Global warming: causes, effects, and mitigation strategies

Global Warming: An Inconvenient but Necessary Remedy

When I saw "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary produced by Al Gore about the effects of global warming, I felt motivated to learn more about the subject. Before, I had been a bit smug. After all, I recycled. I did not drive a Hummer. I did not litter or buy things with a great deal of excess packaging. I considered myself reasonably 'eco-friendly.' Also, in the back of my mind, I admit I was not overly concerned about the issue. I knew that remedying the effects of global warming was a long-term priority for our nation. But it was hard to get 'fired up,' no pun intended, about global warming, in comparison to other, more immediate issues, like our escalating involvement in Iraq and rising gas prices, because the dangers seemed to lie so far in the future -- why worry about what was more likely to affect my children-to-be when my friends and family members were suffering from other issues? The documentary underlined a very important and equally inconvenient truth for me -- that a real solution to global warming is unlikely to come unless political as well as personal action is undertaken, and that the impact of global warming is already here and now. It showed me that the calculation of every individual's carbon footprint is too complex for one person to compute alone and I must take action to pressure politicians to acknowledge the reality of global warming. We must make sacrifices to improve out own health and the health of our planet on a global, not merely a national level.

The effects of global warming have only begun to be noticed slowly by average Americans -- for example, warmer weather results in shifts in animal migration and plant growth. Sea levels are rising, which has been causing beach erosion and economic as well as physical damage to costal communities ("Driven to Extremes: Health Effects of Climate Change,"2007, Environmental Health Perspectives, p.A 201). There has also been an increase in severe storms and droughts. "In many regions, it is already raining less often but harder. According to the Physical Science Basis, trends from 1900 to 2005 show significantly increased precipitation in many regions, including eastern parts of North and South America. More intense and longer droughts have occurred over wider areas worldwide since the 1970s ("Driven to Extremes: Health Effects of Climate Change,"2007, Environmental Health Perspectives, p.A 198). This suggests that Hurricane Katrina may simply not have been an anomaly, but an indication of a larger trend. Increased aid to disaster relief from storms and droughts is likely to be another 'cost' of global warming, as well as food shortages (as manifest in the recent failure of the rice crop in drought-prone Australia).

Once upon a time, the symptoms of the warming of the planet seemed easy to ignore in the short-term. After all, unless you are a polar bear or a penguin, you can pretend that the melting of the polar ice caps is not happening. But the immediate, human toll from global warming is now all too obvious. Also, "Rising temperatures also increase the amount of ground-level ozone in urban areas. Ground-level ozone is the result of reactions from vehicle tailpipe emissions. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds combine rapidly, particularly in warmer weather. Many studies have linked higher ozone levels to increased risk of asthma" ("Driven to Extremes: Health Effects of Climate Change,"2007, Environmental Health Perspectives, p. A 200). The poor, members of minority groups with a genetic predisposition to the condition, and the very old are particular vulnerable to extremities of temperature (Bazilchuk 2006: 545) Temperature extremes have changed the way people live their lives, whether it is from famine, the increased rate of deaths from the increase of extremes of hot and cold, illnesses, or even simply the loss of traditional ways of life -- from the Arctic Inuit Eskimos to the Vermont maple syrup farmers who can no longer sustain their trees in warmer temperatures.

It is clear that unless we open our eyes as a nation and as a world, global warming's effects can be catastrophic. Of course it is heartening that there been the greater willingness of people in recent years, partially for self-serving reasons and partially out of the goodness of their hearts, to take proactive actions to reduce their carbon footprint, whether by fashionably driving a Prius, riding a bike, or walking -- a behavior reinforced by the escalating price of gas. So has carrying a shopping bag to the supermarket. But going green and dropping bottles in the recycling bin is enough to reverse such catastrophic changes. The developing world is consuming more oil, eating more meat that releases methane into the atmosphere, and leaving a larger global footprint. Unless nations work together to reduce the toll to the environment, one person, even one nation is not enough.