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Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 10 June 2012

The Lankan economy is seen or projected in different colours and hues.

The Parliamentary opposition often tells us the economy is in the red. The Central Bank, with its new penchant for spin, reassures that the macroeconomic factors are all very…rosy.

But just how GREEN is our economy? Who thinks — or cares — about that aspect? What are the main gaps and challenges?

These questions are worth asking as governments of the world converge in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development this month. The conference is also known as Rio+20, counting upwards from the original Earth Summit that city hosted in June 1992.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) defines a green economy as “one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 3 June 2012

World Environment Day is once again being observed on June 5.

It’s 40 years since the first UN Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 1972, which led to the founding of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). I was too young to remember anything of that event. But what happened exactly 20 years later is unforgettable.

World leaders – including Lankan Prime Minister D B Wijetunga – had converged to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the Earth Summit. As they debated the fate of the planet, Greater Colombo received the heaviest rainfall in living memory: 492mm, or more than one-eighth of its annual rainfall, all on a single night.

World Environment Day 1992 dawned with many areas in and around Colombo under water. That flash flood cut across…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 27 May 2012

For the past few days, while enduring Colombo’s heat and high humidity, I’ve been hoping for a timely monsoon.

A billion and a half fellow South Asians joined me in this waiting and guessing game for the mighty rain-carrying oceanic winds — one of the great forces of nature on this planet. Few things – human or natural – evoke such anxiety and anticipation.

And with good reason: the rains that the summer monsoon brings are life-giving for most parts of South Asia. An ample monsoon that arrives on time can boost harvests, drive power generation and and generate wealth across South Asia where large numbers are still engaged in farming.

A delayed or failed monsoon, on the other hand, causes much concern for governments and communities. India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee acknowledged…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 20 May 2012

What’s the worst human invention of all time? The answer depends on whom we ask.

As a cheer-leader of innovation and currently host of a TV series on this topic, I keep asking around. I find there is no agreement on either the best or worst inventions — even top 10 lists vary enormously.

But many now agree that the internal combustion engine – which has literally driven our civilisation forward for a couple of centuries – needs serious rethinking. Burning fossil fuels (petroleum and coal) is costly, polluting and planet warming. We really need to kick our addition to oil.

Where do we begin? Electrically powered vehicles are much cleaner, provided the electricity is readily available and affordable. Are hybrid vehicles – now growing on Lankan roads – the solution, or just…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 13 May 2012

Exactly three months ago, on 13 February 2012, Robert Paul Lamb died at his London home. With his untimely exit, I lost a gifted mentor and the world, a planetary scale story teller.

For over 30 years, he reported about the state of our planet using its most pervasive medium: broadcast television. An accomplished science writer, TV journalist and documentary film maker, Robert was just 59 when he succumbed to cancer.

Robert’s outlook was rooted in journalism, where he started his career in the mid 1970s as a TV reporter with the BBC. He later straddled the worlds of media and development, but always remained a journalist at heart. He used simple words and well chosen moving images to show how we mismanage natural resources and energy.

Robert is probably best remembered as…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 6 May 2012

Growing up in a very different Sri Lanka during the 1970s, I was image starved.

We had no television, no Internet, and going to the cinema was a rare treat. And cameras were uncommon – those who owned them had to carefully plan every photograph to make the best use of film rolls with a finite number of shots (12, 24 or 36).

My school teacher parents had a Kodak box camera, using which they took some home photos of my early years. Two dozen black-and-whites (some in sepia prints) survive to this day in remarkably good shape. That is all I have to show for the first decade and half of my life.

I also have a few (now fading) colour photos from my mid to late teens, taken fleetingly with…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 29 April 2012

As I lie awake in the wee hours of the morning struggling to breathe, I remember Saneeya Hussain.

And when I see yet another road accident on our increasingly mean streets, I think of Sachitra Silva.

It is now seven years since both these lives were snuffed out, on opposite sides of the planet, within a couple of weeks. The shock and grief have subsided; the memories linger.

I knew and worked with both these committed journalists. I connect their premature deaths to the inter-related urban scourges of our own making that are now running amok: crazy traffic and fouled air.

Saneeya was an ebullient, passionate journalist who blazed new trails in empathetic media coverage of social, political and development issues – initially in her native Pakistan, and then at South Asian…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 22 April 2012

To warn or not to warn — that was the question. On 11 April 2012, following a powerful undersea earthquake, government officials in many Indian Ocean rim countries agonised over this.

The 8.6 magnitude quake occurred at 8.38 UTC (14:08 Sri Lanka Time), 440 km southwest of Banda Aceh in Indonesia and 33 km beneath the ocean floor. That was relatively close to the location from where the devastating tsunami originated on Boxing Day 2004.

Earthquakes can’t be predicted, but once detected, they require rapid assessment and decision making, especially in maritime countries in case of a tsunami.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) – a scientific facility of the US government, located in Hawaii – issued its first information bulletin six minutes after the 4/11 quake. It introduced an Indian Ocean-wide Tsunami…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 15 April 2012

Exactly one hundred years ago today, RMS Titanic — the world’s largest passenger ship — sank on her maiden trans-Atlantic voyage.

Several worlds collided on that night of 14/15 April 1912, with results that shook and horrified the world. Its reverberations are felt even today, a century later, and its lessons are still valid.

When the floating city disappeared in the open seas off Newfoundland, Canada, humanity’s technological grandiosity was literally reduced to debris. The Titanic disaster has been attributed to many factors, among them overconfidence of its designers, builders and operators.

For example, J Bruce Ismay, director of the White Star Line that owned the passenger liner, had argued that carrying the full complement of lifeboats was unnecessary: after all, the ship was ‘unsinkable’!

Besides, it was fitted with the latest wireless…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 8 April 2012

Now we’re feeling the heat – literally.

The period from February to May is the hottest time of the year for most parts of Sri Lanka, with average day-time temperatures hovering around 31 degrees Centigrade (C). The peak for specific locations can be higher.

True, the extremes that our mercury rises to (36 in Colombo, or 40 in Vavuniya) are still a good 10 degrees cooler than what Indians endure for weeks every summer. But we islanders like our creature comforts: fans and airconditioners (ACs) come to our rescue.

Half of all households in Sri Lanka have at least one electric fan, according to Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2009/10, conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics. It’s the commonest domestic electrical item, followed by sewing machines, refrigerators and washing machines…