An array of future weather extremes will make our current climate look ordinary.  Hurricanes and monsoons will double in frequency.  The average temperatures throughout the world will increase markedly.  Where flooding isn’t prevalent, drought will be.  It will eventually become impossible to find a healthy, safe place to live.

All thanks to global warming – the difference between life and death for humankind.  A major contributor to global warming is the infamous ‘greenhouse effect’.  A term we have heard so often but perhaps pay too little attention to.

Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other air pollutants and greenhouse gases collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface.  Normally, this radiation would escape into space—but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. That’s what is known as the greenhouse effect.

Greenhouse gases are crucial to keeping our planet at a habitable temperature. Without the natural greenhouse effect, the heat emitted by the Earth would simply pass outwards from the Earth’s surface into space. The Earth would have an average temperature of about -20°C.

Since the start of the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century, human activities have greatly increased the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Consequently, measured atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are many times higher than pre-industrial levels.

The danger that we are increasingly creating is an enhanced/unbalanced greenhouse effect, in which too much carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and CFCs, are filling the atmosphere.

What are the effects of global warming?

Each year, scientists learn more about the consequences of global warming, and agree that environmental, economic, and health consequences are likely to occur if current trends continue. Here is what we can look forward to:

• Melting glaciers, early snowmelt, and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages and increase the risk of wildfires
• Rising sea levels will lead to coastal flooding on the Eastern Seaboard, especially in Florida, and in other areas such as the Gulf of Mexico
• Forests, farms, and cities will face troublesome new pests, heat waves, heavy downpours, and increased flooding. All those factors will damage or destroy agriculture and fisheries
• Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and Alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species into extinction
• Allergies, asthma, and infectious disease outbreaks will become more common due to increased growth of pollen-producing ragweed, higher levels of air pollution, and the spread of conditions favourable to pathogens and mosquitoes
• Exploding disease. A catastrophic loss in biodiversity, reckless destruction of wildland and warming temperatures have allowed disease to explode. Ignoring the connection between climate change and pandemics would be “dangerous delusion,” one scientist said.

What are the main causes of rising emissions?

• Burning coal, oil and gasproduces carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide
• Cutting down forests (deforestation). Trees help to regulate the climate by absorbing CO₂from the atmosphere. So when they are cut down, that beneficial effect is lost and the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere_, adding to the greenhouse effect
• Increased livestock farming.  Cows and sheep produce large amounts of methane when they digest their food
• Fertilisers containing nitrogenproduce nitrous oxide emissions
• Fluorinated gasesproduce a very strong warming effect, up to 23 000 times greater than CO₂.
• Chlorine has amazing durability in the atmosphere and it takes just one atom of chlorine to destroy one hundred thousand molecules of ozone

Add all of this up and we have a planet that is slowly being warmed up to the point of cataclysmic flooding and extreme weather conditions, because of extreme levels of greenhouse gases and an ozone layer too diminished to dilute the sun’s radiation.

We are damaging the earth to the point of it no longer being habitable.  Our behaviour is sending species after species of animal into extinction and seemingly forgetting that we humans are every bit as vulnerable to extinction as any other species on Earth.

What are some simple steps we can take to stop the dreadful descent into destruction:-

• Use recycled paper
• Change your light bulbs to LED
• Turn down your geyser temperature
• Have shorter showers
• Turn your computer off rather than letting it ‘sleep’
• Unplug electronics when you’re not using them
• Plant a tree

All of the above will save the atmosphere from damaging carbon dioxide

How does global warming lead to the spread of disease?

The scientists who study how diseases emerge in a changing environment knew this moment was coming. Climate change is making outbreaks of disease more common and more dangerous.

Over the past few decades, the number of emerging infectious diseases that spread to people — especially coronaviruses and other respiratory illnesses believed to have come from bats and birds — has skyrocketed.  A new emerging disease surfaces five times a year. One study estimates that more than 3,200 strains of coronaviruses already exist among bats, awaiting an opportunity to jump to people.

The diseases may have always been there, buried deep in wild and remote places out of reach of people. But until now, the planet’s natural defence systems were better at fighting them off.

Today, climate warming is demolishing those defence systems, driving a catastrophic loss in biodiversity that, when coupled with reckless deforestation and aggressive conversion of wildland for economic development, pushes farms and people closer to the wild and opens the gates for the spread of disease.

If we do not love our planet enough to save her, we will go down together.  If we do not love ourselves enough to care for and nurture our temple – it will be no more.

Every day express gratitude for what you have, every day live mindfully and compassionately, every day expect that it will unfold with grace.   Be trusting, be optimistic, be forgiving.