Morgan has written about why we need to step up to save the planet.
Imagine New Zealand 50 years, 100 years into the future – is it inundated with water or a parched and dry wasteland? Imagine widespread flooding covering the continents, heat waves, droughts and tropical cyclones ravaging the planet, ice caps melting and entire species being wiped out in the blink of an eye. This is how global warming will affect our planet. The continual use of non -renewable resources such as coal and oil, our inability to take action and our general unconcern for our planet has taken its toll. We all need to step up and do our part to reduce our carbon footprints before it’s too late and the damage becomes irreversible.
Scientists have many different theories about what will happen to our planet in the future. Some say that the sea levels will rise by between 9 and 88 cm due to the increased temperature and the melting of the polar ice caps. This would cause widespread flooding all over the globe meaning most of the world would be under water, including New Zealand. Others say that droughts, heat waves and tropical cyclones would occur around the globe drying up the land and sea and causing massive famines in many countries. There would be increased sickness and less immunity to diseases such as cholera resulting in plagues around the world. Basically the whole world would be reduced to the status of a third world country, decimating the chances of our survival, the human race will finally pay the price of the constant overuse of our planet.
The Arctic is global warming’s canary in a coal mine, fragile and easy to kill off. With average temperatures rising twice as fast in the Arctic region then they are all over the world you can see why this is so. The polar ice cap as a whole is shrinking at a rate of 9% every day meaning if this trend continues summers in the Arctic will be ice free, raising the sea level dramatically. Because the ice in the Arctic acts as a cooling layer over the area, when this ice melts the earth will start absorbing more sunlight and the temperatures will increase. This melting will also affect low lying island nations such as the Maldives and low lying cities such as Shanghai who are at the risk of erosion, coastal flooding and contamination of freshwater supplies. If we don’t stop our destruction of the planet then soon it will be too late, we will not be able to change the fate of our world.
People all around the world people need to start to make an effort to clean up the planet and rectify our past mistakes. We have mined Earth of nearly every useful metal, gem and fuel source there is, we’ve pumped chemicals into the earth, sea and sky, and we’ve wiped out thousands of species. Despite knowing what we have done to our planet the most terrible thing of all is that we continue to pump chemicals into the sky, pollute our waters and kill off animal species even though we know the consequences of these actions. We need to tackle the problem of global warming before it gets any worse as we risk endangering the survival of the human race. Overtime, the planet we are killing may be able to repair itself but what fate awaits humans? Will there be a second chance for us?
english@cc 