W11 Draft: Academic Paper Part 01

 Is technology helping or harming our environment?

Many of the technologies we use every day consume a lot more resources and power than they need to, and using and manufacturing them can create a mess through pollution, waste, and more. Carbon emissions, primarily carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, are greenhouse gasses produced by humans. Greenhouse gasses are gasses in the atmosphere that trap heat and radiation and reflect it back to the earth's surface. Carbon emissions are released into the atmosphere by cars, planes, power plants, and factories. They are also released by people like you when you use a vehicle or electricity generated by burning fossil fuels. The computer you are reading this uses electricity, as does your mobile device and video game system. In recent events, scientists are arguing if climate change could be a result of environmental change.

Climate change is a new concept of the 1990s which is concerned with the long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. In some cases, Climate change might be natural, but since the 1800s, scientists say there is a 95% chance that human activity is the cause. Human activities such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas), as well as natural processes such as respiration and volcanic eruptions have become the main drive to this change. Some of these burning releases CO₂, to power our homes, factories, airplanes, and cars. These gases go to the air, and when the sunlight gets into the earth’s atmosphere, some of the heat gets trapped, and the planet gets warmer.  

The graph below shows the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and the spike in carbon dioxide at the very end took off during the industrial revolution. The CO₂ breaking record started in 1950 and hasn’t stopped since. The UN says that “right now, our world is about 1 degree hotter than pre-industrial times (1800).” Which is okay. In fact, the UN says if we warm by 1.5 - 2 degrees before the end of the century we should be fine.” But the problem is the speed. As of 2020, we are on track to hit 1.5 degrees in only ten years. Therefore if we don’t slow that warming down, it could mean catastrophe in our lifetime – and we are already getting a taste of it.

            In the middle of October 1987, a powerful storm ravaged many parts of the United Kingdom. Massive devastation across the country left the country in tears – 18 people were killed, 15 million trees were blown down, electrical and telephone lines were destroyed, leaving thousands of homes without electricity for several hours. Other sad events of Climate change happened in another continent. Northern Mozambique was hit by the tropical Cyclone Kenneth in 2019 which killed 38 people, destroyed 35,000 houses – affecting 1,000,000 people, and left the area without clean water for months thus the arise of water-borne diseases. And Typhon Cyclone swept its way through East Asia and forced two of the world's busiest ports in China to suspend some operations. As temperatures get warmer, sea levels are rising about 3 millimeters a year, people around the world are losing their homes, millions of people are likely to suffer worsening food and water shortages, and entire coastal cities could be underwater within 100 years like Miami (US) and Osaka (Japan). Government cannot lose sight of the threat that climate change poses to the country’s major sectors and must mobilize all of the resources at its disposal to support economic recovery especially during the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 Kate Marvel, an associate research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and science writer, said, “Climate change won’t destroy the actual planet or make the human species go extinct, the climate apocalypse will not come for us all, at least not all at once.” Her judgment is similar to many others who believe in the impact climate change has on the world but aren’t as worried about it, mainly because the results of the predictions seem to lead into the long distant future. That’s a definite nowadays citizen mindset to always believe that we’ll cross the bridge when we get there. António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said “Natural disasters becoming more and more intense, more frequent, with devastating consequences. The dramatic impacts of droughts in different parts of the world, all of this is creating a situation that is a real threat to humankind. And we are not doing enough.”

Many nations are currently facing a debt crisis due to the economy being hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Climate change and Covid-19 have become a rising concern around the globe. With our technological advancement, most of the population has access to reliable data exploiting global warming’s effects via the Internet—at the very least most can say they’ve heard about it. But does it all really matter? Climate change has all these negative connotations, yet nothing is really done about it, is it really that important? There may be a tendency to wonder why we should even care about climate change, especially when we are dealing with other urgent issues on a daily basis. Research suggests that unless drastic measures are taken to improve our population's health and quality of life, our population's health and quality of life may decline dramatically. In addition to gaining a full understanding of climate change's harmful consequences, it would be ideal to also develop the attitude that taking action now is much better than delaying action and suffering the consequences later.

There are current circumstances enabling climate change to become a pressing issue. Natural disasters, pollution levels, health issues, and economic strife contribute to this situation. Climate change, or what is commonly referred to as global warming, is too often underestimated when it comes to taking action. Although the concern has been discussed in the past, today's society is insurmountably more advanced in t

erms of technology, allowing us to access much more reliable and accurate data than ever before. It was announced in mid-November that the National Climate Assessment would release its latest report, a 1600-page report that summarizes all of the grim realities we're facing. As we have already seen, communities have been affected by extreme weather-including wildfires and hurricanes-and we can expect more of the same in the future.  It did not take long for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to release a report concluding the same thing just a month later.

Back in 2015, it was confirmed that the earth's temperature had increased by 1 degree Celsius. One degree does not seem like a big deal, but on a global scale, these are all things that could happen: Mountains could lose most of their glaciers, causing rivers to dry up and eventually disappear. Mountainous regions are also at greater risk of landslides as the permafrost that once held them together for thousands of years begins to melt. 1/3 of all fresh water in subtropical regions could disappear within 85 years. Tropical regions could also experience heatwaves for up to 3 months, drastically affecting the growth of stable plants needed to feed the growing population. We know that 40 percent of Arctic sea ice has already disappeared in the last thirty years. The huge increase in ocean surface area makes it less likely that the ice will form again, as the ocean keeps warming and the ice stays melted. Melted ice caps cause low-lying islands to flood when sea levels rise. For comparison, if sea levels rise even 1 meter, 10% of the human population would be relocated. With a global rise of 2 degrees Celsius (4.6 degrees Fahrenheit), we can expect plant growth to slowly decline until the process of photosynthesis stops completely. Plants would no longer be able to absorb carbon dioxide as efficiently and would instead emit it into the atmosphere, further fueling global warming. Warmer oceans would cause irreversible damage to 99% of coral reefs, disrupting the ecosystem of up to 9 million different species. In fact, ecosystems around the world would collapse as species would be forced to migrate, throwing them out of balance. This would lead to the grim fact that 1/3 of all living things on Earth would face extinction. Humans would not be immune to this either, they would die. For example, in the summer of 2016, when temperatures were 2.3 degrees Celsius above average, over 50,000 people died from heat-related illnesses across Europe.

To combat climate change and adapt to its effects, several nations concluded a common cause called the “Paris Agreement” – which is a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted in Paris, on 12 December 2015. During that time, scientists discovered that the global temperature had risen by 1 degree Celsius. So the Paris Agreement, also known as The Paris Climate Accord, aims to stop these dangerous levels of climate change in hopes to prevent lives from being destroyed by extreme weather. Despite the efforts, political leaders seems to relax and not much has been done to mediate its effects.

Rick Perry, a former US secretary of energy and 47^th governor of Texas took an unequivocal stand on climate change when he claimed scientists had "falsified global warming data for money". Perry brings up the suggestion that George Luber, a co-chair of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is analyzing several facts related to environmental factors and human health. In terms of the environment, he says we can expect an increase in drought-affected areas, a rise in extreme sea levels, frequent heavy and erratic rainfall, an increase in intense tropical cyclones, and severe heat waves. Human health, of course, will be affected by global events. Because of all these factors, Luber addresses the fact that we can expect increases in heat-related deaths, mental stress, cardiovascular and respiratory disease, exposure to environmental toxins, and deteriorating air quality. Physical and biological systems on all continents and oceans are already affected by global warming," he says. There is likely to be further warming in the coming decades. The long-term effects of emissions are becoming more apparent."

Even though climate change does not seem to be causing drastic problems today, we need to educate ourselves about it, regardless of which side we support. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel that shows there are things we can do to help this cause. Predictions may not be enough to stop people from continuing to warm the earth, but they are at least a guide on how to prepare for a scary future. As Marvel aptly points out, "There is a room for maneuver between "all is well" and "we are doomed." Sometimes people get so excited about using a new technology that they overlook the negative impact on the environment. But it is very important that we use technology in the most intelligent and responsible way so that we solve problems and do not create more for the future.