Global Warming - The Beginning of the End

Nowadays, Global Warming is a hot topic in everywhere form discussion tables in United Nations to schools and streets. It is a common truth that human driven activities are the main causes for this. What are those activates? What are the consequences of the global warming? How critical are they especially considering the future generation? What are the measures taken and can be taken today to save tomorrow?

Global warming means the rise of the temperature caused by green house effect of the atmosphere. In simple terms, a large amount or heat received from the sun get trapped inside the atmosphere because of the heat is reflected back to earth by Green House Gasses (GHG). Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide are considered as the major gases which play in part in global warming.

Nature has set clear rules to maintain the balance and harmony on earth. As an example lion or tiger would not eat anything other than fresh meat even if they die in hunger. I think this is because they have better understanding about the nature than human beings. Animals and human produce carbon dioxide in the process of metabolizing the food and trees absorb that in the process of photosynthesis. This was well balanced system until man found fossil fuel and built the engines to work for them. They started to produce carbon dioxide beyond the trees can handle and in the same time deforesting continue to increase in name of development. This is like a digging his own grave or more precisely digging the grave of the future generations.

Former US vice president, Mr. Albert Al Gore in his presentation on global warming known as “An Inconvenient Truth” discusses about the consequences such as rising of sea levels, changes in weather patterns, increasing the chances of epidemics and slowing down the processes of the nature to equalize the inequalities on the earth. Further to that he stress that even though we experience those in small scale now, if we continue our irresponsible habits the consequences will become dangerously high in near future. Even though there are criticism about this film saying that some figures are inaccurate and he has personal agenda behind, this is definitely an eye opener.

As human beings can we see the future generations suffer as a result of our faults? There has been lot of discussions are going on at international level to act up on it. In 1997 Kyoto Protocol was established to reduce GHG as first global step to fight against global warming even though it was a half success story. In 2010, discussions at Copenhagen for wider plan were ended without achieving the objectives b. Although this problem should be addressed in global level and witnessing the failure of proper actions by global leaders , we as individuals should battle against global warming by using energy efficiently, reducing waste by recycling and reusing, changing life styles with less carbon footprint and growing more trees.