Elsa Kotorri | 23 Dec 2019

Humans! The source of all the positive and negative effects in the world. Starting from animals, plants, technology, civilizations, global warming and so on. Our planet is living more difficult days than those of World War I and World War II, more difficult days than hunger crises, ideological or religious wars. It seems as if humanity is fighting against their planet, the Promised Land.

Global warming has increased in alarming numbers in recent years. According to global climate change models, global warming levels began to rise in the mid-20th century, when industrial activity increased further creating the greenhouse effect – when the atmosphere blocks the heat radiating from the earth toward space. Now various scientists give humanity another 10 years to further prevent global warming, or we will face fatal consequences.

Every day we are seeing strange phenomena of nature, today we face snowfall and the next day with extreme heat. Then we have the dilemma of the day. Swim in the clean waters of the Caribbean or in waste-filled waters that not only cause disturbance to the underwater habitat but also take thousands of years to decompose. We hear every day that the Arctic’s glaciers are disappearing day after day, while Russia, the USA and other great powers are struggling for oil and natural gas reserves. They seek to conquer even that small piece of land by which our planet regulates its temperature.

Global warming will certainly have effects on our health. Many microbes and bacteria will multiply and spread through natural disasters causing a large number of deaths. At the same time potable water reserves will become scarcer. The world will be in chaos.

In the annual meetings of various organisations on environmental protection and global warming there are strong lobbies but in the end the results are still zero. This is because of not acting governments that could have the most impact on this issue and that can truly act and prevent what is being reported by various international institutions that observe these changes and effects of global warming.

In my opinion, the problem lies in finding a global solution for preventing further global warming. On the one hand are these various organisations and institutes which have all the necessary information and ways to act, and on the other hand, there are the governments that have the right tools but do not provide these tools to the organisations to operate. Still playing under the table even when our future is at stake, it renders these institutions irresponsible for what they represent.

Always maintaining the view that governments are the ones with the right tools to operate, a long-term solution would be to block all factories that produce plastic, replacing it with weaker material, organic matter such as broccoli, eggshell and the amount of paper to be used will be smaller, thereby stopping forest destruction. In this way, the three indicators that directly affect our lives will be balanced: by stopping the production of plastics, the gases released into the atmosphere will be less, the oceans and seas will not be polluted by plastics (and this implies a healthy underwater habitat and not with waste that takes many thousands of years to decompose) and last but not least, the economy will not be harmed by the fact that the production of plastic materials was stopped as they were replaced.

As technology has advanced greatly, it should be used in heavy industries that emit a large amount of gas into the atmosphere, setting limits on the release of harmful gases. We have only two choices: we will either use technology to save the world or go back to the Stone Age when no technology or industry existed. Although technology has helped us to identify and cure various diseases and make our life become easier and more comfortable.

We have come at a time when whatever solution we give to the problem of global warming, it will have negative consequences, and in time we only have to choose the options that least damages humanity and our planet as well.