'Alter lifestyle to counter climate change'

VADODARA: Environmentalist and alternative energy promoter Michael Mazgaonkar on Monday emphasized the need to change lifestyles in order to counter climate change effects.

"While we are running out of our energy sources, the consequences of our modern day living are increasingly becoming alarming. Climate change is for real and unless we made conscious decisions to change our lifestyles, we would also be facing a Beijing-like situation where it rained 18 inches in 24 hours, killing 30 people, recently. We have already seen floods in Mumbai," he said.

He was here to speak on alternative energy sources at 'Hariyali', a green event being organized by Jatan Trust and Faculty of Social works, MSU.

This engineer-turned social activist along with his physicist wife Swati Desai has transformed the lifestyles of tribals in Mozda village near Rajpipla after introducing windmill and solar energy and soil and water conservation efforts, during the last two decades,

Mazgaonkar asserted that non-renewable energy driven lifestyles are causing most of the present day problems and "unless we started understanding these issues and lobbied hard," it would be difficult to escape from the life-threatening results. Don't ask me whether it is an easy task, I say, it is the only way out."