U.N.Secretary Generals come and go and soon forgotten. But the present Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is an exception. He will remain in the annals of history for a long time to come for he is the most environmentally conscious public figure ever.
In all international forums, his bold voice is heard protesting against the evils done to the MOTHER EARTH and exhorting the myopic world leaders to scale down any activity that directly or indirectly promote a worsening of the environmental situation. His words at the last session of the World Climate Conference are prophetic for its apocalyptic emphasis. And there is extreme irony in the metaphor he used to express it.
‘OUR FOOT IS STUCK ON THE ACCELATOR AND WE ARE HEADING TOWARDS AN ABYSS,’ Who pollutes the environment more than the guy sitting behind the steering wheel of a motor vehicle powered by the despicable internal combustion engine – oh, I know he has no choice.
Recently he visited Svalbard, an island situated in Norway. He watched in grief the death of another glacier, collapsed as a result of the personal greed of a group of industrialists and their colluding henchmen occupying the Olympian heights of politics.
The distant scenarios that the scientists have been predicting are happening now according to this wise and concerned international diplomat. He made a dig at those who claimed that there is no climatic change or if there is, it is necessary for economic growth. He said those who called scientists scaremongers are the real scaremongers for they are taking the whole world with all the people in it towards ultimate destruction, a veritable end of the world as prophesied in all religions.
This modern day great has made extensive visits around the world to the current ecological hot spots. He watched anxiously as the desert ate into Chad, the diminishing of the Amazonian forests in Brazil and the disappearance of the layers of ice in the Poles.
He warned, “change is altering the geopolitical landscape” itself. A whopping 130 million people will be affected. And the worst sufferers will be the poorest countries that have done no harm. The have to pay the price for the avariciousness of certain industrialists and the politicians kowtowing to them in the name of progress.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ARE FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE AND NOT TO MAKE HOMO SAPIENS ANOTHER EXTINCT SPECIE.
Hats off to the greatest modern-day-individual BAN KI-MOON.
Showing posts with label melting glaciers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label melting glaciers. Show all posts
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Beware of Traitors
These days when many are worried about the deteriorating environment and its consequences, certain people raise their evil heads here and there, claiming that global warming is a scam, dreamed up some scientists who don’t know what they are talking about. They go on to say that the process of global warming is quite natural and not man-made at all, like everyone else seems to think. They assure us, heating up and cooling down of the atmosphere occur all the time. It only means that Nature is going about her business in her own way. Dontcha worry, old boy, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.
Here, I wish to point out certain home truths to these misguided apologists for carbon emissions – they might even claim like the ignoramuses that they are that since carbon dioxide and monoxide contain oxygen, it will compersate fot the carbon molecules spewed out into the atmosphere. So what’s the problem!
I happen to live in India and have seen the melting glaciers of the great Himalayas. My friends in Europe tell me the same thing is happening there and soon there won’t be any ski slopes left in the Alps and other such areas, fit to ski. The inhabitants of the scenic Maldives are looking elsewhere to migrate when their lovely islands are submerged under the sea forever, through no fault of their own.
A friend of mine, a devout Christian tells me that the end of the world is nigh. All the pestilences, famines, floods and other calamities mentioned in the good book are coming to a pass. He even exhorted me to prepare myself with constant prayers.
Hollywood issues some prophetic movies at regular intervals, depicting what it will be like in the years to come. Such movies show the Earth as bleak, barren and inhospitable – some even say that NASA is looking for worlds to which humans can migrate to, once our planet becomes unfit to live. And many industrialists and politicians watch these movies. But they watch them as something merely entertaining, figments of some scriptwriter’s fertile imagination. But the real fact of the matter is that such scripts are well researched for the fellers who wrote them in the first place, know what they are talking about.
May be the skeptics will believe it when the world becomes ‘The Water World’.
It’ll like Noah’s warning to the world at large. Those who ignore it, do so at their own peril.
Here, I wish to point out certain home truths to these misguided apologists for carbon emissions – they might even claim like the ignoramuses that they are that since carbon dioxide and monoxide contain oxygen, it will compersate fot the carbon molecules spewed out into the atmosphere. So what’s the problem!
I happen to live in India and have seen the melting glaciers of the great Himalayas. My friends in Europe tell me the same thing is happening there and soon there won’t be any ski slopes left in the Alps and other such areas, fit to ski. The inhabitants of the scenic Maldives are looking elsewhere to migrate when their lovely islands are submerged under the sea forever, through no fault of their own.
A friend of mine, a devout Christian tells me that the end of the world is nigh. All the pestilences, famines, floods and other calamities mentioned in the good book are coming to a pass. He even exhorted me to prepare myself with constant prayers.
Hollywood issues some prophetic movies at regular intervals, depicting what it will be like in the years to come. Such movies show the Earth as bleak, barren and inhospitable – some even say that NASA is looking for worlds to which humans can migrate to, once our planet becomes unfit to live. And many industrialists and politicians watch these movies. But they watch them as something merely entertaining, figments of some scriptwriter’s fertile imagination. But the real fact of the matter is that such scripts are well researched for the fellers who wrote them in the first place, know what they are talking about.
May be the skeptics will believe it when the world becomes ‘The Water World’.
It’ll like Noah’s warning to the world at large. Those who ignore it, do so at their own peril.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Imja, The Himalayan Glacier…A Lake Now!
Himalayan glaciers are slowly turning into lakes. It was in the 1950s that Erwin Schneider and Fritz Muller braved the extreme hazards of a Himalayan winter to map and measure the Imja glacier, a major glacier that has been there for thousands of years.
Half a century has passed when the famous mountain geographer Alton Byers reached the very same breath taking location. But the photographs he took of the region and exhibited at Bonn, Germany tells us a different story, shocking in its implications. The famous glacier has all but disappeared and a lake stands in its stead. Small glaciers at the lower reaches have vanished altogether and only half of the larger glaciers remain.
Now most of the awesome glacier has become a lake and keep on declining at an alarming rate. Sadly the same trend is repeated all around the globe, in the Alps, Greenland and the poles.
Nepal, home for most of the Himalayas is getting increasingly warmer as a result. At certain points the banks of the lake is vulnerable. If any of these points is breached the toll of destruction it will exact will be cataclysmic.
Poor Imja Glacier! Can we turn ironic and call it the Imja Lake?
Half a century has passed when the famous mountain geographer Alton Byers reached the very same breath taking location. But the photographs he took of the region and exhibited at Bonn, Germany tells us a different story, shocking in its implications. The famous glacier has all but disappeared and a lake stands in its stead. Small glaciers at the lower reaches have vanished altogether and only half of the larger glaciers remain.
Now most of the awesome glacier has become a lake and keep on declining at an alarming rate. Sadly the same trend is repeated all around the globe, in the Alps, Greenland and the poles.
Nepal, home for most of the Himalayas is getting increasingly warmer as a result. At certain points the banks of the lake is vulnerable. If any of these points is breached the toll of destruction it will exact will be cataclysmic.
Poor Imja Glacier! Can we turn ironic and call it the Imja Lake?
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