Come again to Copenhagen

All eyes or to be more realistic many eyes and ears had been focused in the direction of Copenhagen during the last two weeks. I would feel left out by not making a statement about this much talked about “Climate Summit” as it had a grand closing yesterday. The climate summit was not surprisingly given contradictory ratings by various countries as some terming it an unprecedented outcome while other saying it a good start and a few terming it an outright failure. Probably they have to come back to Copenhagen or maybe Mexico to take this further.

What does it really mean to us lesser mortals? We quite do not understand the difference between 2° temperature rise and 1.5° rise and how can a nation control that. It is particularly difficult for someone like me to perceive this extremely relative affair concerning temperature. I feel cold at 15° while my friends live comfortably at -25°. I guess it will be prudent to leave this complex issue of climate change and global warming in the able hands of the scientists and the leaders as their spokespersons.

But there is a thing or two we could all chip in to make this world a better place for us, our coming generations and other forms of life with whom we share our planet.

I feel particularly sad to see people waste paper. I equate paper with deforestation and destruction of the habitat of the animal kingdom... if there were to be a kingdom. This is something we need to consider with sincerity. We can start by using both sides of the sheets and when it comes to free leaflets and pamphlets we need to rethink before we pick one up.

A few years back I was involved in the making of restaurant in a five star hotel. As the operations took over the restaurant and started to prepare their staff for service, we got to hear a few very important instructions going out to the waiters. "Serve water as soon as the guest takes the table" was one and "try to sell more" was the second. We have to add one more bottle to the already huge pile of plastic while it is difficult to believe that such a state of the art property do not have reliable water filtration installed!

We all can help in the recycling process by separating the different category of trash. We human generate a huge amount of trash every day with our mindless lifestyle churning out bottles, cans, cartons and other forms of plastic and paper every moment that we are awake.

And finally we can make a statement by buying only what we require and not what we desire…….. Well, As much as practically possible!

Bins in the roads of Dubai