by Ricky Jimenez
Everyone is talking about global warming, but hardly anyone is doing anything about it.
For consumers, it is important that we have a basic understanding of what global warming is all about so we’ll know what course of action to take. Let’s understand its science. The facts are: planet Earth has life all because we have an atmosphere. Other planets in the solar system are not as lucky. With an atmosphere over our head like a protective umbrella, we are not bothered much by cosmic ray particles and solar radiation which would have burned us into crispy un-eatables (yuck!). In short, no atmosphere, no life.
Look at it this way: the Earth (with no atmosphere) would be like the moon. Bitterly cold at night -270 degrees Fahrenheit (the freezing temperature of water is 32 degrees F), and unbearably hot during daytime at +212 degrees F (the boiling temperature of water is exactly that).
The atmosphere works like a filter as well. Of the solar radiation bombarding the planet, 20% is absorbed in the atmosphere, about 50% reaches and warms the earth’s surface, and the rest is bounced back into outer space like excess baggage. The right amount of heat is retained on earth making life sustainable. This phenomenon is called “global warming”.Up there is a combination of “greenhouse gases” like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, including water vapor and floating particles, in just the right amount to keep the warmth constant and pleasant for creature comfort on earth.
These greenhouse gases come from two sources: Mother Nature itself and human activities. Natural sources would be respiration of all living organisms (yours and mine, your pet dog’s, etc), decaying vegetation, volcanic gases, forest and grass fires. Man-made sources are emissions from transportation and industries using fossil fuel. According to the book Trashing the Earth (1992), nature and mankind produce almost the same volume of greenhouse gases.
But in time, with the dawning of the industrial revolution in the 1880s, when the wheels of industry began churning out consumer goods and machinery, the amount of greenhouse gases dramatically rose onwards to the present. Estimates say every year, over five billion tons of carbon dioxide is discharged into the air from burned fossil fuels (gasoline, diesel, bunker fuel, coal, etc) and forest destruction (bulldozing forest cover to give way to farm lands, settlements, mining sites released carbons captured in the soil and plants throughout the ages), As a result, more solar radiation is trapped by the thickening greenhouses gases in the atmosphere, instead of ejecting the excess heat out to space. The result is what you now call “global warming” in the present context.
In 1997, developed nations agreed to reduce their collective emission of greenhouses gases by 5%, pursuant to the agreement called Kyoto Protocol approved in 1992. Unfortunately, some countries haven’t signed up yet, among them, the biggest polluter nation in the world, the United States (China and India, too—editors).
Reader’s Digest (August 2005) posed this hypothetical question: What would happen if temperatures rose by five degrees Celsius by 2100 (90 years from now)? But, of course, most of us reading this article would have gone to our resting place by then, unless the Fountain of Youth was discovered sooner). The Philippines, like the rest of the countries in tropical Asia, would be experiencing a one meter seawater level rise, and other attendant problems such as rise of deadly diseases spawned by the climate change.
Given this grim scenario, what would consumers like us do to avoid disastrous natural calamities from happening? The Consumer Action for Sustainable and Healthy Lifestyle (CASH-L) is proposing for urban planners to look into four vital areas on which our life would depend on: safe and healthy food, energy from renewable sources, water supply and waste management (FEWW). This early, these areas are best considered for discussion, planning and development by governments and the business sector. Not tomorrow, for tomorrow may be too late. (email me at rjrjrajimenez@gmail.com)
