Reducing the Carbon Footprint

Often we talk about afforestation or planting more trees whenever there is a talk of reducing the carbon footprint of human beings. This may well be one of the primary ways of doing so, does it ever occur to one if we can actually reduce the release of GHGs into the atmosphere rather than releasing it and then taking minimal measures to reduce the overall impact of that release?

There has been a lot of talk of late about moving the economic growth to tier II and tier III cities and so on. So far so good. However, there will soon be a time when we might have to cut down forests further to create new habitations for humans to reside in (Just like in the past)

Now here's the argument:

Every industrial unit has a certain start-up cost attached to it. Majority of the big brands open various manufacturing units at various places to cut down on the economic costs of distribution, marketing and also to be 'local'.

Now imagine a human habitat as an industry or a brand. Why would it want to expand itself by moving to other habitats, probably which have so far been uninhabited by humans? The most often quoted reason would be: "जगह की कमी हो रही है यार, वहां शान्ति मिलेगी, स्वच्छ हवा होगी, अगेरा वगेरा..." (Space constraints are experienced here and there we'll get peace, clean air etc)

Instead, a better option would be to expand the existing city/town/village habitat. We need to learn to optimize the usage of living space resources because, to start a new habitat, there are various start up costs associated, well, environmentally.

The costs of clearing the new area of forests, the costs of establishing communications with that area, the costs of building a new 'human' habitat there with all the costs of administrative, hygiene, entertainment, etc. Moreover, it increases the carbon footprint because every 'modern' human habitat needs transportation and connectivity with other world centers and today, no transportation or connectivity comes free of environmental costs. Power generation and transmission have heavy environmental costs associated with them.

What instead we need to do is

-to invest more and more on Free and non-polluting sources of energy (Solar, Tidal, Wind primarily)
-to invest on R&D to increase the efficiency of Solar Energy Generators

(Ofcourse one might think that it will take time before we get appreciative results out of it. But, so be it. Won't we think of well being of our own children and try to ensure their lives are as less economically fluctuative as possible? The future generation are collective children of the collective us)

-to avoid, as much as possible, increasing the centers of economic importance within a particular radius (I leave it to environmentalists to calculate the optimal value of this radius)

-to optimize the current land inhabited by 'modern' humans for the infrastructure required. To expand, only if required, radially away from the city rather than starting a new city altogether.

-to implement laws ensuring that average number of children to a couple is close to 2 (Why only 2 will be discussed in another post at an another time)


No matter how large an economic growth we achieve, it will always remain relative. However, its environmental effects will be absolute and permanent.