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ROBERT JAMES LEE HAWKE

Robert James Lee Hawke AC GCL (born 9 December 1929) is an Australian politician who was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia and the Leader of the Labor Party from 1983 to 1991. After a decade as President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, he was elected to the House of Representatives as the Labor MP for Wills in 1980. Three years later, he led Labor to a landslide election victory and was sworn in as Prime Minister. He led Labor to victory at three more elections in 1984, 1987 and 1990, thus making him the most successful Labor Leader in history. Hawke was eventually replaced by Paul Keating at the end of 1991. He remains to date Labor's longest-serving Prime Minister, and is Australia's third-longest-serving Prime Minister.

Early life and education[edit]

Hawke was born in Bordertown, South Australia to Clem, a Congregationalist minister, and his wife Ellie. His uncle, Albert, was the Labor Premier of Western Australia between 1953 and 1959, and was also a close friend of Prime Minister John Curtin, who was in many ways Bob Hawke's role model. Ellie Hawke had an almost messianic belief in her son's destiny, and this contributed to his supreme self-confidence throughout his career.^[1]Both his parents were of Cornish origin, and he himself has stated that his background is Cornish.^[2][3] This led the Cornish writer and historian A.L. Rowse to write, "Bob Hawke's characteristics are as Cornish as Australian. I know them well; the aggressive individualism, the egoism, the touchiness, the liability to resentment, even a touch of vindictiveness."^[4] While attending the 1952 World Christian Youth Conference in Kottayam,Southern India, Hawke was struck by "this enormous sense of irrelevance of religion to the needs of the people". He subsequently abandoned hisChristian beliefs.^[5] By the time he entered politics he was a self-described agnostic.^[6] Hawke told Andrew Denton in 2008 that his father's Christian faith continued to influence his outlook however: "[My father] said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily, and even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me."^[7]

Hawke was educated at Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws. At the age 15, he accurately boasted that he would one day become Prime Minister of Australia.^[8] He joined the Labor Party in 1947 at the age of 18, and successfully applied for a Rhodes Scholarship at the end of 1952.^[9][10] In 1953, Hawke attended University College, Oxford to commence aBachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).^[11] He soon found he was covering much the same ground as his did in his education at the University of Western Australia. Hawke then transferred to a Bachelor of Letters, with a thesis on wage-fixing in Australia which was successfully presented in January 1956.^[12]

His academic achievements were complemented by setting a new world speed record for beer drinking; he downed 2 ¹?₂ imperial pints (1.4 l) - equivalent to a yard of ale - from a sconce pot in 11 seconds as part of a college penalty.^[13][14] In his memoirs, Hawke suggested that this single feat may have contributed to his political success more than any other, by endearing him to a voting population with a strong beer culture.^[12]

In March 1956, Hawke married Hazel Masterson at Perth Trinity Church.^[15] They would go on to have three children: Susan Pieters-Hawke (born 1957), Stephen (born 1959) and Roslyn (born 1960). Their fourth child, Robert Jr, died in his early infancy in 1963. In the same year, Hawke accepted a scholarship to undertake doctoral studies in the area of arbitration law in the law department at the Australian National University in Canberra.^[12][15]Soon after arrival at ANU, Hawke became the students' representative on the University Council.^[15]

In 1957, Hawke was recommended to the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), Albert Monk, to become a research officer, replacing Harold Souter who had become ACTU Secretary. The recommendation was made by Hawke's mentor at ANU, H.P. Brown, who for a number of years had assisted the ACTU in national wage cases. Hawke decided to abandon his doctoral studies and accept the offer, moving toMelbourne.^[16]

ACTU President[edit]

Not long after Hawke began work at the ACTU, he became responsible for the presentation of its annual case for higher wages to the national wages tribunal, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. He was first appointed as an ACTU advocate in 1959. The 1958 case, under advocate R.L. Eggleston, had yielded only a five-shilling increase.^[17] The 1959 case found for a fifteen-shilling increase, and was regarded as a personal triumph for Hawke.^[18] He went on to attain such success and prominence in his role as an ACTU advocate that, in 1969, he was encouraged to run for ACTU President, despite the fact that he had never held elected office in a trade union.

He was elected ACTU President in 1969 on a modernising platform, by a narrow margin of 399 to 350, with the support of the left of the union movement, including some associated with the Communist Party.^[19] He later credited Ray Gietzelt, General Secretary of the FMWU, as the single most significant union figure in helping him achieve this outcome.^[20]

Hawke declared publicly that "socialist is not a word I would use to describe myself", and his approach to government was pragmatic. He concerned himself with making improvements to workers' lives from within the traditional institutions of government, rather than by using any ideological theory. He opposed the Vietnam War, but was a strong supporter of the US-Australian alliance, and also an emotional supporter of Israel. It was his commitment to the cause of Jewish Refuseniks that led to a planned assassination attempt on Hawke by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and its Australian operative Munif Mohammed Abou Rish.^[21]

In industrial matters, Hawke continued to demonstrate a preference for, and considerable skill at, negotiation, and was generally liked and respected by employers as well as the unions he advocated for. As early as 1972, speculation began that he would seek to enter Parliament and eventually run to become the Leader of the Labor Party. But while his professional career continued successfully, his heavy drinking and his notorious womanising placed considerable strains on his family life.^[22]

In 1973, Hawke was elected as the Labor Party's Federal President. Two years later, when the Whitlam Government was controversially dismissed by the Governor-General, Hawke showed an initial keenness to enter Parliament at the ensuing election. Harry Jenkins, the MP for Scullin, came under pressure to step down to allow Hawke to stand in his place, but he strongly resisted this push.^[23] Hawke eventually decided not to attempt to enter Parliament at that time, a decision he soon regretted. After Labor was defeated at the election, Whitlam initially offered the Labor leadership to Hawke, although it was not within Whitlam's power to decide who would succeed him.^[24] Despite not taking on the offer, Hawke remained influential, playing a key role in averting national strike action.^[25] The strain of this period took its toll, and in 1979 he suffered a physical collapse.

This shock led Hawke to make a sustained and ultimately successful effort to conquer his alcoholism – John Curtin was his inspiration in this, as in many other things. He was helped through this period by the relationship that he had established with the writer Blanche d'Alpuget, who in 1982 published an admiring biography of Hawke. His popularity with the public was unaffected by this period of rehabilitation, and opinion polling suggested that he was a far more popular public figure than either Labor Leader Bill Hayden or Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.

Member of Parliament[edit]

Hawke addresses the Labour Day crowd in October 1980

Hawke's first attempt to enter Parliament came during the 1963 federal election. He stood in the seat of Corio and managed to achieve a 3.1% swing against the national trend, although he fell short of winning the seat.^[26] Hawke passed up several opportunities to enter Parliament throughout the 1970s, something he later wrote that he "regretted". He eventually stood for election to the House of Representatives at the 1980 election for Wills, Melbourne, winning comfortably. Immediately upon his election to Parliament, Hawke was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet by Labor Leader Bill Hayden as Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations, Employment and Youth.^[27] Throughout that time, opinion polls continually indicated that, in contrast to Hayden, Hawke was regarded as "a certain election winner". After losing the 1980 election, Hayden's position as leader was never completely secure. In order to quell this constant speculation over his position, Hayden eventually called a leadership ballot for 16 July 1982, believing that if he won he would be able to lead Labor into the next election.^[28] Hawke duly challenged Hayden, but Hayden was able to defeat him and remain in his position, although his five-vote victory over the former ACTU President was not large enough to dispel doubts that he could lead the Labor Party to victory at an election.^[29]

Despite being defeated, Hawke continued to agitate behind the scenes for a change in leadership, with opinion polls continuing to show that Hawke was a far more popular figure than both Hayden and Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. Hayden's leadership position was thrown into further doubt after Labor performed poorly in a by-election in December 1982 for the Victorian seat of Flinders, following the resignation of the former Liberal Minister Sir Phillip Lynch. Labor needed a swing of 5.5% to win the seat, and had been predicted by the media to win, but could only achieve a swing of 3%.^[30] This convinced many Labor MPs that only Hawke would be able to lead Labor to victory at the upcoming election. Labor Party power-brokers, such as Graham Richardson and Barrie Unsworth, now openly switched their allegiance from Hayden to Hawke.^[30] More significantly, Hayden's staunch friend and political ally, Labor's Senate Leader John Button, eventually became convinced that Hawke's chances of victory at an election were greater than Hayden's. Having initially believed that he could carry on, Button's defection proved to be the final straw in convincing Hayden that he would have to resign as Labor Leader.^[31] Less than two months after the disastrous showing in Flinders, Hayden announced his resignation as Labor Leader to the caucus on 3 February 1983. Hawke was subsequently named Acting Leader—and hence Leader of the Opposition—pending a party-room ballot at which he was elected unopposed.^[31] By a remarkable coincidence, on the same day that Hawke became Leader, Fraser called a snap election for 5 March 1983, hoping to both capitalise on Labor's feuding before it could replace Hayden with Hawke.^[32] Fraser initially believed that he had caught Labor out, thinking that they would be forced to fight the election with Hayden as Leader. However, he was surprised to find out that Hayden had already resigned that morning, literally hours before the writs were issued. In the election held a month later, Hawke led Labor to a landslide election victory, achieving a 24-seat swing—still the worst defeat that a sitting non-Labor government has ever suffered—and ending seven years of Liberal rule.

Prime Minister[edit]

After Labor's landslide win, Hawke was sworn in as the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia by the Governor-General on 11 March 1983. The inaugural days of the Hawke Government were distinctly different from those of the Whitlam Government. Rather than immediately initiating extensive reform programmes as Whitlam had, Hawke announced that Malcolm Fraser's pre-election concealment of the budget deficit meant that many of Labor's election commitments would have to be deferred.^[33] As part of his internal reforms package, Hawke divided the Government into two tiers, with only the most important ministers attending regular meetings of the Cabinet. The Labor caucus were still given the authority to determine who would make up the Ministry, but gave Hawke unprecedented powers for a Labor Prime Minister to select which individual ministers would comprise the 13-strong Cabinet.^[34] Hawke said that he did this in order to avoid what he viewed as the unwieldy nature of the Whitlam Cabinet, which had 27 members. Caucus under Hawke also exhibited a much more formalised system of parliamentary factions, which significantly altered the dynamics of caucus operations.^[34]

Hawke presents a cheque for Ash Wednesday fire relief to South AustralianPremier John Bannon in April 1983.

Unlike his predecessor as Labor Leader, Hawke's authority within the Labor Party was absolute. This enabled him to persuade his MPs to support a substantial set of policy changes. Individual accounts from ministers indicate that while Hawke was not usually the driving force for economic reform – that impetus instead coming from Treasurer Paul Keating and Industry Minister John Button – he took on the role of achieving consensus and providing political guidance on what was electorally feasible and how best to sell it to the public, tasks at which he proved highly successful. Hawke took on a very public role as Prime Minister, proving to be incredibly popular with the Australian electorate; to this date he still holds the highest ever AC Nielsen approval rating.^[35]

The political partnership between Hawke and his Treasurer, Paul Keating, provided essential to their success in government. The two men proved a study in contrasts: Hawke was a Rhodes Scholar; Keating left high school early.^[36] Hawke's enthusiasms were cigars, horse racing and all forms of sport; Keating preferred classical architecture, Mahler symphonies and collecting English Regency and French Empire antiques.^[37] Hawke was consensus-driven; Keating revelled in aggressive debate. Hawke was a lapsed Protestant; Keating was a practising Catholic. These differences, however, seemed only to increase the effectiveness of their partnership, as they oversaw sweeping economic and social changes throughout Australia.

According to political commentator Paul Kelly, "the most influential economic decisions of the 1980s were the floating of the Australian Dollar and the deregulation of the financial system".^[38] Although the Fraser Government had played a part in the process of financial deregulation by commissioning the 1981 Campbell Report, opposition from Fraser himself had stalled the deregulation process.^[39] When the Hawke Government implemented a comprehensive program of financial deregulation and reform, it "transformed economics and politics in Australia".^[38] The Australian economy became significantly more integrated with the global economy as a result, which completely transformed its relationship with Asia, Europe and the United States.^[38] Both Hawke and Keating would claim the credit for being the driving force behind the success of the Australian Dollar float.^[40]

Among other reforms, the Hawke Government dismantled the tariff system, privatised state sector industries, ended the subsidisation of loss-making industries, and sold off the state-ownedCommonwealth Bank of Australia.^[41][42] The tax system was reformed, with the introduction of a fringe benefits tax and a capital gains tax, reforms strongly opposed by the Liberal Party at the time, but not ones that they reversed when they eventually returned to office.^[43] Partially offsetting these imposts upon the business community – the "main loser" from the 1985 Tax Summit according to Paul Kelly – was the introduction of full dividend imputation, a reform insisted upon by Keating.^[44] Funding for schools was also considerably increased, while financial assistance was provided for students to enable them to stay at school longer. Considerable progress was also made in directing assistance "to the most disadvantaged recipients over the whole range of welfare benefits."^[45]

The Prime Minister's Office at Old Parliament House, preserved as it appeared during Hawke's Prime Ministership

Hawke benefited greatly from the disarray into which the Liberal Party fell after the resignation of Malcolm Fraser. The Liberals were divided between supporters of the dour, socially conservative John Howard and the more liberal, urbane Andrew Peacock. The arch-conservative Premier of Queensland,Joh Bjelke-Petersen, added to the Liberals' problems with his "Joh for Canberra" campaign, which proved highly damaging. Exploiting these divisions, Hawke led the Labor Party to landslide election victories in a snap 1984 election and the 1987 election.

Hawke's time as Prime Minister saw considerable friction develop between himself and the grassroots of the Labor Party, who were unhappy at what they viewed as Hawke's iconoclasm and willingness to cooperate with business interests. All Labor Prime Ministers have at times engendered the hostility of the organisational wing of the Party, but none more so than Hawke, who regularly expressed his willingness to cull Labor's "sacred cows". The Socialist Left faction, as well as prominent Labor figure Barry Jones, offered severe criticism of a number of government decisions. He also received criticism for his "confrontationalist style" in siding with the airlines in the 1989 Australian pilots' strike.^[46]

Hawke and US President Ronald Reaganat the White House in 1985

In spite of the criticisms levelled against the Hawke Government, it succeeded in enacting a wide range of social reforms during its time in office.^[47][48] Deflecting arguments that the Hawke Government had failed as a reform government, Neville Wran, John Dawkins, Bill Hayden and Paul Keating made a number of speeches throughout the 1980s arguing that the Hawke Government had been a recognisably reformist government, drawing attention to Hawke's achievements as Prime Minister during his first five years in office. As well as the reintroduction of Medibank, under the new name Medicare, these included the doubling of child care places, the introduction of occupational superannuation, a boost in school retention rates, a focus on young people's job skills, a doubling of subsidised home care services, the elimination of poverty traps in the welfare system, a 50% increase in public housing funds, an increase in the real value of the old-age pension, the development of a new youth support program, the re-introduction of six-monthly indexation of single adult unemployment benefits, and significant improvements in social security provisions.^[49][50] As pointed out by John Dawkins, the proportion of total government outlays allocated to families, the sick, single parents, widows, the handicapped, and veterans was significantly higher under the Hawke Government than under the Whitlam Government.^[49]

Another notable success for which Hawke's response is given considerable credit was Australia's public health campaign regarding AIDS.^[51] In the later years of the Hawke Government, Aboriginal affairs also saw considerable attention, with an investigation of the idea of a treaty between Aborigines and the Government, although this idea would be overtaken by events, notably the Mabo court decision.

The Hawke Government also made some notable environmental decisions. In its first months in office it halted the construction of the Franklin Dam inTasmania, responding to a groundswell of protest about the issue.^[52] In 1990, with an election looming, tough political operator Graham Richardson was appointed Environment Minister, and was given the task of attracting second-preference votes from the Australian Democrats and other environmental parties. Richardson claimed this as a major factor in the government's narrow re-election at the 1990 election.^[53]

Richardson felt that the importance of his contribution to Labor's victory would automatically entitle him to the ministerial portfolio of his choice, which was Transport and Communications.^[54] He was shocked, however, at what he perceived as Hawke's ingratitude in allocating him Social Security instead. He later vowed in a telephone conversation with Peter Barron, a former Hawke staffer, to do "whatever it takes" to "get" Hawke.^[33][55] He immediately transferred his allegiance to Paul Keating, who after seven years as Treasurer was openly coveting the leadership.^[56]

Bob Hawke and Labor Leader Mark Latham unveil a plaque in 2004 to commemorate the centenary of the Watson Labor Government in 1904.

The late 1980s recession and accompanying high interest rates had seen the government in considerable electoral trouble, with many doubting if Hawke could win in 1990. Although Keating was the main architect of the government's economic policies, he took advantage of Hawke's declining popularity to plan a leadership challenge. In 1988, in the wake of poorer opinion polls, Keating put pressure on Hawke to step down immediately. Hawke responded by agreeing a secret deal with Keating, the so-called "Kirribilli Agreement", that he would stand down in Keating's favour shortly after the 1990 election, which he convinced Keating he could win.^[57] Hawke duly won the 1990 election, albeit by a very tight margin, and subsequently appointed Keating asDeputy Prime Minister to replace the retiring Lionel Bowen, and to prepare Keating to assume the leadership.

Not long after becoming Deputy Prime Minister, frustrated at the lack of any indication from Hawke as to when he might step down, Keating made a provocative speech to the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. Hawke considered the speech extremely disloyal, and subsequently indicated to Keating that he would renege on the Kirribilli Agreement as a result.^[58] After this disagreement tensions between the two men reached an all-time high, and after a turbulent year, Keating finally resigned as Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer in June 1991, to challenge Hawke for the leadership. Hawke comfortably defeated Keating, and in a press conference after the result Keating declared that with regards the leadership, he had fired his "one shot". Hawke appointed John Kerin to replace Keating as Treasurer, but Kerin quickly proved to be unequal to the job.^[59] In spite of his convincing win over Keating, Hawke was seen after the result as a "wounded" leader; he had now lost his long-term political partner, his rating in opinion polls began to decrease, and after nearly nine years as Prime Minister, many were openly speculating that he was "tired", and that it was time for somebody new.^[60]

Hawke's leadership was finally irrevocably damaged towards the end of 1991, as new Liberal Leader John Hewson released 'Fightback!', a detailed proposal for sweeping economic change, including the introduction of a goods and services tax and deep cuts to government spending and personal income tax.^[59][61] The package appeared to take Hawke by complete surprise, and his response to it was judged to be extremely ineffective. Many within the Labor Party appeared to lose faith in him over this, and Keating duly challenged for the leadership a second time on 19 December 1991, this time narrowly defeating Hawke by 56 votes to 51.^[62] In a speech to the House of Representatives the following day, Hawke declared that his nine years as Prime Minister had left Austalia a better country than he found, and he was given a standing ovation by those present. He subsequently tendered his resignation as Prime Minister to the Governor-General. Hawke briefly returned to the backbenches before resigning from Parliament on 20 February 1992, sparking a by-election which was won by independent Phil Cleary from a record field of 22 candidates.^[63]

Hawke wrote that he had very few regrets over his time in office; although his bitterness towards Keating surfaced in his earlier memoirs, by 2010, Hawke said that he and Keating had long since buried their differences, and that they regularly dined together and considered each other friends.^[64]

Retirement and later life[edit]

Bob Hawke in 2012.

After leaving Parliament, Hawke entered the business world, taking on a number of directorships and consultancy positions, roles in which he was able to achieve considerable success. He and Hazel Hawke divorced in 1995; she had tolerated his open relationship with Blanche d'Alpuget whilst he was Prime Minister, but the marriage ended three years after his retirement from politics. Shortly afterwards, Hawke married d'Alpuget. Hazel Hawke died on 23 May 2013 following complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Hawke deliberately had little involvement with the Labor Party during Keating's time as Prime Minister, not wanting to overshadow his successor, although he did occasionally criticise some of Keating's policies publicly.^[65] After Keating's defeat and the election of the Howard Government at the 1996 election, he began to be more involved with Labor again, and he has since regularly appeared at a number of official Labor launches and campaigns, often alongside Keating.

Bob Hawke at Parliament House for the national apology to the Stolen Generations.

In the run up to the 2007 election, Hawke made a considerable personal effort to support Kevin Rudd, making speeches at a large number of campaign office openings across Australia. As well as campaigning against WorkChoices, Hawke also attacked John Howard's record as Treasurer, stating "it was the judgement of every economist and international financial institution that it was the restructuring reforms undertaken by my government, with the full cooperation of the trade union movement, which created the strength of the Australian economy today".^[66] Similarly, in the 2010 and 2013 campaigns, Hawke leant considerable support to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd respectively. Hawke also maintained an involvement in Labor politics at a state level; in 2011, Hawke publicly supported NSW Premier Kristina Keneally, who was facing almost certain defeat, in her campaign against LiberalBarry O'Farrell, describing her campaign as "gutsy".^[67]

In February 2008, Hawke joined former Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating in Parliament House to witness Prime Minister Kevin Rudd deliver the long anticipated apology to the Stolen Generations.^[68]

In 2009, Hawke helped establish the Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia. Interfaith dialogue was an important issue for Hawke, who told the Adelaide Review that he is "convinced that one of the great potential dangers confronting the world is the lack of understanding in regard to the Muslim world. Fanatics have misrepresented what Islam is. They give a false impression of the essential nature of Islam."^[69]

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Gravity

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Himalayas

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“Child’s Right to Education”: A Skit

A Professor sitting in his study, holding his head in his hands, is on the verge of desperation, trying to write a skit to be performed by his students. The skit competition is being organized by an NGO working on “Child’s Right to Education.”

Few books are piled up on the table and a writing pad in front of him. He lights a cigarette.

The first and last speeches in the skit are in the form of a monologue; the professor’s thoughts will have to be narrated as a voice-over by another person in the background.

Professor: (Voice-over) Oh! What a lot of mess. Tomorrow I have got to give this script to my students for the skit competition. How do I start? I know there are other colleges taking part in the competition. My script has got to be different. Looks like  others will harp on the exploitation of little children. Their hardships, their struggle. No, I will not sentimentalize this. I will be different. Let me have three-four children working as cobbler, tea-stall vendor, and laborer in a factory. Suppose they come and sleep in the same place at the end of the day. Let me try to imagine what they must be talking about…it’s difficult when both the partners work. Who will look after the house? Moreover, who will look after our two-year old daughter? This girl was working in our house for so long. Suddenly her parents took her away. Someone else was offering them more money. Even we were paying her around Rs.500/- every month. And all the food she guzzled on. These people are so selfish. They are so ungrateful. My elder daughter comes back from school at three o’clock when none of us are at home. At least this girl used to give her food and play with her until we got back home from work. Now, I have to look for another girl. My wife doesn’t want a grown up woman. She feels the house isn’t safe because they bring in all kinds of people when we are not home…I have got to finish the script today itself. We will rehearse over next two days. Idea! What about having this little boy sell channa outside the school gate during Tiffin hours? He must be wondering how these kids earn their livelihood when they spend almost the whole day in school…Let me have some coffee. I will ask mali to get me some. Ramu, Ramu…

Ramu: (From inside) Aaya, babu.

Professor: Ramu, get me some coffee.

Ramu: Ji, babu. (Prepares to go.)

Professor: Arre, Ramu, you have a daughter. How old is she?

Ramu: Babu, she is just eight. She is going to school. Kyun babu?

Professor: School! What’s she going to school for? Bring her here. You know the girl who was working in my house left. I need somebody to look after my two year old daughter. Moreover, your daughter can play with my elder one when she comes back from school. She will get good food. She can sleep in the kitchen.

Ramu: Lekin babu?

Professor: Now, don’t irritate me. Bring your daughter tomorrow. I have got to finish this script. Get me some coffee.

Ramu: Ji, babu. (He goes.)

Professor: (Voice-over) Now I can finish the script in peace…It will surely  appeal if I can capture the thoughts of this little kid selling channa outside the school-gate. He must also be longing to go to school and see what happens inside those rooms. What about ending the skit with this song (to be sung as a chorus in the background):

“Take me to the magic of the moment

On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow dream away

In the wind of change…”

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Current Affairs of November 2013

Current Affairs of November 2013

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Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. By profession he was a doctor. He was the creator of the famous character Sherlock Homes. Sherlock Holmes was introduced in A Study in Scarlet (1887), followed by A Sign of Four in 1890, but didn't really take hold of the public's imagination until a series of short stories called "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" were published.

Residing in London at 221B Baker Street, Holmes's character and personality set him apart from all others. "Holmes, with his keen sense of observation, his lean face and hooked nose, his long legs, his deerstalker hat, his magnifying glass, and his ever-present pipe. This personality is what caught the reader's imagination."

Conan Doyle said that the character of Holmes was inspired by Dr Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Sherlock Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.

The first Sherlock Holmes film was produced in 1900. In 1939 the novels were developed as a series of films starring Basil Rathbone.

        Sherlock Holmes is without doubt one of the most beloved figures in the history of mystery fiction. In all, Holmes and Watson were featured in four novels and 56 short stories.

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Independence Day Speech for Kids

Respected Head Mam, teachers and my friends,I wish you a happy independence day.

INDEPENDANCE DAY means a day when we had got freedom from not only our brute rulers but freedom from want from fulfillment of right needs...

India was under the British rule for 3-4 centuries. It was in 1857 India started it's independence struggle forcefully through a revolt named "The Great Revolt" against the British.

Mahatma Gandhi was the spine and brain behind the Indian independence struggle and finally her Independence. "Non-violence" or "Ahimsa" against the cannons and rifles of the so called "MIGHTY" British. His words of wisdom were followed by almost every Indian of that age to follow non-violence and struggle with perseverance and the British finally manumitted India from it's bondage. India's independence struggle is a huge epic on it's own. "NON_VIOLENCE" was the weapon used to free India. That's why India even today doesn't want resort to

force or war unless there is some menace to the security/integrity of Indian unity.

India gained independence after nearly 200 years of British rule on 15 August 1947 and Indian tricolor flag was unfurled by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, on the ramparts the Red Fort of Delhi Proud to be an Indian. Thank You One and all. Jai Hindh.............

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Trees Please!

Trees Please!              

Trees are not only beautiful plants, they are also home to many creatures! Think of a colobus monkey swinging on tree branches deep in the rainforests of Kenya. Or picture a koala bear sitting in a eucalyptus tree in Australia, munching its tasty leaves. Or imagine a spotted owl nesting in the trunk of a giant redwood tree in California. Without trees, and the forests that contain them, our planet wouldn’t be able to support all the different living things, or organisms, that depend on them. As a matter of fact, more than 90% of all species living on land make their homes in trees and forests! Without trees and forests, many animal species will become extinct, or disappear forever like the dinosaur.

Lungs of the Earth

Human beings need lungs to breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Without our lungs, we couldn’t survive. Trees act like the lungs of the earth. Trees hthe planet breathe by turning carbon dioxide into clean, pur

Trees and forests around the world also act like the planet’s air conditioning system and keep the planet cool. They help stop global warming. Global warming happens when we burn too much oil or gasoline and when we cut down too many forests. Global warming makes the weather change in serious ways, which is why it’s important to stop it from happening. Protecting forests keeps our planet cool.

Parts of a Tree

A plant is usually considered a tree if it has one woody stem and branches. The woody stem is called a trunk. Tree trunks move water and nutrients, or vitamins and minerals, up and down the tree. The trunk is covered in a protective layer called bark, and each tree has roots. Roots are a big underground system of thin stems that anchor, or hold, the tree to the earth. Roots can reach deep down to find the water and nutrients the tree needs to grow. Chlorophyll is what makes leaves green, and allows plants to gather energy from the sun through a process called photosynthesis. Photosynthesis happens when green leaves use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into sugars that the plant needs to grow. It is also how plants make oxygen.

Fruits and Flowers

Through the magic of nature, flowers turn into fruit. Flowers produce pollen, a yellowish dust that helps plants grow. Pollen is blown by the wind, or carried on the antennae of bees into other flowers. This is called pollination. When flowers are pollinated they turn into fruit. Fruit acts as a shield, protecting the tree’s seeds while they grow. Once the seeds are fully-grown, the fruit is ripe and ready to eat. Different animals like bats, birds and bears, eat these fruits and help spread the seeds to other areas where they can grow into new trees. Some seeds are not protected inside fruits,

so they find other ways of being spread like being blown in the wind or attaching to fur and clothing.

Chocolate and Maple Syrup

Every day we use many things that come from trees. Fruits and nuts like apples, peaches, plums and almonds all come from living trees, as does the cocoa bean that makes chocolate! Living trees also provide spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper, and the sap from the maple tree makes maple syrup!

Many medicines come from trees and other plants. As a matter of fact, aspirin comes from the bark of a willow tree. Scientists are still searching for new medicines in trees, which is another reason why it’s so important to protect our forests. They could provide us a cure for cancer!

Threatened Forests

While living trees provide us with many things, trees that are cut down also provide us with things. When a tree is logged, or cut down, it is usually made into lumber, or cut wood, for building homes and furniture. Some trees are pulped, or ground up, to make paper products such as office paper, cardboard boxes, magazines and newspapers.

While it is okay to cut down trees for the things we need, often too many trees are cut down in one forest. Clear-cutting is when every tree in an area is cut down, and it destroys that forest and the home of all the wildlife that lived there. Clear-cutting also makes it easier for floods to happen in logged areas, because the tree roots can no longer soak up water when it rains. While some lumber companies replant trees in areas they have cut, they only replant one or two kinds of trees, which means they are planting a tree farm, or plantation, not a forest. Remember, a forest is more than just trees. It is the collection of thousands of different plant, animal and insect species that have been living there for hundreds and thousands of years. It is possible to cut down trees without clear-cutting an entire area and some lumber companies are starting to do this. One thing we can do to help forests is to use less paper and recycle the paper we do use.

Let’s Make it Tree Free!

Another way we can protect forests is by using other plants instead! For instance, members of the grass family such as bamboo can be used to build homes and make furniture. Bamboo is a plant that grows very quickly and can be turned into many different forms and materials for building or making floors. We can also use plants like kenaf, hemp, sugarcane, and cotton to make tree-free paper. Farmers around the world can grow these crops to make paper. Farmers can also provide agricultural waste, or farm leftovers, like corn stalks and wheat straw to make tree-free paper. Rather than burning or burying this waste, farmers can sell these plant leftovers so that others can make paper without using trees.

Web of Life

All of life is connected like the strands of a spider web. If one part of nature is destroyed, other parts will be affected by it. This connection between all living things is called the web of life. Trees are a very important part of the web of life, so let’s do what we can to protect our trees and forests!

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Water pollution

Water pollution: an introduction

                     Over two thirds of Earth's surface is covered by water; less than a third is taken up by land. As Earth's population continues to grow, people are putting ever-increasing pressure on the planet's water resources. In a sense, our oceans, rivers, and other inland waters are being "squeezed" by human activities—not so they take up less room, but so their quality is reduced. Poorer water quality means water pollution.

We know that pollution is a human problem because it is a relatively recent development in the planet's history: before the 19th century Industrial Revolution, people lived more in harmony with their immediate environment. As industrialisation has spread around the globe, so the problem of pollution has spread with it. When Earth's population was much smaller, no one believed pollution would ever present a serious problem. It was once popularly believed that the oceans were far too big to pollute. Today, with over 8 billion people on the planet, it has become apparent that there are limits. Pollution is one of the signs that humans have exceeded those limits.

How serious is the problem? According to the environmental campaign organization WWF: "Pollution from toxic chemicals threatens life on this planet. Every ocean and every continent, from the tropics to the once-pristine polar regions, is contaminated."
What is water pollution?

Water pollution can be defined in many ways. Usually, it means one or more substances have built up in water to such an extent that they cause problems for animals or people. Oceans, lakes, rivers, and other inland waters can naturally clean up a certain amount of pollution by dispersing it harmlessly. If you poured a cup of black ink into a river, the ink would quickly disappear into the river's much larger volume of clean water. The ink would still be there in the river, but in such a low concentration that you would not be able to see it. At such low levels, the chemicals in the ink probably would not present any real problem. However, if you poured gallons of ink into a river every few seconds through a pipe, the river would quickly turn black. The chemicals in the ink could very quickly have an effect on the quality of the water. This, in turn, could affect the health of all the plants, animals, and humans whose lives depend on the river.
                   

Thus, water pollution is all about quantities: how much of a polluting substance is released and how big a volume of water it is released into. A small quantity of a toxic chemical may have little impact if it is spilled into the ocean from a ship. But the same amount of the same chemical can have a much bigger impact pumped into a lake or river, where there is less clean water to disperse it.

Water pollution almost always means that some damage has been done to an ocean, river, lake, or other water source. A 1971 United Nations report defined ocean pollution as:

    "The introduction by man, directly or indirectly, of substances or energy into the marine environment (including estuaries) resulting in such deleterious effects as harm to living resources, hazards to human health, hinderance to marine activities, including fishing, impairment of quality for use of sea water and reduction of amenities."

Fortunately, Earth is forgiving and damage from water pollution is often reversible.

What are the main types of water pollution?

When we think of Earth's water resources, we think of huge oceans, lakes, and rivers. Water resources like these are called surface waters. The most obvious type of water pollution affects surface waters. For example, a spill from an oil tanker creates an oil slick that can affect a vast area of the ocean.

Not all of Earth's water sits on its surface, however. A great deal of water is held in underground rock structures known as aquifers, which we cannot see and seldom think about. Water stored underground in aquifers is known as groundwater. Aquifers feed our rivers and supply much of our drinking water. They too can become polluted, for example, when weed killers used in people's gardens drain into the ground. Groundwater pollution is much less obvious than surface-water pollution, but is no less of a problem. In 1996, a study in Iowa in the United States found that over half the state's groundwater wells were contaminated with weed killers.

Surface waters and groundwater are the two types of water resources that pollution affects. There are also two different ways in which pollution can occur. If pollution comes from a single location, such as a discharge pipe attached to a factory, it is known as point-source pollution. Other examples of point source pollution include an oil spill from a tanker, a discharge from a smoke stack (factory chimney), or someone pouring oil from their car down a drain. A great deal of water pollution happens not from one single source but from many different scattered sources. This is called nonpoint-source pollution.

Photo: Left: Point-source pollution comes from a single, well-defined place such as this pipe. Right: Non point-source pollution comes from many sources. All the industrial plants alongside a river and the ships that service them may be polluting the river collectively.

When point-source pollution enters the environment, the place most affected is usually the area immediately around the source. For example, when a tanker accident occurs, the oil slick is concentrated around the tanker itself and, in the right ocean conditions, the pollution disperses the further away from the tanker you go. This is less likely to happen with nonpoint source pollution which, by definition, enters the environment from many different places at once.

Sometimes pollution that enters the environment in one place has an effect hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This is known as transboundary pollution. One example is the way radioactive waste travels through the oceans from nuclear reprocessing plants in England and France to nearby countries such as Ireland and Norway.
How do we know when water is polluted?

Some forms of water pollution are very obvious: everyone has seen TV news footage of oil slicks filmed from helicopters flying overhead. Water pollution is usually less obvious and much harder to detect than this.

But how can we measure water pollution when we cannot see it? How do we even know it's there?

There are two main ways of measuring the quality of water. One is to take samples of the water and measure the concentrations of different chemicals that it contains. If the chemicals are dangerous or the concentrations are too great, we can regard the water as polluted. Measurements like this are known as chemical indicators of water quality. Another way to measure water quality involves examining the fish, insects, and other invertebrates that the water will support. If many different types of creatures can live in a river, the quality is likely to be very good; if the river supports no fish life at all, the quality is obviously much poorer. Measurements like this are called biological indicators of water quality.
What are the causes of water pollution?

Most water pollution doesn't begin in the water itself. Take the oceans: around 80 percent of ocean pollution enters our seas from the land. Virtually any human activity can have an effect on the quality of our water environment. When farmers fertilise the fields, the chemicals they use are gradually washed by rain into the groundwater or surface waters nearby. Sometimes the causes of water pollution are quite surprising. Chemicals released by smokestacks (chimneys) can enter the atmosphere and then fall back to earth as rain, entering seas, rivers, and lakes and causing water pollution. Water pollution has many different causes and this is one of the reasons why it is such a difficult problem to solve.
Sewage

With over 8 billion people on the planet, disposing of sewage waste is a major problem. In developing countries, many people still lack clean water and basic sanitation (hygienic toilet facilities). Sewage disposal affects people's immediate environments and leads to water-related illnesses such as diarrhoea that kills 3-4 million children each year. (According to the World Health Organization, water-related diseases could kill 135 million people by 2020.) In developed countries, most people have flush toilets that take sewage waste quickly and hygienically away from their homes.

Yet the problem of sewage disposal does not end there. When you flush the toilet, the waste has to go somewhere and, even after it leaves the sewage treatment works, there is still waste to dispose of. Sometimes sewage waste is pumped untreated into the sea. Until the early 1990s, around 5 million tons of sewage was dumped by barge from New York City each year. The population of Britain produces around 300 million gallons of sewage every day, some of it still pumped untreated into the sea through long pipes. The New River that crosses the border from Mexico into California carries with it 20-25 million gallons (76-95 million litres) of raw sewage each day.

In theory, sewage is a completely natural substance that should be broken down harmlessly in the environment: 90 percent of sewage is water. In practice, sewage contains all kinds of other chemicals, from the pharmaceutical drugs people take to the paper, plastic, and other wastes they flush down their toilets. When people are sick with viruses, the sewage they produce carries those viruses into the environment. It is possible to catch illnesses such as hepatitis, typhoid, and cholera from river and sea water.


Nutrients

Suitably treated and used in moderate quantities, sewage can be a fertilizer: it returns important nutrients to the environment, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which plants and animals need for growth. The trouble is, sewage is often released in much greater quantities than the natural environment can cope with. Chemical fertilizers used by farmers also add nutrients to the soil, which drain into rivers and seas and add to the fertilizing effect of the sewage. Together, sewage and fertilizers can cause a massive increase in the growth of algae or plankton that overwhelms huge areas of oceans, lakes, or rivers. This is known as a harmful algal bloom (also known as an HAB or red tide, because it can turn the water red). It is harmful because it removes oxygen from the water that kills other forms of life, leading to what is known as a dead zone. The Gulf of Mexico has one of the world's most spectacular dead zones. Each summer, it grows to an area of around 7000 square miles (18,000 square kilometres), which is about the same size as the state of New Jersey.


Waste water

A few statistics illustrate the scale of the problem that waste water (chemicals washed down drains and discharged from factories) can cause. Around half of all ocean pollution is caused by sewage and waste water. Each year, the world generates 400 billion tons of industrial waste, much of which is pumped untreated into rivers, oceans, and other waterways. In the United States alone, around 400,000 factories take clean water from rivers, and many pump polluted waters back in their place. However, there have been major improvements in waste water treatment recently. For example, in the United States over the last 30 years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has spent $70 billion improving treatment plants that now serve about 85 percent of the US population.

Factories are point sources of water pollution, but quite a lot of water is polluted by ordinary people from nonpoint sources; this is how ordinary water becomes waste water in the first place. Virtually everyone pours chemicals of one sort or another down their drains or toilets. Even detergents used in washing machines and dishwashers eventually end up in our rivers and oceans. So do the pesticides we use on our gardens. A lot of toxic pollution also enters waste water from highway runoff. Highways are typically covered with a cocktail of toxic chemicals—everything from spilled fuel and brake fluids to bits of worn tyres (themselves made from chemical additives) and exhaust emissions. When it rains, these chemicals wash into drains and rivers. It is not unusual for heavy summer rainstorms to wash toxic chemicals into rivers in such concentrations that they kill large numbers of fish overnight. It has been estimated that, in one year, the highway runoff from a single large city leaks as much oil into our water environment as a typical tanker spill. Some highway runoff runs away into drains; others can pollute groundwater or accumulate in the land next to a road, making it increasingly toxic as the years go by.

Chemical waste

Detergents are relatively mild substances. At the opposite end of the spectrum are highly toxic chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). They were once widely used to manufacture electronic circuit boards, but their harmful effects have now been recognized and their use is highly restricted in many countries. Nevertheless, an estimated half million tons of PCBs were discharged into the environment during the 20th century. In a classic example of transboundary pollution, traces of PCBs have even been found in birds and fish in the Arctic. They were carried there through the oceans, thousands of miles from where they originally entered the environment. Although PCBs are widely banned, their effects will be felt for many decades because they last a long time in the environment without breaking down.

Another kind of toxic pollution comes from heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium, and mercury. Lead was once commonly used in gasoline (petrol), though its use is now restricted in some countries. Mercury and cadmium are still used in batteries (though some brands now use other metals instead). Until recently, a highly toxic chemical called tributyltin (TBT) was used in paints to protect boats from the ravaging effects of the oceans. Ironically, however, TBT was gradually recognized as a pollutant: boats painted with it were doing as much damage to the oceans as the oceans were doing to the boats.

The best known example of heavy metal pollution in the oceans took place in 1938 when a Japanese factory discharged a significant amount of mercury metal into Minamata Bay, contaminating the fish stocks there. It took a decade for the problem to come to light. By that time, many local people had eaten the fish and around 2000 were poisoned. Hundreds of people were left dead or disabled.

Radioactive waste

People view radioactive waste with great alarm—and for good reason. At high enough concentrations it can kill; in lower concentrations it can cause cancers and other illnesses. The biggest sources of radioactive pollution in Europe are two factories that reprocess waste fuel from nuclear power plants: Sellafield on the north-west coast of Britain and Cap La Hague on the north coast of France. Both discharge radioactive waste water into the sea, which ocean currents then carry around the world. Countries such as Norway, which lie downstream from Britain, receive significant doses of radioactive pollution from Sellafield. The Norwegian government has repeatedly complained that Sellafield has increased radiation levels along its coast by 6-10 times. Both the Irish and Norwegian governments continue to press for the plant's closure.

Oil pollution

think of ocean pollution, huge black oil slicks often spring to mind, yet these spectacular accidents represent only a tiny fraction of all the pollution entering our oceans. Even considering oil by itself, tanker spills are not as significant as they might seem: only 12% of the oil that enters the oceans comes from tanker accidents; over 70% of oil pollution at sea comes from routine shipping and from the oil people pour down drains on land. However, what makes tanker spills so destructive is the sheer quantity of oil they release at once — in other words, the concentration of oil they produce in one very localized part of the marine environment. The biggest oil spill in recent years (and the biggest ever spill in US waters) occurred when the tanker Exxon Valdez broke up in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989. Around 12 million gallons (44 million litres) of oil were released into the pristine wilderness—enough to fill your living room 800 times over! Estimates of the marine animals killed in the spill vary from approximately 1000 sea otters and 34,000 birds to as many as 2800 sea otters and 250,000 sea birds. Several billion salmon and herring eggs are also believed to have been destroyed.


Plastics

If you've ever taken part in a community beach clean, you'll know that plastic is far and away the most common substance that washes up with the waves. There are three reasons for this: plastic is one of the most common materials, used for making virtually every kind of manufactured object from clothing to automobile parts; plastic is light and floats easily so it can travel enormous distances across the oceans; most plastics are not biodegradable (they do not break down naturally in the environment), which means that things like plastic bottle tops can survive in the marine environment for a long time. (A plastic bottle can survive an estimated 450 years in the ocean and plastic fishing line can last up to 600 years.)

While plastics are not toxic in quite the same way as poisonous chemicals, they nevertheless present a major hazard to seabirds, fish, and other marine creatures. For example, plastic fishing lines and other debris can strangle or choke fish. (This is sometimes called ghost fishing.) One scientific study in the 1980s estimated that a quarter of all seabirds contain some sort of plastic residue. In another study about a decade later, a scientist collected debris from a 1.5 mile length of beach in the remote Pitcairn islands in the South Pacific. His study recorded approximately a thousand pieces of garbage including 268 pieces of plastic, 71 plastic bottles, and two dolls heads.

Alien species

Most people's idea of water pollution involves things like sewage, toxic metals, or oil slicks, but pollution can be biological as well as chemical. In some parts of the world, alien species are a major problem. Alien species (sometimes known as invasive species) are animals or plants from one region that have been introduced into a different ecosystem where they do not belong. Outside their normal environment, they have no natural predators, so they rapidly run wild, crowding out the usual animals or plants that thrive there. Common examples of alien species include zebra mussels in the Great Lakes of the USA, which were carried there from Europe by ballast water (waste water flushed from ships). The Mediterranean Sea has been invaded by a kind of alien algae called Caulerpa taxifolia. In the Black Sea, an alien jellyfish called Mnemiopsis leidyi reduced fish stocks by 90% after arriving in ballast water. In San Francisco Bay, Asian clams called Potamocorbula amurensis, also introduced by ballast water, have dramatically altered the ecosystem. In 1999, Cornell University's David Pimentel estimated that alien invaders like this cost the US economy $123 billion a year.    

Other forms of pollution

These are the most common forms of pollution—but by no means the only ones. Heat or thermal pollution from factories and power plants also causes problems in rivers. By raising the temperature, it reduces the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water, thus also reducing the level of aquatic life that the river can support.

Another type of pollution involves the disruption of sediments(fine-grained powders) that flow from rivers into the sea. Dams built for hydroelectric power or water reservoirs can reduce the sediment flow. This reduces the formation of beaches, increases coastal erosion (the natural destruction of cliffs by the sea), and reduces the flow of nutrients from rivers into seas (potentially reducing coastal fish stocks). Increased sediments can also present a problem. During construction work, soil, rock, and other fine powders sometimes enters nearby rivers in large quantities, causing it to become turbid (muddy or silted). The extra sediment can block the gills of fish, effectively suffocating them. Construction firms often now take precations to prevent this kind of pollution from happening.

What are the effects of water pollution?

Some people believe pollution is an inescapable result of human activity: they argue that if we want to have factories, cities, ships, cars, oil, and coastal resorts, some degree of pollution is almost certain to result. In other words, pollution is a necessary evil that people must put up with if they want to make progress. Fortunately, not everyone agrees with this view. One reason people have woken up to the problem of pollution is that it brings costs of its own that undermine any economic benefits that come about by polluting.

Take oil spills, for example. They can happen if tankers are too poorly built to survive accidents at sea. But the economic benefit of compromising on tanker quality brings an economic cost when an oil spill occurs. The oil can wash up on nearby beaches, devastate the ecosystem, and severely affect tourism. The main problem is that the people who bear the cost of the spill (typically a small coastal community) are not the people who caused the problem in the first place (the people who operate the tanker). Yet, arguably, everyone who puts gasoline (petrol) into their car—or uses almost any kind of petroleum-fueled transport—contributes to the problem in some way. So oil spills are a problem for everyone, not just people who live by the coast and tanker operates.

Sewage is another good example of how pollution can affect us all. Sewage discharged into coastal waters can wash up on beaches and cause a health hazard. People who bathe or surf in the water can fall ill if they swallow polluted water—yet sewage can have other harmful effects too: it can poison shellfish (such as cockles and mussels) that grow near the shore. People who eat poisoned shellfish risk suffering from an acute—and sometimes fatal—illness called paralytic shellfish poisoning. Shellfish is no longer caught along many shores because it is simply too polluted with sewage or toxic chemical wastes that have discharged from the land nearby.

Pollution matters because it harms the environment on which people depend. The environment is not something distant and separate from our lives. It's not a pretty shoreline hundreds of miles from our homes or a wilderness landscape that we see only on TV. The environment is everything that surrounds us that gives us life and health. Destroying the environment ultimately reduces the quality of our own lives—and that, most selfishly, is why pollution should matter to all of us.

How can we stop water pollution?

There is no easy way to solve water pollution; if there were, it wouldn't be so much of a problem. Broadly speaking, there are three different things that can help to tackle the problem—education, laws, and economics—and they work together as a team.

Education

Making people aware of the problem is the first step to solving it. In the early 1990s, when surfers in Britain grew tired of catching illnesses from water polluted with sewage, they formed a group called Surfers Against Sewage to force governments and water companies to clean up their act. People who've grown tired of walking the world's polluted beaches often band together to organize community beach-cleaning sessions. Anglers who no longer catch so many fish have campaigned for tougher penalties against factories that pour pollution into our rivers. Greater public awareness can make a positive difference.

Laws

One of the biggest problems with water pollution is its transboundary nature. Many rivers cross countries, while seas span whole continents. Pollution discharged by factories in one country with poor environmental standards can cause problems in neighbouring nations, even when they have tougher laws and higher standards. Environmental laws can make it tougher for people to pollute, but to be really effective they have to operate across national and international borders. This is why we have international laws governing the oceans, such as the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (signed by over 120 nations), the 1972 London Dumping Convention, the 1978 MARPOL International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, and the 1998 OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North East Atlantic. The European Union has water-protection laws (known as directives) that apply to all of its member states. They include the 1976 Bathing Water Directive, which seeks to ensure the quality of the waters that people use for recreation. Most countries also have their own water pollution laws. In the United States, for example, there is the 1972 Water Pollution Control Act and the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act.

Economics

Most environmental experts agree that the best way to tackle pollution is through something called the polluter pays principle. This means that whoever causes pollution should have to pay to clean it up, one way or another. Polluter pays can operate in all kinds of ways. It could mean that tanker owners should have to take out insurance that covers the cost of oil spill cleanups, for example. It could also mean that shoppers should have to pay for their plastic grocery bags, as is now common in Ireland, to encourage recycling and minimize waste. Or it could mean that factories that use rivers must have their water inlet pipes downstream of their effluent outflow pipes, so if they cause pollution they themselves are the first people to suffer. Ultimately, the polluter pays principle is designed to deter people from polluting by making it less expensive for them to behave in an environmentally responsible way.

Our clean future

Life is ultimately about choices—and so is pollution. We can live with sewage-strewn beaches, dead rivers, and fish that are too poisonous to eat. Or we can work together to keep the environment clean so the plants, animals, and people who depend on it remain healthy. We can take individual action to help reduce water pollution, for example, by using environmentally friendly detergents, not pouring oil down drains, reducing pesticides, and so on. We can take community action too, by helping out on beach cleans or litter picks to keep our rivers and seas that little bit cleaner. And we can take action as countries and continents to pass laws that will make pollution harder and the world less polluted. Working together, we can make pollution less of a problem—and the world a better place.

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Deserts

Deserts

A Desert is a type of Habitat or Biome characterised mainly by extreme temperatures and extremely low amount of precipitation. Scientifically speaking a Desert is a region which receives rainfall less than 10 inches or 25cm or less in a year. Deserts are one of the Earth’s major types of ecosystems, supporting a community of distinctive plants and animals specially adapted to the harsh environment. About one-third of the Earth's land surface is Desert. Deserts are not only made of sand as commonly believed, they also consist of rocks and mountains. Desert sands are often rock which has weathered down to sand over the centuries. There are many Deserts in the World. The Largest Desert is the Sahara Desert found in North Africa. The largest continuous stretch of sand is called the 'Empty Quarter' which is part of the Arabian Desert that stretches 250,000 sq. miles. Deserts are inhabited by very few Plants and Animals. They are often able to survive by avoiding the driest times and only growing after the rains. 

Classification / Types of Deserts

There are almost as many definitions of Deserts and classification systems as there are Deserts in the World. Most classifications rely on some combination of the number of days of rainfall, the total amount of annual rainfall, temperature, humidity, or other factors. 

1.  Basic or General Desert Classification

• Cold Deserts - The Deserts that occur in Greenland, Antarctic and the Nearctic realm are called Cold Deserts. These Deserts are characterized by cold winters with snowfall and high overall temperatures throughout the winter and sometimes the summer too. The mean winter temperatures in cold Deserts is between –2 to 4°C and the mean temperature is between 21-26°C. The mean annual precipitation in cold Deserts range from 15-26 cm. The soil in this area is salty, silty and heavy. The plants in cold Deserts are widely scattered and vary between 15 cm to 122 cm in height. The main plants in this area are deciduous, most of them having spiny leaves.
• Hot and Dry Deserts - Most Hot and Dry Deserts are located near the Tropic of Cancer or the Tropic of Capricorn. Hot and Dry Deserts' temperatures range from 20 to 25° C.  Summer temperatures in these Deserts often reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. At night the temperature may drop to 45 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.They usually have very little rainfall and/or they get a lot of rainfall in a very short time, and then there are long periods of time (especially the winter) when there is no rain. The average rainfall is usually less than 15 cm a year. The soils in the hot and dry Deserts are coarse-textured, shallow, rocky and gravely with good drainage and have no subsurface water, the reason of the coarse texture is the chemical weathering. Some of the plants in this area open their stomata only at night when evaporation rates are lowest.
• Semiarid Deserts - Semiarid Deserts are located in North America, Europe, and northern Asia. In these Deserts the summers are moderately long and dry, and like Hot Deserts, the winters normally bring little rainfall. Summer temperatures usually average between 21-27° C. It normally does not go above 38° C . Also, like the Hot Desert, rainfall is often very low and/or concentrated. The average rainfall ranges from 2-4 cm yearly. However, the evening temperatures in these Deserts are cool, around 10° C , and because the nights are cool, condensation occurs. Dew is formed, and the amount of dew formed may equal or exceed the rainfall received by some Deserts. The soil in the semiarid Deserts range from sandy and fine-textured to loose rock fragments, gravel or sand. Near the mountain slopes the soil is shallow, rocky, gravely, well drained and with good drainage whereas in the bottom land the soil is sandy and fine-textured. Many of the plants in a semiarid Desert have spines and silvery or glossy leaves that let them reflect more radiant energy.
• Coastal Deserts - Coastal Deserts are found in moderately cool to warm areas such as the Nearctic and Neotropical realm which means areas of southern California, Baja California, south-west Africa, and Chile. Atacama of Chile is a well known Coastal Desert. Coastal Deserts have cool winters and moderately long, warm summers. The average summer temperature ranges from 13-24° C. Winter temperatures are 5° C or below. The average rainfall measures 8-13 cm in many areas. The soil in the coastal Desert is fine-textured with moderate soil content, and is fairly porous with good drainage.

2.  Peveril Meigs Classification

In 1953, Peveril Meigs divided Desert regions on Earth into 3 Categories according to the amount of precipitation they received. 

According to this system

• 'Extremely Arid Lands' have at least 12 consecutive months without rainfall.
• 'Arid Lands' have less than 250 millimetres of annual rainfall.
• 'Semiarid Lands' have a mean annual precipitation of between 250 and 500 millimetres.

'Arid' and 'Extremely Arid Land' are Deserts, and 'Semi-arid' Grasslands generally are referred to as 'Steppes'.

3.  Köppen Climate Classification System

• BWh - Hot Desert temperature ranges from 20 to 25° C. The extreme maximum temperature for Hot Desert ranges from 43.5 to 49° C. Hot Deserts usually have very little rainfall and/or concentrated rainfall in short periods between long rainless periods. This may average out to under 15 cm a year. Plants are almost all ground-hugging shrubs and short woody trees. All of the leaves are replete (packed with nutrients). Some examples of these kinds of plant are Turpentine Bush, Prickly Pears, and Brittle Bush.
• BWk - Temperate Deserts have strong temperature contrasts between summer and winter and low rainfall. Temperate Deserts temperature in winter ranges from -2 to 4° C and in the summer 21 to 26° C a year. Most precipitation falls in winter, despite a peak in May. Temperate Deserts usually have lots of snow. They also have rain around spring. This may average out to 15-26 cm a year. Aridity increases markedly in the rain shadow of the Pacific mountain ranges. Even at intermediate elevations, winters are long and cold, with temperatures falling below 32°F (0°C). All plants here are either deciduous and more or less contain spiny leaves. Sagebrush is a commonly found Plant in this area.

4.  Classification according to Geographical Location & Weather Pattern

• Trade Wind Deserts - These type of Deserts occur where the Trade Winds (surface winds found in the tropics) blow over the land. The Trade Winds blowing in two belts on the equatorial sides of the Horse Latitudes (subtropic latitudes between 30 and 35 degrees both north and south) heat up as they move toward the Equator. These dry winds dissipate cloud cover, allowing more sunlight to heat the land. Most of the major Deserts of the World lie in areas crossed by the Trade Winds. The Sahara Desert is a Trade Wind Desert.
• Mid Latitude Deserts - Mid Latitude Deserts occur between 30° and 50° N. and S., poleward of the subtropical high pressure zones. These Deserts are in interior drainage basins far from oceans and have a wide range of annual temperatures. Dominant high pressure and lack of moisture combine to inhibit the production of clouds. The Sonoran Desert of south-western North America is a typical Mid Latitude Desert.
• Rain Shadow Deserts - Rains Shadow Deserts are those areas that lie in the shadow of mountain ranges and receive little precipitation. These are formed because tall mountain ranges prevent moisture-rich clouds from reaching areas on the lee, or protected side, of the range. As air rises over the mountain, water is precipitated and the air loses its moisture content. A Desert is formed in the leeside "shadow" of the range. Death Valley, USA is a Rain Shadow Desert.
• Coastal Deserts - Coastal Deserts are formed when cold waters move from the Arctic and Antarctic regions toward the equator and come into contact with the edges of continents. The cold waters are augmented by upwellings (rising up) of cold water from ocean  depths. As the air currents cool as they move across cold water, they carry fog  and mist, but little rain. Coastal Deserts are generally are found on the western edges of continents near the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. They are affected by cold ocean currents that parallel the coast. Because local wind systems dominate the trade winds, these Deserts are less stable than other Deserts. Winter fogs, produced by upwelling cold currents, frequently blanket coastal Deserts and block solar radiation. Coastal Deserts are relatively complex because they are at the juncture of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric systems. These type of Deserts are found southern California, Baja California, south-west Africa, and Chile.
• Monsoon Deserts - Monsoon Deserts are those Deserts which receive rainfall owing to monsoons developing in response to temperature variations between continents and oceans. The south east trade winds of the Indian Ocean, for example, provide heavy summer rains in India as they move onshore. As the monsoon crosses India, it loses moisture on the eastern slopes of the Aravalli Range. The Rajasthan Desert of India and the Thar Desert of Pakistan are parts of a monsoon Desert region west of the range.
• Polar Deserts - Polar Deserts are high-latitude Deserts where the existing moisture is frozen in ice sheets and is thus unavailable for plant growth. Polar Deserts are areas with annual precipitation less than 250 millimetres and a mean temperature during the warmest month of less than 10° C. Polar Deserts on the Earth cover nearly 5 million square kilometres and are mostly bedrock or gravel plains. It is are also known as Arctic Desert. Sand dunes are not prominent features in these Deserts, but snow dunes occur commonly in areas where precipitation is locally more abundant. Temperature changes in polar Deserts frequently cross the freezing point of water. This "freeze-thaw" alternation forms patterned textures on the ground, as much as 5 meters in diameter.

Distribution

Deserts are found all over the World. There are Deserts like the Sahara of North Africa and the Deserts of south western U.S-Mexico and Australia that occur at low altitudes and then there are the Cold Deserts that occur in the basin and range area of Utah and Nevada and in parts of western Asia. 

Major Deserts of the World

Antarctic Desert (Antarctica) -  Area = 13,829,430 km²  or  5,339,573 mi².

Arctic Desert - Area = 13,700,000+  or    5,300,000+ mi².

Sahara Desert (Africa) - Area =    9,100,000+ km²  or  3,320,000+ mi².

Arabian Desert (Middle East) - Area = 2,330,000 km²  or  900,000 mi².

Gobi Desert (Asia) - Area = 1,300,000 km²  or  500,000 mi².

Kalahari Desert (Africa) - Area = 900,000 km²  or  360,000 mi².

Patagonian Desert (South America) - Area = 670,000 km²  or  260,000 mi².

Great Victoria Desert (Australia) - Area = 647,000 km²  or  250,000 mi².

Syrian Desert (Middle East) - Area = 520,000 km²  or  200,000 mi².

Great Basin Desert (North America) - Area = 492,000 km²  or  190,000 mi².

Formation of Deserts

Deserts form under certain geographical conditions.

Primarily there are 3 geographical conditions which can result in a Desert.

1.  When an area is not located near a large body of water it may result in Arid or dry region. High atmospheric pressure in the region brings cold, dry air from higher altitudes closer to land. The sun heats the air causing low humidity and high ground temperatures.

2.  When an area lies in the interior of a land mass, it may lack moisture leading to a dry conditions. This may happen because of the lack of rain because the moisture in the air has already fallen by the time it reaches the inland of a land causing them to dry up.

3.  When mountains prevent rain from reaching an area, making that area dry and eventually into a Desert. If there are two mountain ranges, one to the east and one to the west, they can prevent ocean air from reaching the land. The region between the mountains becomes very dry. Cold deserts such as those in Antarctica are products of the extreme cold climate. Surface water remains frozen and the air is too cold to contain more than minute amounts of moisture. 

General Characteristics of Deserts 

Extreme Temperatures - Deserts are generally known as 'Areas of Extremes'. The reason being that temperatures in Deserts are either too cold or too hot. Temperatures are high during the day because there is very little moisture in the air to block the Sun's rays from reaching Earth. The arid conditions of the major Desert areas result from their position in subtropical regions to either side of the moist equatorial belt. The high temperature is caused by the intense radiation it receives. The sky is not sheltered by clouds, causing more than 70% of sunlight to penetrate into the ground. Once the Sun goes down, the heat absorbed during the day quickly escapes back into space. Temperatures in excess of 100 degrees fahrenheit during day are not uncommon. But at night, the same Desert experiences a temperatures fall into the 40s or 50s. 

Imbalance between Precipitation and Evapotranspiration - A desert is an area where more water is lost through evaporation than is gained from precipitation. Due to the high temperature, the rate of evaporation is fifteen times the amount of rain. Whatever little amount of water it does receive is quickly lost through evaporation. Average annual Precipitation in the world's deserts ranges from about 0.4 to 1 inch (10 to 25 millimetres) in the driest areas to 10 inches (250 millimetres) in Semi arid regions. The little precipitation and rain that falls in deserts is usually erratic and varies from year to year. But when it rains, it comes in high quantities that disappear as quickly as they came. This rain is called 'Intermittent' or 'Episodic Rain'. Such powerful bursts of water can erode the landscape with great force.

Location near the Tropics - Most of the World's Desert ecosystems are located in two belts near the tropics (also called the torrid zone) at 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south of the equator. These areas receive little rainfall because of the downward flow of dry air currents that originate at the equator. As this equatorial air moves north and south, it cools and loses whatever moisture it contains. Once this cool, dry air moves back toward Earth's surface, it is rewarmed, making it even drier. Over the Desert areas, the dry air currents draw moisture away from the land on their journey back toward the equator. 

Free Flowing Winds - Winds flow freely unhindered in Deserts because Deserts have few Plants, especially Trees, to stop the air flow and bind the soil to prevent it from erosion. That is why sands and soils are easily blown away in Deserts.

Erosion - In Deserts the wind erodes rocks. This process is known as 'Abrasion' in which sand is carried up and hits against the rocks having a sand-papering effect. Over a period of time, landforms like pillars, rock pedestal and natural arches are formed. 

Unique Geographical Features - Deserts have unique physical features which are not found elsewhere.

• Dunes - Prominent among the Hot Deserts is the presence of Dunes. A Dune is a hill of sand built by winds. Dunes also form under the action of water flow (alluvial processes), on sand or gravel beds of rivers, estuaries  and the sea-bed. The form of the sand is also shaped by the wind in the form of Barchans (crest shaped dune). Blown about sand usually collect in basins or piles up against fixed objects or rocks which may create different physical features. Nearly all Desert surfaces are plains where removal of fine-grained material by the wind has exposed loose gravels consisting predominantly of pebbles but with occasional cobbles.
• Mesas and Buttes - Where rock lie in horizontal layers, some harder than others, water erosion with wind and weathering over thousands of years can produce Mesas and Buttes. A Mesa is a large, flat-topped island of rock that is left standing when the surrounding areas have been eroded away. When these erode or weather further, columns of rock called 'Buttes' remain jutting out of the landscape.
• Canyons - Canyons are formed where river flows. As the water slices down into the rock, it leaves behind almost vertical sides.
• Bajadas - Bajadas are shallow slopes that lie at the base of rocky hills, where materials accumulate from the weathering of the rocks. Fast-flowing streams caused by sudden rainstorms have great power and scour out huge amounts of pebbles and rock, which they carry downhill. When they deposit their load at plains, fan-shaped deposits of stone and rocks called Alluvial Fans are formed. Bajadas are formed when several Alluvial Fans merge together.
• Hoodoo - It is a bizarre-shaped column or pillar caused by differential erosion on rocks of different hardness.

Unique Plants - Most Desert Plants are drought or salt-tolerant. Some store water in their leaves, roots, and stems. Other Desert Plants have long tap roots that penetrate the water table, anchor the soil, and control erosion. The stems and leaves of some Plants lower the surface velocity of sand-carrying winds and protect the ground from erosion. Cactus is one of the most common Desert Plant which is adapted to Desert life. Most of the Cacti store water in their leaves, stems and roots. They have very few or no leaves and in most Species, the leaves are modified to needles. Apart from Cacti, Deserts also feature Plants from the Pea Family and Sunflower Family. Cold Deserts have Grasses and Shrubs as dominant vegetation. 

Some of the Desert Plants

1. Date Palm.
2. Thyme.
3. African Peyote Cactus.
4. Olive Trees
5. Acacia.
6. Needle Grass.
7. Reeds.
8. Black Sage.
9. Buckwheat Bush.
10. Rice Grass.
11. Salt Bush.
12. Arctic Azaleas.
13. Arctic Lupine.
14. Arctic Poppies.
15. Cinquefoil.
16. Campanulas.
17. Buttercups.
18. Lichens.
19. Wild Crocus.
20. Yarrow.

Desert Adapted Animals - Animals that live in the hot Desert have many adaptations. Some animals never drink, but get their water from seeds (some can contain up to 50% water) and plants. Many Animals are nocturnal, sleeping during the hot day and only coming out at night to eat and hunt. Some animals rarely spend any time above ground. Spadefoot toads spend nine months of every year underground. Deserts are home to many Reptiles, Insects, Birds, and small Mammals. The kangaroo mice of North America and the Bilby and Red Kangaroo of Australia are Desert Specialists. The most universal behavioural adaptation used by small Mammals, Reptiles, and Insects to deal with high temperatures is staying in the shadow (shade) of plants or rocks, thus avoiding the direct rays of the Sun. These animals also seek shelter by burrowing into the ground.  a burrow, even a few feet underground, can decrease the temperature by several degrees. Another behavioural adaptation used by Desert animals is to remain inactive during the hot daylight hours. They hunt at night when temperatures are cool and when there is less risk of losing precious body water. Animals that use this adaptation are referred to as Nocturnal. Some animals get all of the water they need from the insects, bulbs, and seeds they eat. They will not drink water even when it is available. Some animals have developed salt glands, a physical adaptation that allows the secretion of salt without the loss of water. The absence of sweat glands, and the concentration of urine are other physical adaptations made by Desert animals. Because fat intensifies heat, a unique physical adaptation of some Desert animals is the storage of fat in humps or tails, rather than throughout the entire body. Camel is the best example of such a adaptation. Animals found in Cold Deserts have adopted to the cold environment by having thick fur and fatty layered bodies which protect them from cold and save them during harsh times. Some are even coloured as snow to camouflage themselves from predators and to catch prey as well. Arctic Fox and Polar Bear are examples of such colour adaptations.

Some of the Desert Animals

1. Camel.
2. Desert or Kangaroo Rat.
3. Armadillo Lizard.
4. Desert Tortoise.
5. Bilby.
6. Red Kangaroo .
7. Ground Squirrel.
8. Jack Rabbit.
9. Arctic Fox.
10. Rock Ptarmigan.
11. Arctic Wolf.
12. Polar Bear.
13. Musk Ox.

Origin of Deserts

The present day Deserts are of relatively recent origin as per geological studies. They represent the most extreme result of the progressive cooling and consequent aridification (drying up) of global climates during the Cenozoic Era (65.5 million years ago). It has been suggested that many typical modern desert plant families, particularly those with an Asian centre of diversity such as the chenopod and tamarisk families, first appeared in the Miocene (23 to 5.3 million years ago), evolving in the salty, drying environment of the disappearing Tethys Sea along what is now the Mediterranean–Central Asian axis.

Importance of Deserts

Scientific Study - Deserts are scattered with fossils, human artifacts, ancient rocks and minerals. Because Deserts are dry, they are ideal places for human artifacts and fossils to be preserved. Researchers and scientist can and do study these in understanding the ununderstood. They are open environments wherein the wind and sometimes water interact with arid surface, these phenomena are the basis of geological studies with far reaching implications. 

Solar Energy - As Sun is nearest the equator it's heat occurs as well near these. This light can and is being used to produce solar energy and meet energy requirements of a country and save the environment as well. The Negev Desert and the surrounding area, including the Arava Valley, are the sunniest parts of Israel and little of this land is arable, which is why it has become the centre of the Israeli solar industry.

Minerals - Valuable minerals located in arid lands include copper in the United States, Chile, Peru, and Iran; iron and lead-zinc ore in Australia; and gold, silver, and uranium  deposits in Australia and the United States. Non-metallic mineral resources and rocks such as beryllium, mica, lithium, clays, pumice, and scoria also occur in arid regions. Sodium carbonate, sulphate, borate, nitrate, lithium, bromine, iodine, calcium, and strontium  compounds come from sediments and near-surface brines formed by evaporation of inland bodies of water.

Indicators of Land Degradation - There are certain Deserts which have been recently formed and some have been the result of deforestation and improper land usage. Deserts are constant reminders to humanity that if proper care of environment is not taken, it can lead to Desertification. They also highlight the importance of Afforestation.

Source of Inspiration - Deserts have been sources of inspiration for various writers and artists. Deserts have been portrayed as fascinating environments of adventure and exploration in the form of Narratives like 'Lawrence of Arabia' and it's form in movie as well, along with movie like Dune.

List of Deserts

• Antarctic Desert
• Arabian Desert
• Arctic Desert
• Atacama Desert
• Chihuahuan Desert
• Colorado Plateau
• Dasht-e Kavir
• Dasht-e Lut
• Gibson Desert
• Gobi Desert
• Great Basin Desert
• Great Sandy Desert
• Great Victoria Desert
• Karakum Desert
• Kyzyl Kum
• Mojave Desert
• Namib Desert
• Patagonian Desert
• Sahara Desert
• Simpson Desert
• Sonoran Desert
• Syrian Desert
• Taklamakan Desert
• Thar Desert

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