The words coined or put together in an age indicate the major concerns of the times. We live in an age when environmental concerns override all others and the neologisms are a true reflection of this.

"Alternative fuel" is fuel other than petrol for powering motor vehicles. The quest for alternative fuel points towards a context of increasing anxiety about air quality. The big hope of the times is that alternative fuels such as bio-diesel, ethanol and methanol will pave the way towards a healthier environment and research into AFV’s or alternative fuel vehicles continues as the age advances.

The search is on for the ideal bio fuel that can be derived from organic material alone, without the use of any kind of mineral oil. A more strict approach proposes to implement the ZEV or zero emission vehicle, run on electricity. The goal behind this kind of vehicle is the complete eradication of exhaust emissions.

To discourage the burning of fossil fuels, the concept of ‘carbon tax’ was first proposed in America in 1986 when worry about the greenhouse effect and global warming was at its peak. The tax is levied on fossil fuels to reduce the production of carbon dioxide that is given out when these are burnt.

Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes would have loved this coinage: ‘ecological footprint’. This is a permanent mark made on the ecology of a region by any harmful feature. The ecological footprint is a term typical of the 1990s, a term that reflects the growing awareness that any environment is likely to be adversely affected by those who live in it.

The population going overboard has given birth to ‘cardboard cities’. The cardboard city is any area of a town where homeless people collect at night to take shelter under makeshift roofs made from discarded cardboard boxes and other packing materials. In the UK and US, it is sometimes used as a place name, so permanent has the phenomenon become. It is quite common in India where migrant labour huddles under tents made of gunny bags or polythene sheets.