Blue Cross of India Wins Important Environmental Listing

While this is not an issue that is strictly related to Renewable Energy, many of the friends who are in touch with me on this and related subjects are friends whom I met as a volunteer at a fantastic animal welfare organization - The Blue Cross of India. Yes, my best four legged buddy whom you see with me in my Profile Picture, came to be a part of my family from their shelter in Chennai, India, and now lives proudly at my place in the Chicago suburbs. The Blue Cross have a fun approach to animal welfare that is second to none. The numerous adoptathons and healthy mongrel shows that I have attended in the past (and which continue with ever more people joining these days because they enjoy themselves as much as I did) testify to their success in finding how much fun it can be to work with animals. And this has been recognized by Radford University VA in an entry into their Environment History Timeline with the following entry:

https://php.radford.edu/~wkovarik/drupal/?q=node/26

Quote [1959 -- Formation of the Blue Cross of India. Cofounder Chinny Krishna in 1964 introduced the first neuter/return program for street dogs in the world, which he called "ABC," short for "Animal Birth Control." In 1997 the Indian goverment accepted the recommendation of the Animal Welfare Board of India that ABC should become national policy, and endorsed the goal of abolishing animal control killing throughout India by 2005.(M. Clifton, 2007)] End Quote

Mr S Chinny Krishna, the Co-founder, still puts in long hours at thier shelter and in advising other branches of the Chennai group that have sprung up across other parts of India, as original volunteers move from Chennai for various reasons. The good work begun in 1959, therefore, is being spread across India in a systematic and happy way. Now, some supporters who have moved to the USA, have formed a 501 C trust here to support the Blue Cross's activities in India: http://www.krupa-usa.org/ Their website is well worth a visit and of support by anyone who is interested in supporting not just animal welfare, but also environmental casues. Please note that Radford recognized the Blue Cross for the overall beneficial impact their work had on the environment of the cities that they work in, and not just on their animal neutering program which has been working since 1964.

I would like to salute this great organization and convey my congratulations again to Mr Chinny Krishna and everyone at the Blue Cross. And this request is to whoever wishes to support a charitable cause - please support the Krupa USA trust. My personal thanks are due to anyone who supports them.

Stupidity Is A Way of Life With Politicians and Bureaucrats in India

Today's Deccan Chronicle has this piece of In Rs 78,000 Crore lying unutilized in the country because the politicians and bureaucrats have been doing the one thing that they invariably do - nothing http://www.deccanchronicle.com/news/india-sitting-rs-78%2C000cr-aid-595 Considering that the country is desperately poor and that it always needs money to spruce its miserable infrastructure up, to focus on more efficient utilization of energy and so on, this is criminal to say the least. And then, there is tall talk like this piece in The Hindu suggests - that Nagpur would become the country's first "solar city" http://www.hindu.com/pp/2009/02/21/stories/2009022150100800.htm and the article proudly highlights the fact that In Rs 9.5 Crore had been offered to as many as 60 other cities to go solar.

There are always times you become cynical about something not because you just happen to be in a bad mood, but because there is nothing but BS in something that you're looking at. India, I am sorry to say, always wallows in BS - both literally and figuratively.

This Should Work in India and Very Well at That

There was an attempt at getting India to convert to biomethane when I was a boy many decades ago - the Indian government called biomethane "Gobar Gas" after the name for cow dung in Hindi. Somehow, the whole project didn;t take off at all and the whole business died. India, as many know, has the world's largest cow population. The problem, from the perspective of caring for the cows in a country where they are worshipped is concerned, is that Indian cow breeds do not produce anywhere near as much milk as western breeds produce. Historically, bullock-carts (as oxcarts are called in India) were a popular mode of transportation in India with Arnold Toynbee writing in the 1950s that the total number of these vehicles in India exceeded the total number of cars in the rest of the world. But this was not to be as "progress" turned India's cities into urban ghettos stinking of untreated sewage and diesel exhaust fumes.

As the title suggests, there is a very interesting on Autoblog Green (Click on the title to go there) about using biomethane to run trucks that would normally run on diesel. India has a number of diesel vehicles and diesel gensets in factories etc. The country also has charitable Pinjrapols which are retirement centers for cows which are fed and cared for daily with donations. Well, now, there is an opportunity to get rewarded for this care that some give these cows - Cummins and the other companies involved in this Autoblog Green entry are already present in India. So, how about getting them to reconfigure diesel engines, gensets etc that they already sell in India to run on biomethane? And, who is going to look at this as an opportunity to make money from? I hope to send a link to this post to several friends who are keen animal livers and also business people as well as to my former classmates at St Mary's, Sherwood Hall, the Madras Christian College etc and to the Blue Cross of India, the organization that gave me Jack, my best buddy in the world.

Here's to hoping that someone in India, somewhere, gets bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and makes billions out of this idea.