Close your eyes and remember how heavenly heated soil smells when the first raindrops fall on it?? Or even how your own garden smells when you water it at the end of a hot day?
These wonderful aromas are going to be forgotten soon
because we in our collective wisdom are covering up our garden spaces, our front yard, even the areas outside our compound walls with cement concrete!
Gold Rate
03 April 2025
It’s like soil and the green grass that grows on it is our enemy. No one wants to get their feet muddy or wet. If mankind had it’s way, the whole globe would soon be covered with concrete.
Cement roads, even cemented lanes, flyovers, bridges,over bridges, footpaths, and now even our own garden spaces are being covered with concrete.
With what result?
It’s still mid March, yet city is warming up rapidly like we are already into April or May. Sunstroke, heat strokes and other heat related ailments and diseases will soon rear up. With the emphasis on Corona, some may get treatment, many will not. Already, most good hospital beds come at a premium.
But awareness and concern of a few environmentalists about the ill effects of both Cement and it’s off shoot concrete makes them wonder – is our love for the stuff killing us?
In the last 2 – 3 years I have seen more and more of my neighbors concreting up their entire front yard. In fact all the space around their house. Not stopping at that, they pour cement and concrete in the space outside their compound wall…right upto the street and then claim this outer space too as theirs! No one else is allowed to park their vehicles in this space, a close vigil is kept. One family has actually kept huge boulders on the periphery of the concrete which could result in accidents at night when visibility is low!
Another recently constructed bungalow in Bajaj nagar has inmates claiming space on both sides of the road. A bench donated by some good samaritans, where old people would often sit and rest under the shadow of the tree has also ” disappeared ” after this bungalow came up. Their commercial as well as personal vehicles are parked there now. Not just that, a lovingly planted Neem tree in the periphery has been ‘ killed’ by poisoning its roots.
But this editorial is more about the harmful effects the concrete is causing rather than our parking woes.
Concrete, because of its ingredients , has the quality of absorbing the heat and then radiating that heat back into the atmosphere.
Anytime after 11 a.m. try walking barefoot on concrete. You won’t be able to. Your feet, and your brain will look for the comfort of soil and grass. But it’s all going…..going.. gone!
WE ARE MAKING ” HEAT ISLANDS ” OF OUR CITIES
When temperatures rise, countless miles of concrete roads, sidewalks, walls and roofs in cities magnify that effect creating ” heat islands”.
Add to that the heat and CO2 emitted by our growing number of motorized vehicles and you get furnace like heat. The two factors combined can boost temperature by as much as 22° C according to the EPA.
This heat is lethal.very lethal. According to a medical study more people have died in USA ( which we consider a Cold Country!) because of heat rather than cyclones, floods or earthquakes.
And our love of the substance – Cement – only increases.
Our neighbor China, has consumed more cement in the 3 years from 2011 to 2013 ( 6.6 gigatons) than USA consumed in the entire century from 1901 to 2000. ( 4.5 gigatons)
India is now the second largest cement producing country in the world, next to China. We have 8% of the world’s total installed capacity for making cement.
OTHER ILL EFFECTS OF CONCRETE
Concrete is just sand and gravel glued together with cement.
The more concrete we need, the more sand is ‘ mined’ – much of it illegally.
Sand is dredged from river beds, lake bottoms and river beaches. This is destroying the habitat of birds and poisoning the water killing fish.
The dredging causes river banks to collapse and bridges weaken.
Just recollect the horrifying images of entire riverside roads, alongwith many buildings just toppling over and collapsing into the raging river in Uttarakhand near Kedarnath!
We, the people should become more aware of conserving nature and our environment by planting more trees,even having terrace gardens! Not only shall we get home grown vegetables, we will keep the Earth cool. Cooler than it has been in recent years.
We should dig up those roadside areas we have covered with concrete so rain water can percolate down. And the earth can breathe!
It’s this….or perish.
The choice is ours.
.. By Sunita Mudliyar ( Executive Editor )
