It was just last year that I stood by a window in a highrise hospital window overlooking this breathtaking beauty of our city. The city of Houston with her rare asset of lush greenery.
Then everything in Houston got categorised as either “before Harvey” or “after.” Harvey was the yardstick of history. And now, suddenly, Harvey is a nearly forgotten scratch on our memories.
Now it’s either “before the pandemic” or “after” with a few significant days thrown in the midst–the Earth Day, the Envirionment Day, and now the Global Wind Day. If you asked whatever that meant to environmentalist and what’s the message to pass forward, the responses will be about the wind energy shaping up the new energy horizon.
The Friend and the Foe:
But I still remember the windy slapping the hair around my face on a wild west coast afternoon. Wind still meant the lifting of the kites on that special Viswakarma puja day in India when our kites vied for supremacy in the sky, their strings coated with powdered glass clashed in air, slicing the opponent.
I remember the flying asbestos roof that ripped off the top of a neighboring structure during the storm of 1977 and the dust that caked inside our mouths as we ran home. With our eyes closed, of course, to keep the dust out.
We learned in school how the winds were the messengers on errand from the Sun. The sun’s heat set off the magic of varying air pressures, the magic of hot air moving up, and the mad rush for the void created by it. And the storms that ripped up civilization with their angry lashes. The recent visit from cyclone Amphan on the coast Bengal will be unforgettable, even unforgiven, by many.
Yet, without this trigger to move, there would be no rainclouds floating in from the oceans. Without wind, sailboats would go nowhere. No weather or climate to create the seasons. A complete shutdown for the world.
The world shutting down was never an option. Let us respect this natural resource that never ceases to blow. Never. Every resource on the surface of the earth is finite, likely to run out, and soon. If we’re not careful about preserving. The wind is not.
Harnessing the wind:
What man cannot stop or control, he uses it to his favor each chance he gets. Same for the wind. Man cannot tame the storms, nor push the sails. But he can build blades that creaked on hinges to obey the wind. To get some work done.
Until the coming of electricity. The windmills of the Netherlands that crushed grains for centuries retired overnight and still stand like old relics of the past culture. Before long, the windmills are in vogue again, now churning to grind some mechanical energy. To convert into electricity.
The same electricity that sent the mills out of business is being produced by these new generation windmill-cousins. Mills are back with a vengeance to bid goodbye to fossil fuels.
It’s the new kid in the energy domain. It has its share of skepticism of low productivity during low wind speeds. The carbon footprints of installing the stately mills can be debatable as well with a question mark at the end-of-life processes and how much of it is circular enough to stump the critics.
Bird supporters have expressed their doubts of windmills trading prospects of damaged bird populations with air pollution. Communities have complained of noise pollution from rotating blades. The disturbance of passing shadows the blades cast on the nearby houses can have deeper psychological impacts that need some in-depth research.
All said and done, renewable energy is here to stay. Getting a light bulb to glow from the passing air is too good a promise to be thrown to the winds. More research will make sure the problems are solved, not shoved under a greenwashed carpet.
Making it better is now “making it cleaner and circular.” Especially after the pandemic. It’s a one-way traffic–there’s no going back to the old ways of wasted energy.
The figurative flow:
In this pandemic and the social grieving for justice, let us hope we can bring in the winds of change. To touch our future with a good environment, for us to thrive with mental, physical, and spiritual health. To usher in thriving with loving-kindness towards people and all the other living and nonliving things that keep us going.
Spend some time outside to feel the wind in your hair and spirits. Usher in health, usher in love. And keep flowing.
Let’s be the change we need to see in the world. Wind has shaped the strongest rocks that make mountains and valleys. We can all imbibe this trait in our thinking. It is on us to use the winds to sweep out the old ways of thinking–to redefine opulence, luxury, success, and profit.
Seeing these concepts of good-life in a new way can help us recreate meaning for ourselves in the current realities. People without jobs, businesses nosedived without hope can rise again.
When wind faces a rock wall, it doesn’t crash or dive, it simply blows against it and pivots toward a new direction. It almost always finds its way around, through a narrow passage of hope. Even we can live meaningful lives built on the simplicity of the new-age algorithms, living closer to nature, and will less stuff.
It won’t pull down the economy. We will build an alternative one, and feed it to feed us.
0 Comments