakes, which will eventually start disappearing as in the east. Western Siberia is the world's largest peat bog, and the melting of its permafrost is likely to lead to the release, over decades, of large quantities of methane—creating an additional source of greenhouse gas emissions
Hurricanes were thought to be an entirely North Atlantic phenomenon. In late March 2004, the first Atlantic cyclone to form south of the equator hit Brazil with 40 m/s (144 km/h) winds, although some Brazilian meteorologists deny that it was a hurricane.Monitoring systems may have to be extended 1,600 km (1,000 miles) further south. There is no agreement as to whether this hurricane is linked to climate change.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Letter by me to local authorities via Greenpeace
It is disheartening to learn about the current plight of marine life in places like Bering Sea and other commercial fishing hotspots. I am writing to urge you to strengthen and finalize the Steller sea lion recovery plan and help put them on the path towards healthier populations. The draft Steller sea lion recovery plan has been six years in the making. Meanwhile, the sea lions have been fighting off starvation and the population remains at risk.
Over the last four decades, the sea lion population has plummeted by almost 90 percent, coinciding with a virtual explosion of commercial fishing in the region. A network of marine reserves and an adaptive management approach is needed to assess the relative impacts of factors such as the effects of fishing and climate variability on sea lion prey. I would therefore request concerned authorities to do things in their jurisdiction to help conserve the marine life in these areas.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
The chances of the world changing
Please go through this article. http://www.tribecatrib.com/newsoct03/turtle_guy.htm
Also find a documentary about him here: http://www.thechancesoftheworldchanging.com/
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
What is sustainability
Being environmentally sustainable does not mean putting an end to scientific and technological progress and going back to 18th lifestyle. Rather, it is about constantly improving existing products, processes and day-to-day activities so as to achieve more with less, without interfering with the natural ecosystem. This would mean eliminating wastage, reducing energy consumption, end of product life management, recycling etc. So sustainability and technology go hand in hand to result in a positive ecological impact.
This is where contributions from our generation will play a crucial role in defining future trends. We must put our forces together in stopping the transition of our country from the sustainable land it always has been, to an unsustainable one. Please stay active and spread the word of sustainability whenever there is a possibility. For example, college functions can sport an environmental theme, any kind of community public event etc. Thank you and hope to hear back.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Editorial
Contribution

The Petroleum that we currently refine and use are extracted from underground where it was believed to have got accumulated some billion years ago through burying of carbon rich plants and animals through death and earth quakes. The fuels were formed under extreme pressures under the earth surface. The fuel that we extract is actually tons of carbon dioxide that are stored underground directly by plants and indirectly by animals. So, when we pump the fuel to burn them then we essentially are uprooting carbon dioxide(and energy) that was stored deep long time ago. The carbon dioxide is the reason bio-fuels got its attention, what if we produce some thing similar to the age old fuels from the currently living plants or animal fats. In fact the vegetable oils are the first used biodiesel(bio-fuel), used by diesel to demonstrate the idea of diesel engines.
Sustainable Youth: the making
www.sycomm.byethost9.com/home.html