editorial cartoon by Matt Hill
With global warming becoming a day-to-day topic, many are trying to find ways they can help solve the issue.
In a recent response to the Kyoto Protocol, which urges emissions reductions, the United States is doing something different: asking world scientists to develop technology to block sunlight to help fix this global warming issue.
These techniques include propelling giant mirrors in space or pumping reflective dust into the atmosphere. Scientists have estimated that reflecting less than 1 percent of sunlight back into space would compensate the warming created by greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution.
How is eliminating less than 1 percent of sunlight going to solve this crisis?
Will that 1 percent affect our environment in a different way?
Will it create a change in temperature across the globe?
This ridiculously expensive and dangerous idea is what our President finds to be a legit cop-out.
What keeps President Bush from agreeing with the Kyoto Protocol? The threat that we might actually have to cut back on our “ toys” and it may possibly damage our economy. Oh no! We would have to decrease our usage of all fossil fuels, our consumption of all cow products and limit our waste. Never!
As the so-called leading society in the world, this suggestion has definitely shown our laziness.
By producing such an idea of blocking the sun by a certain percentage qualifies as an extremely careless act. To our knowledge, we don’t know what the final outcome would be if we followed through on this procedure.
Also, even though we are blocking less than 1 percent of the sun’s rays we are still producing enough greenhouse emissions on our side of the atmosphere to create global warming.
The United States has also complained that the report prepared by the IPCC is “ Kyoto-centric” and does not include the positives of global warming. Which is interesting, considering the fact the United States is the leading source of hydrocarbon emissions in the world. Is there really a positive to killing the planet?
The “ pros” of global warming include things such as less severe winters in some regions, more rain in dry regions, increased food production in some regions and extended plant and animal populations in other regions. In this list all pros include the word “ some.” Therefore, these positives could be next to nothing.
Another complaint was that the United States wants the report to emphasize the responsibilities of developing countries. In the scheme of things, all countries should obey this protocol. However, since the United States emits most of the world’s greenhouse gases we need to take responsibility. Even though we are the financial helping hand to a lot of Third World countries we should try and focus on ourselves for once before we point our finger at the helpless.
In an economic view, it is interesting to know that President Bush is caught up on depleting our fossil fuel usage to save resources and money, yet we are involved in what seems like a never-ending multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq. Doesn’t quite make sense. We can spend money on killing our own kids and killing the environment, yet we can’t spend money to save the planet.
To hear our government demanding such action to stop global warming is a slap to the face. This “ important insurance” of blocking the sun is not realistic.
Overall, we need to understand that the sun is not creating this issue of global warming, we are. Therefore, we must take responsibility into our own hands and sacrifice our laziness to help save our only home called earth.
