Think Global/ The Daily Post

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Daily Prompt

Think Global, Act Local

“Think global, act local.” Write a post connecting a global issue to a personal one.

A number of countries and companies have long been worried that the costs of tackling climate change (prevention, mitigation, adaptation, etc) will be prohibitive and would rather deal with the consequences. They often assume (or hope) the consequences will not be as bad as scientists are predicting.

Climate change problems also affect people’s health directly, as well as impacting the environment. For example, fossil fuels used by cars in heavily congested areas lead to additional pollutants harmful to human health. Tackling climate change by limiting fossil fuel use and investing heavily in alternatives has the additional benefit of improving health, and even possibly reducing traffic congestion. This is the view of some major reports recently released.

Eighty percent of the forests that originally covered the earth have been cleared, fragmented, or otherwise degraded.

The world’s forests and oceans are natural regulators of carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere — which is a greenhouse gas. While forests are regarded as sinks, meaning they absord carbon dioxide, it is hard to rely on forests to soak up increasing pollution, while forests are increasingly being cut down!

Water is life and without water there is very little and in most cases no life at all. When you talk about lack of water in developing countries, most times people think about lack of water for domestic purposes besides drinking but the problem is worse in some developing countries. In some poor countries around the world, people walk several miles a day just to get a cup of water to quench their thirst and the saddest part is that, children and those who cannot walk such long distances often suffer and die from severe dehydration.

“While many liberal politicians are trying to pass legislation to prevent further global warming, they are facing harsh criticisms from the conservative media. Many Fox News personalities as well as radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh and several conservative internet blogs have claimed that the recent north east snow storm is proof that global warming is a myth. Global warming is a term that many suggest was made popular by former Vice President Al Gore. In 2006 David Guggenheim directed a film titled “Inconvenient Truth” which was a informative film about Al Gore’s message of man’s responsibility for global warming. Many advocates say that the proper term would be “climate change”.

Global warming suggests that through man made pollution, we are damaging the planet’s ozone layer, increasing the sun’s affect on planet earth. Global warming has many supporters, including thousands of scientists who claim to have proven that the issue is real and should not be ignored. Recent studies have shown that the temperatures of 2009 were among the top warmest temperatures since satellites started keeping records. A similar study also suggested that the previous decade, 2000-2009, was the warmest decade in almost 2000 years. Global warming supporters believe that there are several ways to reduce the threat of climate change. These methods include transitioning our main energy sources from coal and other fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources such as solar power, wind power, hydropower, biomass energy and geothermal energy just to name a few.

Well, what do you think? Do you think cutting down our forests and building for power and money are hurting us on a personal level or is this all due to progression of countries?