"As is your desire,as will be your destiny..."

"As is your desire,as will be your destiny..."

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Environment-Then and Now...



For millions of years, the sun’s energy has nourished thena Earth,generating and sustaining all plant and animal life on the planet. A large amount of that energy bounces back into space and some of it is captured by the atmosphere, maintaining warmth and natural balance.




That harmony has been unbalanced by human beings.Our consumption of coal, petrol, diesel, etc,and other human activity such as mining, clearing forests for wood, even agriculture, generates carbon dioxide(CO2),methane, and other greenhouse gases.CO2 levels in the atmosphere have gone up from 280 parts per million at the time of Industrial Revolution to about 

382 ppm currently. 


Other gases emitted raise this figure to an equivalent of 427 ppm.These gases don’t allow the sun’s heat to escape sufficiently, hence warming the planet, the atmosphere, the land, even the deep ocean. As a consequence, on an average, the Earth is at least 0.76 degrees centigrade (1.4 degrees F) warmer than it was at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Much of this happened in the last few decades.


Already as a consequence, permafrost-ice that has remained frozen since the last Ice Age is melting. Droughts in the Horn of Africa are most frequent, affecting the poor there. More intense rainfalls(such as the one that hit Bombay a few years ago, in which a thousand people were killed) getting more common, as are intense cyclones, such as Hurricane Katrina.
Islands are drowning and people are losing their lands and livelihood, such as in the Sundarbans 
as the sea level slowly gets higher and eats away at the low lying lands;glaciers, including the source of the river Ganga, are receding. The crazy weather is there for all to see - floods in Rajastan, drought in Cherrapunji, snow in Dubai…it’s strange and its all related to global warming. Its been estimated by the WHO that 1,50,000 additional people are dying each year from diseases, which spread more widely due to warming. And 0.76 degrees is only an average. Some areas are warming more. In India for instance it is expected that North India will warm more than other regions.Also,further warming is unavoidable because the gases mentioned above stay in the atmosphere long after they are emitted. Hence the gases we emit now will continue to warm the Earth for generations in the future.
Nature as we have known it and the planet itself is at stake .As someone said,it’s the only one we’ve got..
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