E-Paper
A global warning
Are you one of those who change the channel or roll your eyes each time the Copenhagen Climate Summit is mentioned?
Are you one of those who change the channel or roll your eyes each time the Copenhagen Climate Summit is mentioned? Do you think thousands and thousands of people were shivering to death in the sub zero cold of Denmark, protesting in the snow, because Aliens are landing? Are you dumb enough to believe that global warming does not concern you?
Shame on you! Utter and absolute shame on you. Get your head out of the sand, O! Ostrich, and look around.
Don’t you think there’s something odd about how hot it is so close to Christmas? By this time as kids we would be wearing sweaters and blazers to school — winter uniform in full form. And now most of us are boiling even in light sweaters and sweatshirts.
That, my friend, is Global Warming — the lack of rain in the monsoons, the sweltering heat in October and the delay of winter all the way to December — repercussions of the gross misconduct of mankind.
All that CFC pumped into the air, all those trees chopped down in the name of progress, those rivers polluted with factory waste, and those gazillion cars you refuse to leave home.
And it’s not just about the weather.
According to the World Health Organisation, climate change is affecting some of the most important diseases afflicting the world and studies have shown that it is directly correlated to the spread of Dengue in India.
If you’re one of those who sit up and take notice only when catastrophe comes knocking, then here’s a shocker.
According to the Scientific American, 53 million cubic meters of glacier melt may break the banks of a lake upstream in the Himalayan peaks. This, in turn, could cause a “mountain tsunami” —imagine the ramifications of that.
Inconvenient but true, global warming is just as much as an individual problem as it is a collective headache, and it really is time for you to start thinking about yourself.
On a very foggy day back in November, Tarun Sapra, a reader, wrote to me cribbing about how it was too hot to merit the kind of smog/fog Delhi witnessed that particular day. That was just another anomaly in the pattern of the weather, one of many that will come our way in the coming years. Unless, of course, something changes drastically.
If you still don’t believe the gravity of the situation, please watch Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and The Age of Stupid by Franny Armstrong— and if you’re still not scared, then put your head back in the sand and wait for the flood.
