I have been thinking of the dooms day scenario and how we can postpone it if we cannot avoid it. Humans have been designed in a way to conquer the world. However will we be our own enemy, well I think so. I have been subjected to many war like scenarios in the last couple of days being in Bangalore, India. Some of the prominent problems that we are facing today as India is no more isolated from the world issues are,

Fuel shortage: In the recent past we have seen two times when the fuel shortage led to people flocking the gas stations trying to tank up as much as they can. I witnessed non availability of premium fuel and also regular fuel at gas stations around Bangalore. Crude oil prices have gone up a staggering eight times in the past 10 years — from $18 per barrel at the beginning of 1998 to $146 per barrel by early Oct. In the past one-and a-half years, prices zoomed up 133%. Thanks to the truckers strike, taxation policy and global prices of price per barrel. I begin to wonder why the automotive industry has taken so long to find alternative fuel technologies. On the other hand, the Indian government is believed to be considering decontrolling petrol prices, a move that may see rates being hiked by Rs 16-17 a litre, but diesel will continue to be sold at a subsidised price. One of the major reasons for the fuel hike is believed to be due to the aggressive futures trading. Based on recent reports we have witnessed Index speculators who held a little over 400,000 future contracts in 2003, which increased to more than 2.8 million in 2008. In other words, they purchased a net 2.4 million contracts in this period. The cycle has now reversed where the barrel is less than 60$

Food Shortage: We have already seen how the world is scramming for food grains and how countries might have to ready itself for war like situation. There is double digit inflation purely from the supply side which is driving prices north bound. Many super markets in the West have already started rationing certain food grains. I am given to understand that one of the largest retail giant in the US has started rationing amount of food grain you buy in a calendar month. World bank has warned the G-8 that the surging food & fuel prices is entering into the “danger zone”. World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick, has called on the leaders of the G-8 as well as major oil producing countries to apprise them of the situation. He also quoted “What we are witnessing is not a natural disaster - a silent tsunami or a perfect storm: It is a man-made catastrophe, and as such must be fixed by people”. One of the contributors to food shortage is due to , large cultivatable areas have been shifted to bio-fuel. In the US, 46% of land produces ethanol. In EU, by 2012, 50% of area will shift to bio-fuel. A conflict is emerging between food and fuel, stomach and the car petrol tank. It’s criminal to have 12 million hectares under bio-fuel. We read a recent report which read that close to 200 thousand children in US went hungry in the year 2007; which is very alarming to hear from an super power.

War on Terror (to being in Horror): The War on Terrorism (also known as the War on Terror) is the common term for the various military, political and legal actions initiated by the United States government, often stated to be a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Not satisfied with the attack on Iraq, Afghanistan who were believed to possess Weapons of Mass destruction (WMD), now we are looking at Iran being attacked. We can see trillion of dollars spent on mindless fighting. In the name of protect and provisioning democracy, we seem to be taking these wars no where. Some of the old wars still have no exit strategy and this will lead to continuing high expenditures.

Global warming: We are already seeing the effects of some of our acts, which have taken some serious and noticeable effects on the climate. Decreasing ice in North Pole, Snow in Middle East, Ocean level rising, Ocean Temperatures rising, Depletion of marine life which includes coral reefs a life line for human existence, unseasonable monsoon, depleting Ozone layer, Water bodies drying up.

Conflicting interests: OPEC, UN, IAEA, ASEAN, G8 etc. Each of these global bodies don’t seem to have a common human sustenance charter. IAEA wants to protect and lobby only those countries that sign up the NPT, OPEC has a selfish motto of controlling the world fuel production, UN is clearly driven by US policies and so on. This creates global unified silo organizations that would create rifts amongst these organizations. Its an urgent cry that these agencies need to delineate from political climates and move more towards global sustenance.

Mega appetite: USA, China and India put together consume 2/5 of the world fuel. China and India have trillion people to feed. Recent report suggests that even thought India is not federated in the global food grain, hence the escalating prices might not affect them, yet 320 million people go to bed hungry at night.

We can clearly see we are destroying our only home, mother earth. I think we need to take some drastic steps in saving our home thus postponing the doomsday. Just imagine if we had shortage of food, with extreme climates to deal with, inability to move about due to non availability of fuel will make man to become primate again. Guns will rule.

Let’s take a pledge that we will do to our might to think on how we can postpone the “Doomsday” (touch wood J). We can start by taking some very important steps like reducing our carbon footprint (user calculator to identify what your foot print is today http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/), smart utilization of food products, being prudent in our trading, ability to work for social cause and not have the imaginary boundaries in our mind about other fellow homo-sapiens.