Global Warming, er, um, Globalisation!

A strange kind of ennui prevented me from blogging these few days. Apologies. The mind mulled over various posts I usually have swimming around in my mind, but didn’t focus on any one, as the faculties didn't co-operate with finger tips.

My guess, a wild one at that, is that the heat is to blame. Plus the humidity, the fluctuation between a chilly office and the stifling outside (43 degree C) among other things. There’s talk of swine flu and the joke is that during elections there are enough swine around to spread their kind of flu. Hmm. Today, in the train, a man standing near me was sweating so copiously that I had to take away my hand from his face, which kept inadvertently gravitating to my said appurtenance. Hell, the guy felt clammy and like his pores would split open with the deluge of sweat. Poor chap! And, he had closed his eyes and was mumbling some mantra, “sshhhhhwami, sssshhhhwami,” is all I could hear him say in a Southie accent. Maybe, the Gayatri Mantra.

Heard of global warming? A chappy in the office, actually a tech guy, said the other day that the heat is because of “globalisation”. I corrected him and said it was “global warming,” but then I am not too sure. Got me confused. How could “global warming” occur without “globalisation,” the process of sending toxic, ozone-depleting chemicals around the world?

Chlorofluro Carbons (CFCs) the toxic chemicals that deplete the ozone layer that protect us against the sun’s radiations have been at the centre of the global warming agenda. Phew! CFCs, which we think are quite harmless, are present in deodorants, refrigerator and air-conditioning cooling systems, and the developing nations were told to cut down totally on its use. However, nothing happened. The US, which was supposed to phase out CFCs totally by 2000 still smuggles 10,000 tonnes of CFCs according to this article . And the guy behind this smuggling racket is, yes, you guessed right, one H. Patel, an Indian. By exercising of my fading analytical faculties the CFCs must have also been made in India or China, future superpowers, which are also the backyard of all things chemical – both legal and illegal.

So when you are sweating it out, or freezing in your outsourcing unit (Outsourcers like the temperatures to be at freezing point, ergo, those cute, rounded girls with wraps and sweaters in the blazing heat! Been there, cuties, done that!) blame the babus and politicos who have turned their eyes off illegal CFC manufacture.

Or, better still, write to the Member of Parliament from your constituency and tell him to see that CFC phase out is strictly implemented.