Coal issue
This has reference to the letter published on The Star Friday 28th May 2010 on a cover story of the same magazine 'The case for Coal,' and my letter in response to the article. I would like to thank the letter-writer for taking up this point. It's a positive sign that many wise people will come up with fascinating information, logic and ideas, but I think, extraction and burning of coal has a relationship with unsustainable development which is essentially a political problem, and the language of politics is here symbolic. Just because an act is symbolic doesn't mean it is empty. The only way to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to take the pressure off global warming, is an international regime that puts a cap and a price on climate pollution. And the only way that will happen is if the academics, development experts, scientists, economists, corporate leaders and politicians around the world, not here only in Bangladesh, become convinced that sustainable development is an issue that matters to people, one that will make them change the way they live, the way they 'buy' and 'sell' their lives, and vote. Opposing the idea will take us nowhere.
Without defining what sustainable development is, it can be said that sustainable development path is not a fairy story as the climate change is global as well as local, and the pressure is on us to do the right thing. If saying 'no' to coal and commenting in DS makes that political support, well, visible, then this discussion will have been worth it.
The sustainable development movement is reaching a delicate moment, so the confrontation emerges. We're well past the point where going green is novel, where just doing our bit to save our future generation should deserve endless praise, not opposition. We've become inured to the existence of global warming, to its inconvenient truth, yet we sense that the solutions we've been given, change a light bulb, change lifestyle, fall far short of the scale of the problem. We risk green fatigue because, after all, what can we do about it? But this is the moment when we need to keep pushing in every way we can.
The technologies and investments that will help us decarbonise energy should be developed fast, but they need a push, not obstruction, and that will only happen if we keep sustainable development near the top of our political agenda.
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