NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT
The world's five biggest problems
15.10.2016October 15, 2016
The world is facing basically five big problems. These five problems must be
urgently resolved in order for the Earth to continue to be a habitable planet for
humans and other living things.
1. Air pollution and climate change
The problem:
Overfilling of the atmosphere and ocean waters with carbon:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbs and re-reflects
infrared waves of
radiation, heating the air, soil, and ocean surface water. Thus, our planet is
saved from being a solid pile of ice.
However, there is not enough carbon in the air. Fossil fuel use,
deforestation and industrial activities have increased atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentration from 280 ppm (particles per million) to 400 ppm over
200 years. This is an unprecedented increase
in both size and speed, and
as a result of this increase, climate change has begun to occur.
Carbon density is just one of the types of air pollution created by the
burning of coal, oil, gasoline and wood. The World Health Organization
recently stated that one out of every nine deaths in 2012 was due to
diseases caused by carcinogens or other toxc substances in pollut air.
The oceans are taking a triple hit: waters warmed by
overfishing, pollution and climate
Solution:
Using renewable
energy instead of fossil fuels, reforestation,
reducing emissions in agriculture, changing industrial production
processes. There is good and bad news in this context. The
good news is
that there is plenty of clean energy in nature. All that needs to be done is to
rationally 'cultivate' these
resources, invest in renewable energy. Many
experts say that with the technology we have now, a future using 100%
renewable energy is possible.
The bad news is that renewable energy infrastructures such as solar
panels, wind turbines, energy storage and distribution systems have
already become commonplace and, while quite cheap and
efficient, have
not been implemented quickly enough to curb climate change. In order to
solve this problem, political and financial problems need to be overcome.