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Save our Earth

来源：洪恩论坛 Andy's Column

日期：2005-8-11

作者：petrus

阅读：6391 次

Swiss Wrap Glacier in Foil to Keep Cold

What will come to your mind when you see this sentence for the first time? Somebody making up story? This is from Times, London, in which it reads, Switzerland

is wrapping Alpine glaciers in plastic foil in an effort to save the country's melting ski slopes.

Another news is from the BBC, this time in Argentina: The Upsala Glacier, once one of the largest glaciers in the world, now is almost a memory.

You may say it is normal because our planet is changing; and will continue to change. If learning that the glaciers have been retreating for over 1,000 years would not surprise you, take a look at the following facts:

Antarctic ice is breaking into the sea at a rate four to six times faster than 10 years ago.

The Arctic Ocean ice sheet has decreased by 9 percent in the past 30 years and could decline another 10 percent by 2100.

Melting glaciers have reduced the height of Mount Everest by 5

feet. With the melting glaciers elsewhere around the world together, they are adding fresh water to the world’s oceans much more than ever.

…

Does this sound scary enough? The answer may be yes and no - we are afraid of ocean swallowing the world but until now, it has not happened yet. We learn tons of similar news everyday from various news media world-wild, but knowing the root

causes for the sea level rise does not really stop us burning oil as a fuel.

It is a proven fact that cities are the major contributors to global warming which is threatening human life on earth. They consume more of its resources and produce most of its waste. Most of the cities are no self-sufficient in food, water and energy; they have to depend on global forests, seas and the atmosphere while acting as their dustbins. In the age of globalization, on one hand, big cities often represent development, advance modern industry and high technology, they

are a symbol of globalization, but on the other hand, they could be the collapse of globalization itself, as they are threatening the natural order that the biosphere affirmed.

So what should we do? Since we cannot abandon cities, how we keep cities without

damaging the ecology for future generations becomes utterly important. Can we really prevent further environmental damage?

Think about what China was like twenty years ago. Many smaller, self-contained rural towns directly connected to the land that the townspeople cultivated. That

is, actually, what china had been for centuries even with a huge population, because we did not have many cars to burn oil to produce as much pollution and heat

as we do presently. Now, industrialization and urbanization have gotten Shanghai into the top 20 largest cities in the world, and this is only twenty years later. Too bad, we do not have many twenty years.

We absolutely do not have the time. The time is present and now. It starts with

us, and how we relate to it creates the future. It is a race against stupidity and time. I wonder, if we plant as many trees as we can, choose green public transits instead of cars; if we stop burning oil and throwing out garbage around… If we human beings could somehow change our behavior, or become the change that we wish to see in the world, what difference, or what some of the effects would be. What we do actually accumulates; and the future is the result of what we are

doing right now.

Let us start now, change our behavior a little bit to make a huge difference, and to make a world where our children are able to survive.