AMBER
It was a dark stormy night. The clouds were rolling in and
it had started to rain. The deep rumbling of the dark clouds confirmed the
incoming thunderstorm. What would you do on such a night? <Question to Audience> Quite interesting, but do you know
what he did he do? He, was out there, in that dark stormy night, flying a kite!
Fellow Toastmaster, it was 15 June 1752 when Benjamin
Franklin did his famous kite flying experiment in Pennsylvania. He was thus
credited as the inventor of electricity. Contrary to what you might think, he,
was not the inventor. In fact nobody was. Electricity was discovered. Its
history dates back to 600 BC when the ancient Greeks found that if you rub a
piece of Amber, you could attract small bits of paper. It is nothing but static
electricity as we call it today.
The journey has begun with a humble amber. The word Amber
in Greek was translated to the word electricity in English by William Gilbert
in 1600s and since then, there has been an inexorable chain of events,
discoveries and inventions which has paved the way of the modern day
electricity. We owe, this privilege to have an electrified life to these great
people. I cannot help but mention a few like Otto Vann, William Watson, Alexander
Volta, and of course Thomas Alva Edison, whose invention of electric bulb
bought electricity to our household and sure enough, household is the biggest
consumer of electricity.
Imagine just one day in your life without electricity. It’s
tough isn’t it? That’s because this privilege has become a necessity today and
we are dependent on it. Round the clock. From the moment we get up till we go
back to sleep. In fact, even while we are sleeping. Being the biggest consumer
of electricity, the household is sadly the most wasteful and pollution causing
too. In today’s speech we will see how we cause this pollution and ways to
prevent it. Now, how do we cause pollution by merely using electricity? When
you plug in your charger, it does not smoke, it does not create any harmful
gases so how do you cause pollution.
On an average, a medium size house does more pollution
than what a car or a bike does and it does so, at the power plant where fossil
fuels like Coal, natural oil and gases are burned to generate electricity.
Fossil fuels or non-renewable sources of energy as they are popularly called,
take millions of years to be formed. Once they are burned, Poof! They are gone
forever. They are burned in order to generate electricity but with that, they
also generate a lot of by product which can cause global warming, irreversible
damage to delicate ecosystem like tundra, coral reefs and mangroves, extinction
of endemic species, rapid spreading of diseases, powerful heat waves and
tornados, recurring draught and flood so on and so forth.
What can we do to prevent this? Can we stop the generation
of electricity? No, that will not be possible. Alternative ways to generate
electricity like Wind energy, hydro energy, nuclear energy and solar energy are
considered and used too. But still, the majority of electricity generation is
done using burning of fossil fuels.
Let’s look at an option that we have in our hand. Can we
save electricity? The conservation of electricity is far simpler but let’s look
at it by first changing our attitude towards it. When I had once switched off
my colleagues computer monitor, he asked me - why are you bothered about it?
What bit will you save by it and anyways, the company pays for it. Fellow
Toastmasters, it’s high time now that we start realizing the ways in which we
are damaging our environment. And by the way, every bit counts.
In short, I would like to outline 3 methods of saving
electricity which you can remember using the Acronym SEA. Save-Exchange-Avoid.
About saving electricity, I’m sure that I need not tell
you that you should switch off all the lights fan and AC when not in use,
ensure that the room is completely closed before switching to the AC, should
not put hot food in refrigerator. Simple thigs like shutting down the water while
brushing your teeth and taking a shorter shower will help as electricity is
required to pump water to the tank. These are things we teach our kids at
school but quite honestly, do we do it?
For the exchange part, we can replace our normal bulbs
with CFL or LED, exchange the old TV, refrigerator and washing machine with a
newer energy efficient one. Replace normal geyser with a solar one which itself
will bring down the cost drastically.
But what is better than to avoid high usage of
electricity? Try using fan instead of AC whenever possible. Rearrange furniture
around your house so as to allow maximum daylight to pour in. Plant more trees
around your home which will bring down the temperature and hence the cooling
cost.
So you see, with so many tips, tricks and alternatives,
it’s after all not very difficult to save electricity. Many activities and
speeches have already delineated this topic. Some motivated the audience while
other failed to meet its objective.
Did I meet the objectives of today’s speech? In literal
sense, my evaluator here is the best person to tell me that but in deeper
sense, I will achieve my objective if at least one person sitting in this room
will think about what I have said today. If you will think about switching off
your monitor today. If you will consider to use the staircase instead of the
elevator just to climb up or down a couple of floors.
Remember SEA à
Save-Exchange-Avoid. Let’s make this as our common goal and help each other to
achieve it.
Over to the Toastmaster of the day.
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