Smart Planet: The Cost of Pollution in India? $ 80 Billion a Year . . .

Smart Planet is a great website / blog that I often link to, and it is one that I read regularly. This is one of the reasons why - the site quotes a World Bank report that evaluates the cost of pollution in India. Many of the costs of pollution are not easily counted, but it is not difficult to see where they would affect people directly. For example, increased health issues due to exposure to pollutants can put severe strain on societies as they have to deal with sharply higher medical bills. Secondly, when water, soil and the air are dirty, it affects agricultural output, making food more expensive. And the list goes on . . . Do check both the Smart Planet piece and the World Bank report out at this link.

Something that Chennai Could Look At

There is an example here that Chennai, with its two stinking eyesores - the Adayar and the Cooum - could emulate: Kansas City uses human waste to grow crops for the biofuel sector. While India is working hard to cultivate large acreages of waste land with jatropha for its fledgling biofuels sector, large cities like Chennai keep sending tens of thousands of tons of sewerage into the sea every single day, sometimes even clogging up the two rivers into which this sewerage is let and stinking the city up. Every attempt at "beautifying" these rivers has so far concentrated on dredging the sewage and clearing a channel for it to flow into the sea. Some years ago, I had suggested to the then Deputy Chief Minister that he consider an experimental plant to convert the sewage into Synthetic Gasoline using the technology developed by a certain US company. Not much came of it as he was subsequently voted out in the elections. Perhaps, a simpler use for the sewage as in Kansas City might be the answer. Use it to grow more jatropha, convert the jatropha into biodiesel, and reduce the amount of money that hard working Indians send to the Middle East for fuel day after day, year after year.