Alternative: natural resources

An alternative wife!

The search for ‘alternatives’ has pervaded the social family fabric

On the day George left office, our  side splitting favourite late night show host Conan O’Brien commented, “Officials at the White House say that President Bush completed his last piece of official business in the Oval Office at 6:00 am this morning. Yep. Bush says it should take Obama weeks to find where he hid the dead fish.” No. This op-ed scrutiny piece is neither about Obama nor about Bush [No, George, it’s not even about the dead fish you hid!]. But about the dramatic concept of ‘alternatives’, and about how over time, the human psyche has become so maniacal towards the development of ‘alternatives’ that irrespective of how good or bad anything is working – be it your car, your computer, even the President – there has to be an alternative.

A sensible person once said, “Every good thing must come to an end.” [Thank god the philosophy did not exclude bad ones]. What has to be also noted then is that along with ‘every good thing coming to an end,’ what also come to their ends are on one hand trust and satisfaction – a fact that has even been exploited by the extremely clever Barack ‘Change’ Obama. The excruciatingly humorous Jay Leno shared his intellectual inputs recently on his show, “I tell you, the economy is so bad that President Barack Obama’s new slogan is ‘Spare Change You Can Believe In’...”

Jokes apart, the genesis of humanity’s focus on alternatives is obviously historic, and many of such alternatives surely have advanced mankind. Going back in time, during the 18th century, humans relied on oil (extracted from whale’s fat or from vegetables) for lighting. Consequently, whale oil prices soared fantastically in the middle of that century. To counter this Moby Dick’ish over-dependence, an exemplary Abraham Gesner developed kerosene, a cleaner-burning alternative. A few hundred years later, in the late 19^th century, Thomas Edison revolutionised the way people generated light by inventing the electric bulb, an invention that demolished future usage of oil in lighting.

Another similar example is of petroleum. For ages, countries have been fighting over this most expensive natural resource. The popular understanding is that petroleum/oil reserves are limited and would run out in this century. Going against this, many scientists are now trying to prove that oil is neither a fossil fuel nor will ever get exhausted in the near future. For example in the book, Black Gold, Strange Hold, the authors prove that oil can be easily found between granite rocks; ergo, it is not a fossil fuel and thus cannot get exhausted in the near future. Furthermore, in 2004, a few scientists of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry synthesised methane inorganically in a diamond-anvil experiment to prove that the hydrocarbon resources of the bulk Earth may be much larger than traditionally thought. OPEC shows that because of improved technology, by 2020, oil production will cross a tremendous figure of 1,600 billion barrels annually with reserves of 3,400 billion barrels – as compared to, say, 24 billion barrels that were being produced globally in 2003. NASA’s scientists are developing methods for turning carbon dioxide into fuel. Even conversion of natural gas to diesel fuel and petrochemical feedstock has been made possible in recent time – Exxon in Qatar, Shell in Malaysia are a few doing this.

On another front, if you thought gold was valuable, scientists are trying to even develop alternative ‘artificial’ metals and jewellery too [one reason perhaps why Warren Buffett thinks gold is a useless investment]. Pearls, diamonds, you name it and De Beers accepts now how even so-called experts can’t make out which is real and which artificial. If Volkswagen is trying to use auto-engines made out of silicon carbide [and thus eliminating the use of metals], many other companies are using the much cheaper and abundant palladium instead of platinum. If agro-researchers have found out ways to genetically mutate seeds, stem cell researchers are even scampering on the ethically explosive issue of bone marrow stem cell embryo development.

But sadly, this ‘alternative’ concept development – though seemingly and evidently quite profitable a commercial concept, especially for the companies involved – has not worked at all ethically in the area that is related to the second most important element for human survival, water. Yes, technology has to some extent addressed this problem of diminishing water resources – Dubai has desalination plants; Singapore’s Newater plant even cleans sewage water to get potable water. But look around the underdeveloped and developing nations and the scarcity of potable water they suffer and one can realise how myopic have been the focus of various governments.

But the most critical issue is something beyond this and most unnerving. And that is how, over the past few decades, the ‘alternative’ concept has now pervaded the architecture of ‘family’. Somewhere along the line, an American reached a point where he needed to necessarily have an additional car, an additional TV, an additional home and more despite having a fully satisfactorily running car, TV and a wonderful home. Somewhere along the line, the American started imagining that happiness in a family too can come only by applying the diminishing marginal utility curve [“the more you have of something, the less you want to have more of it”]. Somewhere along the line, the wife became a commodity, satisfaction became a diminishing concept, and girlfriends an alternative. To a point today that forget your wife, if you are over twenty and still living in with your parents, you are nothing but a certified sissy. Clearly, this social flux is beyond doubt unsustainable in the future. How can this be solved?

The solution is simple. There used to be a subject called moral science in schools globally. Somewhere along the line, Americans forgot the importance of the subject. On a hot Monday in November 2008, approximately 8,020 miles to the east of the US, somewhere in New Delhi, inside a bureaucratic block called Education Department, Government of India, a landmark bill is approved making it compulsory for all schools in India to start teaching a long forgotten subject. They call it moral science...