GLOBAL MELTDOWN
The catalogue of disasters that are happening right now
Across the planet, rising temperatures are taking their toll
CARBON DIOXIDE
New research has found that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main cause of global warming - are higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years. HOTTEST EVER
This year is expected to be the warmest ever recorded; 1998 was the hottest so far, but the past three years currently occupy the next three places.
DESERTIFICATION
The giant Kalahari desert, already four times the size of Britain, threatens to become larger still, covering farmland in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.
EXPANDING OCEANS
The level of the world's seas and oceans is rising twice as fast as in the past, as their waters expand in rising temperatures and glaciers melt.
OCEAN EXILES
The people of the Carteret Islands, a scattering of atolls off Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific, have started to leave as their homes succumb to rising seas.
HURRICANES
Hurricane Epsilon - the 14th of the year - is forming in the Atlantic, even though the worst recorded hurricane season by far formally ended on Wednesday.
GLACIER MELT
Greenland glaciers have suddenly started racing towards the sea and melting. Much the same is beginning to happen to glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
WATER SHORTAGE
Areas such as the western USA, which depend on mountain snows for their water supplies, are running short as less snow falls - and what does fall melts earlier.
DISAPPEARING SPECIES
Sealife and birdlife have declined catastrophically this year along America's north-west Pacific coast, after a similar meltdown in the North Sea.
CORAL REEFS
Corals on the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching out and dying as sea temperatures rise and scientists fear that the whole reef may perish by 2050.
Also in this section
A cynical look at trade
Where do we go when world trade breaks down? What do we do when we have become dependant on nations with no sympathy for starvation if there is no compensation for them? Will good will triumph over their own needs?
Trade is known to work as a double bladed sword. You give me something and I will give you something. Most people in the modern world look upon money as the international method of trade, but global trade has been known to favour other commodities such as food for oil and wood for debt, in countries of central Africa.
What I find disturbing is that nations that consider themselves developed have infected the rest of the world with an insatiable greed. This has been fueled by the exploitation of natural resources where they are still found within developing countries. Because these third world countries lived a basic self sustained lifestyle, their need for the overexploitation of oil, gold, precious metals and natural forest resources have never been high on their priority because of the low value of financial understanding. When the west infected the world with its dependence upon money for day to day survival, the world became mad. And in this madness we are forced to live. Because there is no longer any escape.
What we have today is a world where the rich become richer and the poor are enslaved for that very purpose. Morales’ individuals are consumed by their greed and the way the world is spinning out of control with its own man made inventiveness, totally dependant upon trade and good will. What will happen when the forests of the world have been exploited through the carelessness of the locals in delivering thus to these greedy warmongers. Those who choose to take and take until there is nothing left. And through their experience they have learned nothing, they have learned that when it runs out on their own soil, they can go and fetch it somewhere else. And when the children grow up in these changed landscapes, we will educate them into believing that what we need we can get somewhere else. Other countries are very willing to sell us their resources. We are not alone in this greedy world. There are others as easily influenced as us, with less experience in losing their natural heritage, and if we are quick about it, by the time they wake up, it will be gone and they will have gained nothing.
We should consider the fields of the developing countries as our future. Protect and nurture its potential instead of taking as much as we can as quickly as we can. They will feed the masses sooner than we think.
by Harry
Threads: Sustainability