“Climate Change and We”

Why so much noise on Climate Change, Why “GREEN” is most listened and written word now days. Why is so much curiosity for Climate change? How it will affect our day to day life?

“Climate” is a long term average (usually 30 years) of weather patterns. Climate change refers to the abnormal change in climate due to human activity. Abnormality in Temperature, Rainfall, snowfall, is due to Climate change.
“GHG’s” refers to Green House Gases which are the combination of Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide and Water Vapors. The earth atmosphere is mixture of gases; some gases allow heat from the sun to pass in and warm the earth but prevent heat from escaping the earth. This is known as Green House effect.
“Global Warming” refers to change in earth’s temperature which is causing the climate change. Due to it the ice caps in north and south poles are melting. They have shrunk by 34% in last 150 years. Rising sea level threatens millions of life in megapolises like Mumbai, New York, London, and Tokyo. The islands like Maldives may be submerged. Mountains Glaciers are also retracting. According to UN report of 2007, Source of the Ganga may disappear by 2030 if the temperature rises with the current pace. There will be more draught areas, Water Scarcity and Power shortage is one of the crucial consequences of it.
“Emissions” are gases released into atmosphere. Industrial revolution caused 40% Carbon Dioxide in atmosphere by burning fossil fuels (Petrol, Diesel, and Coal) and wood. Deforestation also reduces the absorption of carbon dioxide by trees.
It remains in atmosphere for more than 100 years. Carbon dioxide contributes 77% for Global warmings whereas nitrous oxide 14%. The major source for Carbon dioxide is power generation plants and deforestation which contributes 24% for Carbon emissions,
India’s contribution to Global warming is 2.2% whereas the highest comes from developed countries like USA (29%), EU (26.5%), Russia (8.1%), and China (7.6%).
Copenhagen meet was planned to come on consensus to cut the emissions to save the world but unfortunately it was big failure and the credit goes to USA and other Eu countries who wants every country to cut the emission at par with them. This was totally unacceptable to all third world countries including India. Also to create the Global warming fund was contentious issue. Wherein the developed countries were not ready to transfer the technology for low emissions to other countries. India walked out due to uneven policies of it. Cutting emissions means slowing down the economic activity in the country which will put us far behind with other peer countries. Also the debate was that these west countries are using Global warming as a tool to obstruct the growth of Asian countries.
We can also contribute to emission cut by controlling our day to day activity eg. Saving electricity and water, less usage of fossil fuels, planting trees, less usage of fertilization in agriculture, etc.
Remember that Global warming is man made and a global phenomena but starts from us and it will affect each of us in a catastrophic way hence it is our duty to save the world to save us.