When you cross the Yamuna, at least as far as Delhi is concerned, you can see that it is already dead. From a magnificent, historical water body it has been reduced to a decaying corpse of an entire ecology, mauled by the automobile of progress (if that’s how you view progress).
They say Ganga will be gone in 50 years and the polar bears will cease to exist in the next 15 years. Thousands of species will go extinct within a few years and major costal cities will be under water soon due to the rapidly melting ice caps. There will be flash floods, inexplicable droughts, locust attacks, new global epidemics will appear and the old ones will re-appear. Many US areas are already facing regular cyclones and twisters. The point is, global warming is no longer a fictionalized doomsday scenario; it’s knocking at our doors.
Leading climate-change experts gathered in Bangkok to attend the third session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s leading authority on global warming, in a 1000-page report the global warming can be contained but we have only got 8 years to set things right. The UN panel says that, contrary what many claim, the technology to control global warming is easily available, and it shouldn’t cost the earth. The most heartening aspect is, the earth can still be saved.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said temperature increases that began more than a century ago could be capped at 3.6 degrees if nations level greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade and then reduce them between 50 percent and 85 percent by 2050. Source.
Of course, as expected, the US reaction is more about the GDP. The Bush administration has repeatedly said that a full-scale attack on climate change could cripple the economy. Someone needs to tell these clueless souls that if we don’t have a planet we don’t have a GDP to talk about. No matter how much money you have, when the earth goes warm, when the tsunamis come rushing in, when the twisters kick your butt, your money is not going to save you.
So what can we do, as citizens? I think we can make the greatest impact by choosing leaders and administrators who recognize the gravity of global warming. Global warming is the biggest threat the inhabitants of earth have ever faced. This should be the most important election issue at least for the coming years. Forget caste, forget religion. We’ll have centuries to rue over them if we remain alive.
[tags]global warming, un report[/tags]
