India, along with several other developing nations are home
to numerous ramshackle apartments and sooty concrete homes lining dusty roads.
During the last couple fears, and air-conditioner has become a status symbol
for many of these homes and it is now considered a must-have dowry item in
almost every home across helping nations that can afford to pay its electricity
bills regularly.
There have been some abrupt changes as far as the
environment is concerned in the tropical countries and the sun seems to have
become more merciless - scorching us (the low life forms who are unfortunate
enough to be citizens of developing nations) hard enough to force us into
choosing air-conditioning systems over more desirable luxuries.
Air-conditioners have arguably changed lives in the steamy regions of the world
and expensive or not, every air-conditioner promises better study for children
and sleep for workers.
Now, every action has an equal and opposite reaction and it
isn't any different for extensive use of air-conditioners. As more and more
air-conditioners adorn the windows across the globe, scientists are becoming
increasingly alarmed about the impact that they would have in the next couple
of years on the environment because of the gasses on which they run.
It is true that some green alternatives are available but
let's come to terms with some basic facts - be it luxury sedans or are
air-conditioners, the green options have so far proved to be the most
inefficient options. so, it seems that Indians along with their fellow brothers
and other developing nations hardly have any choice.
Now, you need to understand something - the problem does not
lie in air-conditioning; the problem lies in the gasses that are involved in
preparing air-conditioning systems. The pristine air-conditioners used to have
CFC in them and 25 years back some intellectuals across different nations
realized that CFC was creating too many holes in the ozone layer facilitating
the entry of harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. After this, the Montreal
treaty was signed and everyone promised that CFC would amount to be used in the
manufacture of commercial air-conditioning systems.
The problem is, almost always people think that promises are
meant to be broken. Even the developed countries like the United States and the
UK have consistently shown the middle finger to the Montreal treaty and it used
to CFC and HCFC, for manufacturing of air-conditioners. So, is it the
developing nations who are at fault? Of course not! The big daddies of
industrialization need to take a call and completely banish CFC and other
non-environmental friendly gasses.
But, there's another side to the story as well - several
manufacturers from developing nations have come up with green options that have
been proven to be efficient, but the problem is no one has a clue as to why
these manufacturing companies are not able to start full-fledged manufacture of
air-conditioning systems that use environment friendly gasses.
Yes, you got it right. It all boils down to corruption. You
would be amazed to know that there are air-conditioning manufacturing companies
that are funded by the United Nations and guess what you would find in their
warehouses - CFC and other harmful
manufacturing stuff. So, what do we need to do? We need to insist on buying
air-conditioning systems that use safer components and only a mass revolution
can change the scenario.
