It all started with the good old bulb. Workaholics and greedy businessmen could now conveniently work after dark. But was it really dark? With a tungsten filament getting extremely hot and emitting 5% of light along-with 95% of heat. This was followed by people being brutally shocked to death and finally the age of electricity had arrived. More importantly, age of energy consumerism had arrived. It has now become an integral part of our life.
This isn’t about electricity, thermal power plants, total power production of India but about unsustainable lifestyles and our energy future. I will not bore by defining “Sustainability: Living with keeping the future generations’ needs in demand.” Today’s parents don’t think twice about their children before getting divorced, so thinking 100 years down the line seems quite far fetched. But for those who believe in evolution and think that world war 3 will be fought with sticks and bones, do you think our energy consumption is justified?
1 tube light = 40 W of power. What is 40 W? How much exactly is it? Ok, let’s do some quick math.
40 W = (40 kg) * (10 m/s^2) * (0.1 m/s)
So, to power your tube light on your own, you need to lift 40 kg of weight over a distance of 10 cm in 1 second. If you keep on running it for an hour, you have to continue your exercise for that long too! Assuming 100% efficiency. Now that’s a lot, trust me. Ask your weight-lifting-champion-friend. Combining all the modern day appliances we have, an average home consumes 1000 Watts of power. ( Anyone in for lifting 1000 kg with me? 
) Even if you, your dad, your mom and siblings decide to generate electricity by heavy exercise, you’ll fall short of around 400 Watts. 
This is a list of appliances and their typical consumption:
(DO NOT google it to verify, that is where these figures come from. )
Let’s start with the not so obvious ones
40 W tube light: 40 W
100 W bulb : 100 W
Here come the easy ones
TV (21 “): 100 W
Toaster : 800-1500W
Microwave : 600-1500W
Dishwasher : 1200-1500W
Washing Machine : 500W
AC (1.5 Ton) = 3500 W
Since electricity is supplied very cheap to us, we don’t really care. (Cheap! Really? Time for Quick Math (Version 2.0))
1 unit = Running 1 KW appliances for 1 hour.
1 unit = 4 INR
Knowing what 1 KW really means, now you know what I am saying. ( If you continue with the B-Plan of your family generating electricity by slogging on treadmills, your wage is less that 4 Rs/hour. 
)
But we need to know that we are relying on heaps of dead mass of our ancestors: Fossils. And even though we are striving to improve efficiency of our devices, finding alternate sources of energy, what we are not looking at is our insatiable greed for energy. Unless we change ourselves, we have very dark nights (without the bat mobiles ) ahead of us. Automatic door closers, lifts, cell phones, i pod-pad-phone-mac-pill leave our power plant turbines gasping. I am not just talking about turning off the lights when not needed. I am asking something more fundamental. Do we need lights at all? It is just an example. It can be your washing machine, dish washer or something you can do away with. I am throwing this question open to all of you.
What should be done?
What should really be done?
Another air hostess, Deepti claims, “Handling a group of passengers can be difficult. If one person asks for a blanket, everyone wants one. Monkey see, monkey do.” Justified. but these monkeys are responsible for your promotion, right? “We are much more than pretty faces, one day I might save your life too!”, quips an anonymous one. True, but so could a 4 year old!
