A debate on Climate Change was conducted by The Energy Forum of IIT Madras yesterday, the 21st of October.
The topic was ‘This House believes that India must agree to binding CO2 emissions in a time-bound manner, with no pre-conditions.’ The debate was judged by Prof. Mehta and Prof. Maiyya from IIT-Madras.
The debate, unfortunately, had a small turnout. However, T5E would like to note that the people who did turn up, seemed highly enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the current state of affairs. The audience included a person from The British Council, Delhi.
4 teams participated in the debate; 3 from IIT Madras (Mika+Vaishnavi Srivathsan, Slicer + Noddy, Raghav + Ashish) and one from Great Lakes Management School, Chennai.
The debate consisted of 3 minute constructives by both members of each team, followed by a 15 minute combined rebuttal by both the judges, and the audience. The rebuttals were extremely good, with the professors showing their logic and breadth of knowledge.
Since it was not a parliamentary debate, the teams showed vastly different styles of debating. Slicer and Noddy (the only second year team), went up first. They focused more on the arguments. The team from Great Lakes, being the MBAs that they are, were highly eloquent, which in turn reduced time for their actual arguments. Murugan, from Great Lakes, showed his mettle in the rebuttal round. Mika and Vaishnavi had bits of both, and based their argument largely from a financial and economic perspective. Raghav and Ashish brought in the element of ‘Poverty v/s Environment Protection’ in their debate.
The final standings, as judged by Prof Maiyya and Mehta, had the team from Great Lakes finishing first, and Mika+Vaishnavi finishing second.
This debate was a brilliant idea by the Energy Forum of IIT-M. A special mention of Aniket Pangerkar and Prof. Ajit Kumar Kolar must be made for conceptualizing and executing this novel idea.
Climate Change is the biggest problem the planet faces…unless of course, aliens attack
– AE09B0MA
“I believe that change is possible…..I will be the Indian Barack Obama!”
– AE09B0MA
“We say we’re good at everything….but, we’re actually bad at, well…everything.”
– One of the participants.
“There is too much focus on the Energy aspects of Climate Change. We must also note the other problems, like, crop patterns and health.”
– Prof. Ajit Kumar Kolar.
