Global Ecological Problems and Issues

In order to solve the problem of global warming we have to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energies: biofuels, wind, solar, wave, geothermal and hydrothermal energy. Besides this we probably have to abandon, at least partially, the idea of a global marketplace and reduce the amount of goods that are transferred to us from other continents by freightships or by an aeroplane. We probably have to start again emphasizing the importance of local production. We have to renew our local economies so that a larger part of everything we need, including our food and clothes, can be produced as close to our home as possible. This would basically mean taking Gandhiji's vision about strong but somewhat modernized local economies, Gram Swaraj, seriously.

According to the conventional breakdown the transport sector is responsible for about one third of the consumption of fossil fuels in the industrialized countries. However, a Spanish study concluded that when also the indirect energy use of the transportation sector is included, it is responsible for more than one half of the fossil fuel consumption. The study included in the transportation sector also the energy used to manufacture cars, planes, ships and trains; the energy used in building docks, airports, roads, multi-storey car parks and other infrastructure; as well as the energy required to produce the packing materials that become necessary because of the longer transportation distances.

The greenhouse gas emissions caused by the transportation sector in the industrialized countries have increased significantly over the last forty years, but this has not happened because more goods are being consumed but because roughly the same weight of goods is being moved over longer distances because of the increasing concentration of production (which is also causing large-scale structural unemployment). In Britain the number of freight-ton miles almost tripled between 1952 and 1992, even though the production of most bulk commodities fell.

The larger the economic units or "free trade areas" grow, the longer the average transportation distances of various goods become. The United States of America is the only continent-wide modern free trade area that has existed for a somewhat longer time. It might not be a coincidence, that the per capita carbon dioxide emissions of the USA are almost three times higher than in Japan or in Western Europe. The USA is annually producing about six tons of carbon emissions for every inhabitant of the country.

If the whole world would truly become a global free trade area, so that all the goods would be produced where-ever they can be manufactured with the cheapest possible prize, and then transported to the other side of the world, the carbon dioxide emissions caused by the humanity would be multiplied, and there would be no hope of preventing the melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the drying of the tropics.

On the other hand, if we can make our countries to abandon the madness of the present, neo-liberal free trade policies that are destroying both our environment and hundreds of millions of jobs, we can cut the world's carbon dioxide emissions in a very significant way by strengthening local economies and by protecting different national and local production structures in agriculture, forestry, fishing, handicrafts, village industries, and so on.

According to the latest estimates cement production is already responsible for seven per cent of the global carbon dioxide emissions. Cement production produces CO₂ emissions by two different ways. The conversion of the raw material (limestone or calcium carbonate) to the final product (cement or calcium oxide) is a chemical reaction in which a lot of carbon dioxide is released. Besides this a lot of coal is needed in order to heat the kilns to the temperature of 1450 centigrades, which is necessary for roasting limestone.

The world currently produces 1.4 billion tons of cement, every year, and the production increases by 5 per cent, annually. The production of cement is increasing very rapidly in many Asian, African and Latin American countries while growing percentages of their populations are moving from the countryside to the cities. According to John Lanchberry of the Verification Technology Information Centre in London, cement industry will soon be responsible for about ten per cent of the global carbon dioxide emissions.

An alternative for these trends would be to increase the use of bamboo, wood and mud - and different composite materials partly based on them - to replace cement in the construction of houses. Gandhiji actively promoted the use of mud and bricks made of mud for such purposes. Houses build of mud are less hot in summer and warmer in winter, which reduces the need for heating and air conditioning. Mud is cheaper than concrete and mud bricks can be produced without causing carbon dioxide emissions, either by solar energy or by using firewood.

Traditional houses of India, however, were not made of only mud. They were based on a kind of composite structures that incorporated mud with tree branches and shoots. This kind of a structure is surprisingly strong. When the terrible Earthquake of 2001 killed one hundred thousand people and destroyed the homes of five million people in Gujarat, in many areas it was only the houses built by these traditional methods that were able to withstand the holocaust. For example in the village of Ludiya in Kutch all the other kind of buildings collapsed while every single one of the round traditional houses that had used the mud-wood composite structure remained standing. The round houses that had been built of mud and stones, only, and which had thus imitated the mere outlook but not the actual structure of the traditional building, did break down.

In other words, realizing Gandhiji's vision of village republics would go a long way towards solving the whole problem of global warming.

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