THINK AGAIN

At the moment this post is being written I am actually in a work group producing a book about climate change within my organization. Enough about that, I want to talk about how I feel about climate change.

As we know, the natural greenhouse gasses that support our Earth as a thermostat enables the existence of life. Plants, animals and natural processes rely on the temperature to be in a suitable range for activities like photosynthesis, enzyme activity, climatic events and others to operate to support the web of life on Earth. These events also faces extremes in some instances during the history of the planet. Extreme weather conditions let out by many uncontrollable factors explained by scientists have led to the world as we know it today. During the prehistoric days, we were told that our planet was covered with ice, then when the ice melts it fills all the puddles and gaps turning into oceans, rivers, lakes and surrounding the elevated land areas forming continents and islands. These changes are due to the rising of global temperature. The event eventually changes the face of the earth and the livelihood on it as well being transitioned from the reptilians in the form or gigantic dinosaurs to present day where only fossils remains and the world are left with what it has today.

The cause of such change on earth may not only was caused by the elevation of global temperature. It came to my mind that Earth is just a small dot within the universe and like the tide being affected by the gravitational pull with the moon, galactic events also may have contributed to what have happened on earth before. Recently I read that the solar eclipse can caused the tectonic plates on Earth to move more actively resulting to tremors and Earth quakes. All this are due to the gravitational pull from these entities. It struck my mind that probably during those millions of years there are such events when all the other planets was also contributing to the makeover of the earth. During this life time we had seen a few astronomical events involving planets and stars within the orbit of Earth. With active seismic activities and temperature rise, the Earth we know it might have started from the gasses just like the giant planets of the solar systems. This is only my opinion and maybe not valid.

Back to the original topic of climate change. Now, human knowledge have come to the point that what may have caused the prehistoric days to been wipe out from the face of the planet being revealed today. Scientific studies have shown that the events are beginning to rise again and the concern today is can we as humans survive. Like a spin of the wheel, these events are actually coming back again but now humans are actually stepping on the accelerator for such events to happen. In truth we never had the mechanism to stop this uncontrollable event but we can only make preparations and slow down the activities that is contributing this accelerated speed.

What did humans do in accelerating climate change? What comes in mind will always be the burning of fossil fuels. We burn our gasoline for transport, electricity and other purposes. From such burning we emit the residuals from burning mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), a natural greenhouse gas. But by human activity we add up more to the planet thus elevate the temperature on Earth. The sinks for CO2 are water bodies where it dissolves into the ocean and the other natural mechanism is the plant photosynthesis where it produces the life sustaining oxygen (O2). But now, these 2 ways of sinks are being exhausted. Oceans may have reach the saturation point while trees are either being logged or forests being cleared for other human purposes. Scientists even predicted that human have pass the breaking point to stop climate change from happening. We are now in a race to slow down our activities and prepare for the scenarios to come from this event. Actions currently being done right now are finding substitutes for fossil fuels, negotiating new commitments to global commitments to reduce GHG emissions, awareness to lessen our impact by changing simple old practices to be more sustainable and also more R&D for reduction and adaptation measures in this issue.

The issue of climate change have been foreseen late in the in the 20th century. The Kyoto Protocol have been rectified by parties concerned with how much damage the world would be if uncontrollable anthropogenic emissions may cause the alteration of climatic events. Thus this protocol is to bide parties with commitments to ensure that we may avoid or reduce the impact from climate change. The group rectifying the agreements are countries mainly of 2 groups, the developed nations (Annex 1 Countries) and the developing nations (Non-annex countries). The Annex 1 group are bound to strict commitments due to the historical footprint of carbon done by them especially during the Industrial Age. The commitments are not only in just reducing how much they emit but also providing support for the Non-annex 1 countries in reducing their emission.These Non-annex 1 group are not bound to commitments but are encouraged to reduce their own emission. There are lots of things in the Kyoto Protocol but what I mentioned are the main idea in having the agreement and what they want to achieve.

As climate change is being negotiated again after the commitment period ends, there are a lot of things being tabled so that the world can progress for the better in the future. The developed and the developing world are fighting their necks so that their views are heard in the negotiations. As our country is in the developing group, what we can hope is that the negotiations will not cause our ambitions to halt. The developed will surely would want to impose countries like us to small commitments even if it is small. I hope what ever happens it won't cause more suffering for us in the developing world while the developed still live as they are. It won't be fair but all we can do now is voice our concerns accordingly and hope for the best.