Renewable Energy Project Near Coimbatore Soon
Kartikeya has the numbers. "We want greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to be below 350 parts per million (it is 387 now). To achieve that, there must be deep cuts (in GHG emissions), starting with industrialised nations." "We must have progressive interim targets (for GHG emission reductions) and good long-term targets," says Deepanjali, who has finished her degree in Sydney, and is now going home to Vadodara to start working for the IYCN full time. "We need India to move faster." What do they do apart from lobbying governments at climate change negotiations? "We're starting a renewable energy project in a village near Coimbatore (in Tamil Nadu)," Kartikeya said. "We're going to engage urban youth in rural India."]Ruchi is all excited about a "climate solutions road trip" that IYCN is going to start from Chennai on Jan 2. Travelling in electric cars powered by solar cells and in a bus that runs on bio-diesel, they will make their way to New Delhi, raising awareness on the way about the perils of climate change and documenting local solutions to the effects of global warming.
They will have with them a "solar-powered rock band" that draws the power for the audio from solar cells. Shiamak Davar's dance group is choreographing special dance numbers for them now. They plan to arrive in the Indian capital Feb 5, the opening day of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. On the opening morning of the Poznan summit, Leela Raina had been standing outside the main entrance, holding up one end of a banner that read: "Join us in saving our future".
In the company of her IYCN colleagues, she sat quietly and nodded till asked what she did in her spare time. "We have started a group called Campus Climate Challenge," said Leela. "We have huge problems in our Shri Ram College of Commerce (Delhi University) campus. We are fighting them. Then we work among women in Mandawli village nearby, providing them with micro-finance, helping empower them, and making them aware of how climate change is affecting their daily lives."
