The many interviews conducted by Silver Donald deal with different aspects of the climate change problem, but all have a single, underlying theme -- the mess our species has made of the planet and how we can fix it. Most people don't realize the magnitude of the climate change problem or its many implications. And it is not going away. Whether one believes in it or not, whether one is concerned about it or not, we are all affected by it, and we all have to work toward solving the problem. There is no single solution, and the implications of every aspect of it have a multitude of other effects, which have to be addressed if the problem is ever to be solved.
At times, the problem seems insurmountable. Consider, for example, the continuing destruction of the Amazon rain forest. It is the most important boreal forest on the planet, but it is being cut down and burned at an alarming rate. Not only is it the habitat of many species of plants and animals, including many as yet undiscovered ones, but it also produces a good portion of the oxygen in the air we breathe.
Another major source of oxygen is the plankton in the ocean. Most oxygen-producing plankton are found in the upper 100m of ocean. Increasing pollution of the ocean is destroying much of the plankton. These two sources -- the Amazon rain forest and ocean plankton -- produce most of the oxygen that we and most animals need to survive. Yet both are being destroyed by human activity. In fact, the oxygen content of the air has measurably decreased over the last couple of decades.
Human activity, including overfishing and pollution, is destroying life in the ocean. The ocean depths have been estimated to contain 80% of all animal life on earth, including many undiscovered species. No matter how deep the ocean is explored, living organisms are found and new species are discovered.
Humans are putting massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and we do very little about it. Even more is released as icecaps and glaciers in the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic melt. Not only are great quantities of of underlying carbon dioxide released, but melting ice is also raising water levels in the ocean much faster than previously thought. And these are not the only effects. As the great weight of ice is released, the underlying land "rebounds" with movement and readjustments. More earthquakes and tsunamis will occur, perhaps even in places that have never experienced them before,
Other weather changes are occurring. The air above us and the ocean around us can be considered as one dynamic system. Not only are ocean currents changing, but currents in the ocean of air above us are changing as well. These changing currents are contributing to new weather anomalies. For example, 169 tornadoes were reported in the U.S. in just one day in April 2011, accompanied by widespread destruction and the loss of 280 lives. Widespread, uncontrollable flooding is occurring everywhere. Record snowfalls at unusual times of the year or in uncommon places, as well as extreme temperature fluctuations, are observed more often.
There is no doubt that climate change is happening. Drastic climate changes have occurred in the past. They are part of the normal cycle of changes that occur over millennia on the earth. What is different right now is the fact that human activity is accelerating climate change and adding new complications in the process. Increasing the carbon dioxide load carried by the atmosphere is one of the most serious. The greenhouse gases we have added, and are still adding, to the atmosphere are having disastrous consequences, and not just on the environment. For example, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released findings on May 3, 2011 that asthma prevalence was up by 12% in the last decade, and asthma is currently more common in children than adults. This rate will no doubt continue to increase if we cannot stop polluting the air we breathe.
The problem is widespread, and I have barely scratched the surface of all the implications of climate change as a direct result of human activity. So what can we do? There is no simple solution. Every single person can do something. We all as individuals contributed to the problem, and we all must contribute to the solution -- whether it is by adopting clean energy produced by sunlight or wind-powered generators, or by recycling and reusing more of the items we usually discard, or by using public transportation, or by convincing our politicians to act now to reverse the damage we have done, or a myriad of other things to improve the environment. And no matter how much we now do, we can do more. We must; our survival depends on it. As Walt Kelly's comic strip character Pogo said, "I have seen the enemy and he is us."
Sun, 05/15/2011 - 20:21
