COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE
INTRODUCTION:
‘Climate change is a combination of just two words but, has a great impact on this entire earth. The discussions and debates on climate change have been started since 1992 and have gained wide popularity in the 21st century. Recently a teenager ‘Greta Thunberg’ has criticized the world leaders regarding the climate change steps to gain control over it. The term “Global warming” and “Climate change” are somewhat co-related.
HISTORY:
In 1992, the UNs “EARTH SUMMIT’ produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] as a first step in addressing this problem.
In 1995, the “KYOTO PROTOCOL”, which legally binds the developed country to emission reduction targets.
At the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris concluded the “PARIS AGREEMENT”.
In the 2019 “CLIMATE ACTION SUMMIT” world leaders of governments, the private sector, and civil society all came together to support the multilateral process and to increase and accelerate climate action and ambition.
ROLE OF PLASTIC IN CLIMATE CHANGE:
All the countries use plastic for various purposes and are discarded after the use, in developed countries, they have adopted various ways of discarding it while in developing countries they still lack measures of discarding it properly and this scenario even worsens in underdeveloped countries. And when sunlight and heat act on it, it causes the plastic to release powerful ‘greenhouse gases’ which leads to global warming.
As our climate changes, the planet gets hotter and hotter and the plastics break down into more methane and ethylene which as a result increases the rate of climate change.
SOLUTION- 1. By reducing the production of plastic and adapting to its alternative.
A committee should be made by the government to check the usage of plastic and penalizing people and institutions who circulate it [in case if it is totally banned] and discards it openly.
At the individual level, we have to stop its circulation and we should carry paper bags, jute bags, and cloth bags. We also should reuse the plastic bags which are already in circulation.
Many times the plastic has been banned in Uttar Pradesh but is still very popularly used at every place so the government needs to take strict actions regarding this.
To eradicate the plastic waste its other alternative like the plastic waste road which has been constructed in Lucknow should be promoted to other regions also. The Mathura’s plastic to diesel conversion plant should be installed at other places and this plant is capable of eliminating 5 metric tonnes of plastic every day and each tonne of plastic is capable of producing 150-200 liters of diesel.
At places like Restaurants and Marriage lawns, food wastage is a very obvious thing and it could be solved by circulating a law that each restaurant and marriage lawn should install a sludge of their own and making compost out of wasted food and they can sell it or donate it to farmers. Also, the government issue letter to restaurants to start buying their essentials from nearby market vendors which also helps farmers financially and there will be a reduction of transportation which ultimately will reduce the carbon production thus, lowering the climate change rate.
PRESENT SCENARIO AND CASES RELATED TO CLIMATE CHANGE:
The polar region of the arctic which is also known as the ‘Last Ice Area’ is melting at a very fast rate and it will also lead to the extinction of polar bears and seals. Due to the melting of ice, the ‘Phosine Distemper Virus’ [PDV] is spreading even to the pacific oceans and it is killing the ocean creature within 10 days and can affect other animals when comes in contact. In 1988, when this virus was found about 23,000 seals were dead, and in 2002, about 30,000 seals were found dead.
It has been researched and studied very well and was found that various cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Dhaka, Vietnam, Thailand, and other cities which are not much elevated from mean sea level will be submerged into the water by 2050.
It has been found in a study that, due to the worsening effect of climate change the economy of 82 countries will go down and the worst affected country will be Africa where the economy will go down by 4.7 percent and it is not hidden from us that Africa already is underdeveloped and struggles infrastructurally.
Due to climate change, an airport in Greenland has to shut down its operation within 5 years because of melting ice and the development of cracks on its runway.
At home, even the wooden furniture releases an organic compound ‘Formaldehyde’ which is a greenhouse gas that affects human health and in the atmosphere, they break down into formic acid and carbon monoxide and are highly toxic to aquatic creatures. To curb these we can plant rubber trees in our locality and at home in our pots and gardens, we can plant Peace lily, Tulsi, Erica Palm, and Money Plant are some of the suggested plants by the researchers to avoid the bad effects of formaldehyde.
POINTS SUGGESTED IN PARIS CLIMATE SUMMIT :
In the United Nations and Paris Climate Summit, it was suggested from the deep study that if the speed of ships is reduced by just 20% it will reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by the ships by 24% and that will also reduce the noise of the ships by 66% which will be very helpful for the aquatic creatures as the noise created by the ships is very dangerous to them.
OTHER POINTS TO CONSIDER:
In this modern era when everyone and everything is connected with e-mails and other platforms like this really has a very large impact on our planet for instance-The sending of one email is estimated to produce 0.000001 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. And we can already think of how much spam or junk e-mails are we receiving daily, according to a new study of habits of UK- Sending email has such a high carbon footprint that just cutting out a single email a day — such as ones that simply say “LOL” — could have the same effect as removing thousands of cars from the street, Around 62 trillion spam messages are sent every year, requiring the use of 33bn kilowatt-hours (KWh) of electricity and causing around 20 million tonnes of CO2e per year.
With this data one can very well imagine the impact of so much digitalization, in this what we can do at our individual level is that we can unsubscribe from all wanted e-mails and we can enlighten our friends and neighbors the same and at my individual level I have told this thing to my known people.
CONCLUSION:
Before summing up myself I must say that countries are trying and doing the best possible thing to combat this major issue and likewise in India, we can see that we are doing so much in adopting renewable sources of energy like solar plants, windmills, and various projects like ‘solar canal’ one thing which I want to add regarding solar projects is that most government offices at rural areas and urban areas wherever possible be operated through solar electricity. And we must not forget that adapting to renewable sources of energy requires very high investment and developing economies in the African continent and Asian continent couldn’t afford to invest so much in these projects which could hinder the development of these countries in other major areas and the children of these countries have to live in a poverty-stricken economy for another few decades. Therefore, while combating climate change we must not forget that the kids and the future generation must not get affected by our current moves and policies.
This article was originally published by me on https://globalworldaffairs.wordpress.com/
