Global Warming : The Debate is Done

Can you imagine a world with a blue arctic? I can, in fact, we’re already half way there! And we might be only ten years away. Why? Because we’re altering the climate forever as we know it. Carbon has formed from organic matter over the past 300 million years. Then we dig it up and put it in our cars. Our cars mix this carbon with oxygen, as we burn it, and it becomes CO2. CO2 is fine for the environment, without it, there would be no life! The issue is that we’re adding too much CO2 to the atmosphere and it’s starting to back fire on us. In fact we’ve added so much CO2 through cars, trucks, planes and electrical power plants that the global temperature has gone up by 1 degree. That may seem like nothing in day-to-day life but it only took a change of 4 degrees to start the last ice age.

All this CO2 in the environment, which makes our lives so comfortable, is building up in the atmosphere. When the sun’s rays hit the earth, some of them stay, and some of them leave through the atmosphere. As the CO2 builds up, less and less heat can leave the atmosphere. This is called the green house affect. Therefore, the more CO2, the more heat. Well that’s great, right? Being able to suntan in our back yards and grow mangos in northern Ontario sounds appealing? But with all this heat, the arctic is starting to melt and as the arctic melts, hundreds of thousand of liters of water will go gushing into the ocean. All this water would put coastal areas undersea level. When this happens, fresh water will be scarce. The world will turn to countries like Canada with abundance of fresh water for their supply. Possible food shortages may occur. This will lead to disputes and depravation and when people are deprived, they turn to violence. Not so pretty anymore is it? The good news is that we can stop this process. There are three branches of solutions. There is the technical solution, which addresses what we can do to halt global warming. Secondly, there is a Policy solution. Which looks at how we can implement the technical solutions? Finally, there are Personal solutions, which you guys have heard of so many times. What are you doing to combat global climate change?

For global warming, the technical solution is insanely simple. Stop the CO2. If your cheek hurts because you have been slapping yourself in the face, the solution is to stop slapping you self in the face! But how much do we need to change? What if we over shoot and hit a ice age? Well the climate is fine on it’s on. We’re the ones changing it, so we’re not trying to fix the climate, we just need to stop messing around with it.

So, if we stop using fossil fuels which provide up with energy but release harmful CO2, how will we get our power? How will I power my P.C or PS3? Well there’s lots of alternatives, such as nuclear power, wind, solar and hydrogen. We can increase energy efficiency so that we use less energy, simple changes to our lifestyle such as florescent lights or decreasing your thermostat in winter and raising in the summer, using energy efficient appliances, weather proofing your homes, driving less, taking public transit, will all help slow down global warming. We go and dig up carbon for energy when all these alternatives are right there! And these alternatives are not going to harm the environment.

People don’t like to change until they need to. As humans, we only heed danger when its right before us. If Mr. Melo gives an assignment due 2 weeks from now, then we won’t worry about it until the last day. It’s when we see the danger that we decide to change. But, when it comes to global warming, if we wait till the last moment to change, it may be too late. There are many problems with each of these alternatives, that’s why there called alternatives instead of perfects. But if we continue to use carbon based sources, the problems with these alternatives will pale in comparison with those of fossil fuels.

Of course, we can’t solve the problems entirely on our own. There is also technology to take carbon out of the air and put it back in the ground called “Carbon Sequestration”. (Sea-quest-stration) Hal Harvey once said; “More than a decade ago, Amory Lovins and John Holdren and a few others asked this question in the energy field: what do people want? [Their] response was that people do not want barrels of oil or kilowatt hours of electricity or cubic meters of gas; instead they want heat, light, drive power, mobility”

As Indian citizens, we are expected to exercise our right to vote so the government doesn’t get too much power. Well, we need to demand national policies to combat global warming and I hate to break it to you, but that’s what the governments for!

So why is there still debate? The science is there and its very clear! Even the penatagon agrees, stating “because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change …should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.” Now it’s your turn to change, because if you change, the government will see demand for cleaner energy. I’m sure you’ve heard a million speeches on global warming, so why isn’t there action? Global warming is the most threatening issue the human race faces! How important is animal cruelty if hurricane force winds are blowing down homes? Who cares if someone’s burning a flag on parliament hill if the city is flooded. The conclusion is simple. We need to change, or we’ll all face the consequences.