Tuesday, June 24, 2008

How to Stop Global Warming

Garis Hijau

How To Stop Global Warming

Global Warming is happening and there’s no more refuting it (no matter how hard people try). It’s as real as the hand attached to your wrist. Ice caps are melting, polar wildlife is dying, people are doing nothing, ocean levels are rising, tides are shifting, people are doing nothing, temperatures are changing, seasons are adjusting, people are doing nothing. Oh and did I mention that people are doing nothing? Oh sure, some people are doing something, but there aren’t enough of them. They need you to join in and help out. Politicians are in denial, citizens feel like their Governments are taking care of it, and business are too busy worrying about profit margins to see the future impact that this will have on them. If you’re one of those people that are doing something then I commend you. However, if you’re one of those people doing nothing then stick around and I’ll show you some things that you actually can do … right now. And no, I’m not going to ask you to start a coalition and protest in front of public buildings. I’m talking about real, serious, simple things that you can do right now.

What is Global Warming?

Before you can understand what you’re acting for you need to understand what you’re acting on. Global warming is a steady increase in surface air and ocean temperatures. This has been going on for the last century and is not slowing down, in fact it’s speeding up. Within the last two centuries the average surface temperature has risen 0.74° Celsius (1.3° Fahrenheit). Things were going fairly steady until around the 1920’s and that’s when we started producing massive amounts of greenhouse gases brought on mostly as a result of burning fossil fuels, clearing land and commercializing agriculture to the extent that we have.

What’s the big deal?

Well, let’s see.. there’s..

  • increased evaporation in the atmosphere
  • destabilization of local climates
  • rising sea levels
  • acidification
  • impact to ecological productivity
  • melting of glaciers
  • release of methane deposits into the atmosphere
  • increased number of forest fires
  • retreating sea ice

Then there’s also the effect that these changes will have on our civilization like..

  • a decline of agriculture due to rising atmospheric temperatures and longer droughts
  • increased insurance costs due to an increase in natural disasters
  • increaed transportation costs due to additional maintenance needed to adapt to extreme temperature changes
  • an increase in building costs in flood zones due to the rising sea levels and increased instances of extreme weather
  • mainland over-population troubles due to evacuation of low altitude islands and coastal regions
  • destruction of the arctic eco system (particularly to Polar Bears) as ice floes melt and disappear
  • increased hunger in poverish countries due to decreased rainfall and extreme weather events that those countries are not equipped to handle
  • extinction of species due to weather pattern changes, contaminated groundwater supplies due to rising sea levels, reduced reservoirs due to increased evaporation
  • an increase in flash floods due to hardened ground cover
  • less water in areas that depend on gradual glacier melt
  • increased deaths from heart failure due to the human body attempting to over-compensate with internal cooling during hot spells
  • increased asthma and lung diseases due to the increase in ozone at low atmospheric levels
  • increase in diseases such as West Nile Virus and Malaria due to the tropical-like weather, and so on.

This could go on and on, but I think you got the idea.

What can I do?

There are lots of ways that you can act against global warming. The basic idea is to quite simply “Reduce your Carbon Offset”. You can do this by engaging in activities that either reduce the amount of emissions that are created or increase the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed. Here are some examples:

PLANT TREES - they reduce carbon dioxide levels and increase oxygen levels. It doesn’t matter what kind of tree, where you plant it, how big it is, just plant a tree or two or three.

AVOID DEFORESTATION - limit paper waste, live in a smaller house, use a non-wood building material, support recycling, replace a fireplace with a fuel-efficient wood stove. Do whatever you can to keep a tree from being cut down.

USE RENEWABLE ENERGY - wind power, solar power and biofuels are regenerative, essentially cannot be depleted and have no harmful emissions. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to go off-grid or if you’re just going to use a solar powered battery charger instead of plugging one into the wall just use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.

GO WITHOUT POWER - walk or ride a bicycle instead of driving, take the stairs instead of the elevator, use a knife instead of a food processor, grow your own food instead of buying it, read a book and turn off the TV, trade in your speed boat for a row boat, and so on. Just think about all of the things that you do that you could do without power and you’ll not only start staving off global warming but, in some cases, you might even begin to increase your level of health as a by-product of manual activity.

Can I really make a difference?

The short answer is yes, the long answer is yyyyeeeeeeesssssss. Just get up and do something because anything is going to have a bigger effect than nothing no matter how you slice it. You don’t have to invent free power or cure world hunger to make a difference, you just have to do “something” instead of “nothing”. And for the sake of sounding cheesy I’ll go ahead and throw it in there, since you were probably expecting it anyhow, and say “Do it for the children”. But seriously, good luck to all of us.

No comments: