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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (5570)	3/7/2007 12:02:26 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24213

Expert calls for tapping solar energyPublished: Tuesday, 6 March, 2007, 08:51 AM Doha Time By Bonnie James Qatar, which gets abundant sunshine, should tap solar energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels, noted environmentalist and a world leader in sustainable ecology Dr David Suzuki has suggested. “If all your buildings have solar power, it could be used, for example, to heat water, thereby sparing electricity and ultimately reducing the consumption of fossil fuels,” he told Gulf Times in an interview. Dr Suzuki, also an award-winning genetic scientist, broadcaster, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, was the keynote speaker at Tasmeem Doha 2007, the fourth annual international design conference, which began yesterday. “The government ought to take the initiative to utilise solar power as it is an economic opportunity,” he said while pointing out that sun is the most potential energy source when fossil fuels run out. “It doesn’t make sense if you don’t use renewable energy for yourselves when you have more sunlight than you can use to fuel the economy,” observed the expert from Canada. Dr Suzuki believed that Qatar should increase the price of fuel so as to prompt people to reduce its consumption, leading to conservation of fossil fuel. “In Canada, we pay a dollar per litre. It should be two or three dollars per litre. It is crazy to be burning energy to drive a two-tonne truck just to transport a person weighing 180lb,” he said. Substantiating his recommendation to raise fuel price, Dr Suzuki maintained that such a step could be a driving force in changing behaviour. “Right now, the hard part is getting people to change their behaviour,” he remarked while observing that the global economy, presently focused on consumption, should be fundamentally shifted. “If you look at what most of the consumption is about, it has got nothing to do with the basic ability to live a good life. It is digging stuff out of ground, making something, and throwing it back as waste. This is madness, the way that we live now,” he said. Referring to the environmental and ecological imbalance that the world is facing today, Dr Suzuki termed global warming as the biggest crisis. “For over 20 years scientists have said that the threat of climate change is second only to that of nuclear war as a danger to human survival. And yet where do you see any serious attempt to radically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?” he asked. Quoting World Wildlife Fund, Dr Suzuki warned that the exploitation of the natural resources had gone past the sustainable limit. “Now it takes the earth 1.3 years to restore all those resources we take out in a year, which means we are drawing down steadily on the earth’s ability to replenish. If we continue at the rate we are going, by 2050 it would take two planets to restore what we remove in a year,” he said. According to Dr Suzuki the real problem is the hyper-consumption of the industrialised world, which accounts for 20% of the world’s population but uses over 80% of the resources. “So the challenge that we in the industrialised world have to recognise is that we have to get our consumptive rates down. And that is a big challenge,” he maintained. Coming back to the fossil fuel scenario, Dr Suzuki, a recipient of Unesco’s Kalinga Prize for Science, and the UN Environment Programme Medal, cautioned about the ‘peak oil’ phase. “Peak oil is the stage when we know where all of the major deposits of oil are and they are developed. Then there is no more new oil coming online. At this juncture, the price of oil is going to skyrocket,” he predicted. “When such a stage is reached, countries like India and China are going to want that oil, and the US would have to compete with them.” “There is going to be a massive shift in everything. But nobody is planning for what you do once oil begins to decline. We have to find an alternative,” he added. gulf-times.com