“Science has failed our mother Earth.”
- SOAD
Green is in again. Perhaps we have noticed just how much damage we have done to nature so far. Think about it, just a couple of years ago, Bush’s scientists actually implied that Global Warming is a myth. Now, the United States is last-minute-cramming to salvage what’s left of our resources with as little harm to nature as possible. Governments around the world have convened, a lot of times actually, to at least agree on something – WE BARELY HAVE TIME!
Time’s up
What exactly do they mean by “barely having time to save nature? Well, they pinned a timeline on it. Fifty years. That prediction was actually made four years ago. I guess that leaves us 46 years. Ecologists said, “After that is a point of no return.”
No. The world won’t end yet. They mean, after those 50 years and we continue hurting the Earth, we will be on a steadily steep decline – there will be no ‘bringing back species to their old glory,' no ‘reforesting denuded tropical forests,’ not even ‘cooling back the atmosphere.’ Now how could that happen? Easy. We get to warm up the atmosphere enough to kill some plants and to prevent them from growing back. Contrary to public belief, you can’t easily grow plants at any temperature; and plants are sensitive! If we want their help, we wouldn’t want to be on their bad side.
Forests act like giant sinks that suck up carbon dioxide – that colorless air that retains much of the atmosphere’s temperature. I don’t know if you’ve heard this before but each of us need about ten trees to survive naturally… without a car… without the fancy gadgets and appliances. When Kimora Lee-Simmons was told she had a carbon footprint equivalent to 1,000 people, that meant she needs a forest of 10,000 fully grown trees to survive. How many trees have you planted so far?
The good news
Global Warming doesn’t spell instant doom, though. If the global temperature rises up another couple of degrees Canada and a lot of other countries close to that latitude are going to have lush tropical trees. Their temperature would be just about right to grow forests and, maybe, support the animals that live on it. Whoopee!
The really bad news
Everybody gets a new spot in the ecosystem. Everything close to the equator will have to settle with deserts. The poles will melt at least halfway through. Now, you might say, “Great, we get summer weather all year-round!” Wrong. If the poles melt, where will the ice go? Back to the sea. What our great minds have noticed is that fresh water from the ice doesn't easily get carried away by ocean currents. It just refuses to go under salty water. The pride! It even blocks those gigantic streams nearly to a halt!
Now, the ocean currents aren’t just a free ride for fishes. It stabilizes the temperature in high seas. Stopping them would mean unpredictably powerful typhoons. Katrina is just a little pup it bred. That means, when we say global warming, don’t assume hot beach days. Think big – really big. Oceans would be spawning gigantic typhoons that could each raze half the planet, soaking your favorite rug and killing a lot of trees too, worsening our already discouraging state. Staple crops will be destroyed or will be desperately hard to grow since they are prone to strong winds and sheets of rain. After the Big Thaw might come the Big Freeze all over again pretty much like a nuke could cause a nuclear winter.
What to do, what to do
Ok, enough of the grim prophecies. If we have learned something in the past millennia of our existence – it should be that we hold the reins of our fate. We can’t just hope for change. We SHOULD change and now is the best time. A minute later might be a minute too late.
In the first lap, we should minimize our power consumption. Electricity, gas, heat, refrigeration, you name it, you cut it. We might think turning off the TV an hour early is an almost insignificant achievement but how many people watch TV? Imagine billions of people turning off their TVs for an hour. Now that’s an incredible amount of surplus electricity.
On the hindsight, the electricity produced by generating companies don’t get saved if they’re not used but they might think of reducing production at a regular basis if there’s a regular drop in consumption, like the Earth Hour.
Try setting your computer to power saving and set it to hibernate after 5 minutes. Trust me, if you’re not managing a server, you don’t need your computer on 24/7, not even 12/7. Turn off the lights in a room after you leave it. It’s painful to get into every detail like that but it pays. Besides, it’s going to turn into a habit quite sooner than you think.
Saving power is the surefire way to cut the growth of global warming but it should be short-term. What we need is a clean source of power. In any case, we can’t go back to the hermetic ways of our ancestors. I don’t think that will work well with us, do you? Point blank, I want to save the environment but I really want to use my cellphone.
The next step? We should look for ways to lessen the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Reduce CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gas production. NO, it does not mean we should launch a no fart campaign (your fart is a greenhouse gas, so is mine). Don’t save your breath either! Trust me. It could be messy.
Avoid using your car. A lot of people actually believe that they are cutting CO2 emissions as long as they keep their cars from belching brown smoke! Newsflash, CO2 is colorless and odorless. The brown/gray smoke you’re seeing is carbon monoxide (CO). It’s not a greenhouse gas as much as it is toxic but belching CO means your car is not maximizing your fuel. Smoke-belching or not, your car emits CO2 a lot of times more than you. But we don’t need to be told that, do we?
Ready, set, plant! Yes! It’s the new rave. ‘Go green’ is almost synonymous to living in the forests. Sadly, the tree-hugging nature-lovers are right. We should plant trees; maybe not for the forests, not for the animals in it, but at least for our own sake. Did I mention we need at least 10 trees for each of us to survive? Forests have been more than generous to have provided us more than half of our needs. Hell, birds even plant seeds for us. To think we have more nimble hands and a much more capable brain! (Wait, that might be a fallacy.)
Science
I started this article with lyrics from System of a Down. I would like to correct that line. Science has never failed us. Technology did. As a matter of fact, a lot of technologies have been developed with half the science necessary. Science is a way of thinking. Maybe it should even be a way of life. Holistic Science means covering all bases. When you make a car, you shouldn’t just think of how fast you can go. Anyway, most of the time, you won’t go more than 40 mph because of the traffic. When you sit on your car and twist that key on, tell your car, “You have a good purr and an awesome lot of power. Sorry, but you’re killing me and my children.”
If the car manufacturers have been more scientific, they would have considered where they are putting the cars! Not all cars should be made for race tracks. What does it matter if you can go from zero to 60 in 3 seconds flat? With that acceleration, chances are, you will get from 60 to zero in no seconds flat in the middle of the traffic.
Science should serve the people not their pockets. A lot of money has been spent on research to make powerful gadgets and appliances so we would want to buy them. Only a measly amount has been allocated to make ways to improve energy production without harming the environment. The cry for cleaner energy has been echoing for decades. It’s not that they cannot be heard. But if the ones making the laws are, or friends of, oil tycoons (I will defer naming), should we expect them to give in just like that? You betcha!
The sad thing is, it is pointless to save energy, especially electricity if the power plant supporting you produces the same amount of energy. You’ll have to pay for that unused electricity anyway.
There are a lot of energy sources all around us. Why is it that we don’t have much green power plants? Because they are not yet that profitable. I think it’s time to think outside the box. What are you amassing money for if the world will start to crumble in 50 years’ time?
I have heard of developments – a lot actually. Electricity producing bacteria, wind power, geothermal, nuclear, cold-fusion generators, lunar tide power, sea current tapping, a lot! There’s the science. Now, we want the technology!
AOM
Someone once told me, if you want something done en masse, you have to arouse, organize and mobilize.
Arouse. Tell everyone you know to support and know things they should about the environment.
Organize. It’s always more efficient to work as a group. Everybody is watching everybody, putting in check errors and encouraging achievements.
Mobilize. Now that we know what to do, let’s do it!
Always remember, the littlest thing you do to save the environment is a big achievement for all of us. You are not alone.
