Sunday, February 11, 2007

Snow and Global Warming

I saw my first snowfall last week.

February is the coldest month around here unlike in India where this month signals the end of the mild winter. (As an aside, I don’t think that after this I would ever be impressed by the usual Indian winter, unless am near the Himalayas for some reason.) It doesn’t snow much in Bristol but nevertheless, snow was forecast early one morning. My friends got up early, I mean really early, went out and took photos. I am not built like that. But when I got up, I did see snow flakes raining down out of my window. By the time I was out on my way to office however, it was all over.

On another day, it started snowing during the day when I was in office. Myself, Prasad and Peter gathered at the window and took in the scene.

Prasad- “It’s pretty heavy isn’t it?”
Pete- “Naah! When it’s heavy, you wouldn’t be able to see that building over there.”
Prasad- “Shit! If it’s that heavy, then how can one even walk?”
Myself- “You don’t. You stay at home.”

On the whole, according to the local people, it’s been a warm winter and everybody seems to know the reason. Global Warming. It’s quite surprising how an environmental issue has come into mainstream parlance. I guess it hasn’t remained just an environmental issue any longer. The threat of Greenland melting down and submerging cities of Europe seems very real to people around here. I see the issue in newspapers and on the news in the rare occasions that I switch on the telly. This is not a problem that is going to be solved in a hurry though, and along with terrorism, is going to be the issue which is going to dominate world politics and economics in the coming decade or two.

If you don’t know what Global Warming’s about, an entertaining and educative place to start is the documentary called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ starring Al Gore, who didn’t become President of the USA in spite of getting more votes than George Bush. He is now become the chief face of the ‘Save the World from Global Warming’ Campaign. If I have to say one thing about the documentary which I liked, it would have to be the no nonsense way in which he identified the US and Americans as the chief contributors to the problem. For a politician, it takes guts to do that. Is he ahead of his time? At any rate, I bet he is more likely to win a Nobel than George Bush as things stand today.

And speaking of today, I am now in the middle of a sunny spell. I can see blue skies outside my window, white clouds behaving themselves and staying in their place.

2 comments:

The One said...

Arrey... yeh Bristol kab hua?

dazedandconfused said...

been 3 months buddy...u have been ignoring my blog! :)