This article is written on the occasion of Earth Day which is observed on April 22nd.
Sometime in the 22nd century, in the year 2105 due to trash on the Earth, earth’s population is sent on Spaceliners to spend 5 years on a cruise while an army of trash compactor Robots named WALL.E were left behind to clean the Earth. The planet becomes more toxic to support life and makes the people remain in space indefinitely. Are you foreseeing the future of humanity? Fortunately, after seven hundred years WALL.E develops sentience and sense of emotion like human being and later it makes the humanity come back to the planet and plant a tree and starts restoring the home planet. The plot is from WALL.E. Do you want this to happen with us? If we will not feel responsible, we will definitely land up in that situation. Earth Day is observed just to inspire people in saving Earth.
Earth day was designed to inspire awareness and appreciation of Earth’s environment. It was started in 1969. The modern Environment movement started with fighting against oil spills, polluting factories, power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, extinction of wildlife etc. In the course of time the awareness is created in the wider parts of the world.
Recently in Australia 200,000 litres of oil leaked into waters and the oil spill has spread along 60 km of Queensland coast. Significant damage was done to the aquatic life transforming into an environmental disaster.
Cement factories make up one of the world’s biggest industries and they represent an industry that produces more than 5% of mankind’s CO2 emissions. There is a new technology in its incubation stage which might change the future of Earth, CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE (CCS), which captures the carbon and ultimately reduces the carbon emissions. In April, 2009 a Power Plant in South of France started functioning on CCS technology. This technology could save the planet from expected increased use of coal in power stations around the world. At its best, it could trap up to 90% of a power plant’s carbon emissions.
Tim Flannery, an Australian scientist and Environmentalist, recently gave a speech in New Delhi on Pyrolysis. This involves taking any biological material- say crop waste, human sewage- and heating it in the absence of oxygen, effectively cooking it in the process. What you get out of that procedure are three products-a synthetic gas which we use to generate electricity, a crude oil substitute that can be used to make plastics or fertilizers, and charcoal (this contains most of the carbon in the original biological material and if you put the charcoal back into the soil it helps with soil fertility). Experiments done in Australia showed that crop yield increased by 30% just by putting charcoal into the soil.
Coming to the wildlife, many species are at endangered level. Only due to our selfishness the animals are getting extinct. There are some societies which are trying to conserve the rare species. In India, our very own National Animal, there are only 1500 tigers left out. You see tigers missing from the reserves very often. Recently scientists had discovered about 14 species of frogs in the Western Ghats of India. So, there is some work going on in order to conserve the animals.
To monitor the carbon emissions and reduce the pollution and commitment towards Sustainable Development. About 172 countries met in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to discuss on scrutiny on patterns of production, growing scarcity of water which led to an important agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to Kyoto Protocol. Almost all the countries ratified except USA. This year we have Copenhagen climate change summit. World is expecting for the US Govt to ratify the agreement. USA is the largest per capita emitter of CO2 from burning of Fossil Fuels. R.K.Pachauri, Al Gore of IPCC have been instrumental in promoting sustainable development. They were conferred Nobel Peace Prize for their tremendous commitment.
At least at this point of time when youth is feeling the importance of vote, they should also be start feeling the importance of environment.
SAVE EARTH!
Source: Guardian, Wikipedia, Frontline
- Optimistic Indian
Sometime in the 22nd century, in the year 2105 due to trash on the Earth, earth’s population is sent on Spaceliners to spend 5 years on a cruise while an army of trash compactor Robots named WALL.E were left behind to clean the Earth. The planet becomes more toxic to support life and makes the people remain in space indefinitely. Are you foreseeing the future of humanity? Fortunately, after seven hundred years WALL.E develops sentience and sense of emotion like human being and later it makes the humanity come back to the planet and plant a tree and starts restoring the home planet. The plot is from WALL.E. Do you want this to happen with us? If we will not feel responsible, we will definitely land up in that situation. Earth Day is observed just to inspire people in saving Earth.
Earth day was designed to inspire awareness and appreciation of Earth’s environment. It was started in 1969. The modern Environment movement started with fighting against oil spills, polluting factories, power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, extinction of wildlife etc. In the course of time the awareness is created in the wider parts of the world.
Recently in Australia 200,000 litres of oil leaked into waters and the oil spill has spread along 60 km of Queensland coast. Significant damage was done to the aquatic life transforming into an environmental disaster.
Cement factories make up one of the world’s biggest industries and they represent an industry that produces more than 5% of mankind’s CO2 emissions. There is a new technology in its incubation stage which might change the future of Earth, CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE (CCS), which captures the carbon and ultimately reduces the carbon emissions. In April, 2009 a Power Plant in South of France started functioning on CCS technology. This technology could save the planet from expected increased use of coal in power stations around the world. At its best, it could trap up to 90% of a power plant’s carbon emissions.
Tim Flannery, an Australian scientist and Environmentalist, recently gave a speech in New Delhi on Pyrolysis. This involves taking any biological material- say crop waste, human sewage- and heating it in the absence of oxygen, effectively cooking it in the process. What you get out of that procedure are three products-a synthetic gas which we use to generate electricity, a crude oil substitute that can be used to make plastics or fertilizers, and charcoal (this contains most of the carbon in the original biological material and if you put the charcoal back into the soil it helps with soil fertility). Experiments done in Australia showed that crop yield increased by 30% just by putting charcoal into the soil.
Coming to the wildlife, many species are at endangered level. Only due to our selfishness the animals are getting extinct. There are some societies which are trying to conserve the rare species. In India, our very own National Animal, there are only 1500 tigers left out. You see tigers missing from the reserves very often. Recently scientists had discovered about 14 species of frogs in the Western Ghats of India. So, there is some work going on in order to conserve the animals.
To monitor the carbon emissions and reduce the pollution and commitment towards Sustainable Development. About 172 countries met in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to discuss on scrutiny on patterns of production, growing scarcity of water which led to an important agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to Kyoto Protocol. Almost all the countries ratified except USA. This year we have Copenhagen climate change summit. World is expecting for the US Govt to ratify the agreement. USA is the largest per capita emitter of CO2 from burning of Fossil Fuels. R.K.Pachauri, Al Gore of IPCC have been instrumental in promoting sustainable development. They were conferred Nobel Peace Prize for their tremendous commitment.
At least at this point of time when youth is feeling the importance of vote, they should also be start feeling the importance of environment.
SAVE EARTH!
Source: Guardian, Wikipedia, Frontline
- Optimistic Indian
The passage is incomplete without mentioning the usage of cars in the modern world. I feel worried due to the increase of level of usage of cars. Electric Cars should replace the gasoline cars.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the increasing produciton of carbon derived compounds (polymers, plastics etc. which are essentially non-biodegradable and end up in land fills or oceans beds) although outrageoulsy cheap and handy could be an expensive threat later on.
ReplyDeleteAbout the latest on carbob footprint regulaitons in the US follow this link.
http://enr.ecnext.com/coms2/article_inen090415CarbonFootpr
Looks like the pressure on the US to finally do somehting about carbon emmisions (considering it has still not ratified the Kyoto protocol) has started finding its way to more sustainable solutions.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe Obama administration has sanctioned about $50 Billion dollars investment for Wind Energy sector.we have Carbon Footprint calculator which is setup for US and Australian conditions. It is yet to come in the Indian Conditions. Software Engineers should think about idea of creating Carbon Footprint calculator for Indian Conditions. Software Engineers come on!!. Myself and Civil Engineers can give you inputs required for writing a code for a calculator.
ReplyDeleteAt 1995 levels, An average American Citizen contributed 19 times the emissions contributed by an average Indian.Recently in 2006 China has taken first position of highest per capita emission. The awareness fastly growing in USA. Recently NDTV has started Greenathon. In fact GOVT of India has given subsidies in growing Jatropha seeds.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2008/jun/12/carbon.capture
ReplyDelete