Accents
Our planet: your plane and mine
(I exhume from the archives of my laptop a column that presaged Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth on climate change by more than ten years. Foretold therein is today's buzz-word: global warming.)
Crash is the most tragic, most painful, cruelest word of the day. A plane crashes, and lives, hopes, and dreams crash with it.
What if the same happens to our planet Earth? The Earth is our plane in the universe, yours and mine, carrying all of us--its human passengers--as it courses through intergalactic space. We are all in it, of it, and for it. There is no escape.
If the Earth's "engines" sputter, can you jump out of it? My grandchildren Jetrone and Raisa, in their innocence, said the NASA astronauts can escape to the moon or to Mars. Well, children can think of the unthinkable.
Below is an article, When the Atmosphere Goes, So Do We, reprinted from Towards a Viable Environment: WHAT INDIVIDUALS CAN DO prepared by the SEAFDEC Environment Action Group of which this writer is a charter member. Read on and do your bit of protecting and conserving the environment before it's too late:
A layer of air, the atmosphere, surrounds the earth and extends far outward into space. Only the first few miles of the atmosphere contain the mixture of gases, mostly oxygen and nitrogen, that all humans, plants, and animals need for life. This is the air we breathe from the time we are born until the time we die.
The atmosphere provides us with much more than the air we breathe; it is a vital part of the life support system of our planet. Indeed, without the atmosphere, the earth could be as cold and barren as the surface of the moon. The atmosphere has an ozone layer that protects us from the damaging rays of the sun, and provides a natural greenhouse effect that warms the planet's surface. The atmosphere's wind and weather systems shape the earth's climate.
The major gases of the earth's atmosphere are nitrogen (78% by volume), oxygen (21%), argon (0.9%), carbon dioxide (0.035%), water vapor, and ozone. It has taken billions of years for the earth to produce the relatively constant composition of the atmosphere. Sensitive natural cycles normally maintain this delicate natural balance.
The carbon dioxide-oxygen cycle is an example of the delicate balance that exists between living things and the gases of the air. Basic to this cycle is photosynthesis, by which plants make food for themselves and for all other life on earth. Plants use energy from sunlight, and water and carbon dioxide from the air, and release oxygen. Animals including people take oxygen from the air and release carbon dioxide during respiration. Carbon dioxide is also released by bacteria acting on dead plants and animals. Carbonate rocks remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and transfers it to the streams and oceans by weathering. Carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants for photosynthesis, used by animals for skeletons, or goes back to the atmosphere.
The composition of the earth's atmosphere is undergoing a major global change. Human activities such as air pollution, deforestation, the burning of fossil fuels, and even agricultural practices are now altering the delicate balance of gases in our atmosphere. Scientists are predicting major changes in world climate, including a rise in sea level and shifts in rainfall patterns. The chemicals we have added to the atmosphere are causing health problems, damaging lakes and forests, threatening the earth's ozone layer, and contaminating even the most remote areas of the earth.
It isn't easy to clean up the atmosphere. The problems are huge, interconnected and so complex they are not yet fully understood, even by scientists who have studied them for years. But the pollution keeps increasing, and today people understand that it is better to work to limit pollution today than to wait until damage to the atmosphere results in greater problems. (Underscoring supplied)
Air pollution, global warming, and ozone loss are global problems that demand international solutions. Today, scientists from many countries are working together on these problems, and international groups are drawing up laws to protect the atmosphere.
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See, folks, we are all in this together. We are all riders on planet Earth. Its health and future is in everybody's hands. Let us not choose to crash in it. (Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)