Changes in World Environment and its Effects

“People praying to God to send rains in the Monsoon months of July and August”

“Snowfall in Srinagar in the month of June”

“No warm clothes in the month of December in Northern India”

“Flash floods killing thousands of people in S.E Asia”

All these news are a clear indicator to the environmental

changes that our mother Earth is passing through. Earth has gone through many cycles
of ice ages and worm periods in its last 4.5 billion years of age mainly due to changes in
plate tectonics, solar radiations, volcanism and ocean variability like El-nino. But of
late the Human influence is causing these environmental changes to happen at such a
fast pace that it is difficult to comprehend.
The increase in Green house gasses in the atmosphere is
causing the average temperature to increase since middle of 20th century. The ten most
warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997. According to World
Metrological Organization, 1990 was the warmest decade and 1900 the warmest
century during the last 1000 years.
The reckless removal of forest cover in equatorial region and
mountains, burning of fossil fuels, ever increasing demand of power, factory, vehicle
and power house exhausts are putting a huge demand on the varied ecosystem that
make up the world environment.
Never before has the human society existed in the world
where the concentration of heat trapping carbon dioxide and methane as high as now.
Environmentalist have calculated it to be the highest in the last 4,20,000 years. These
green house gasses since the start of industrial revolution is warming the planet and
changing our climate beyond the natural cyclic variability.
 This global warming is causing extreme weather events. The
heat waves and regional droughts have become more frequent during the past 40-50
years thereby effecting the agricultural out put of many regions. The ferocity of
hurricanes and cyclones has been increasing damaging the human property worth
billions of rupees every year. The Arctic ice is declining rapidly and the glacier cover
and ice line on mountains is receding at an alarming rate. This melting of ice is causing
flash floods and human misery. The sea level is rising and will continue to rise in
future putting to stake the lives of crores of people living in low lying coastal areas and
islands. Up to 30 % of plants and animal species are at the risk of extinction with every
1.50 c average rise in global temperature .This ever increasing human interference in
environment has wide range of implication for human health also. Many important
diseases like Malaria, Dengue, Diarrhea etc are highly sensitive to temperature and
become more potent killers with rise in global temperatures.
The continuous warming of oceans will result in the
death of Plankton which is the basic ingredient in the marine food chain. The coral reefs
including the Great Barrier Reef will cease to exist destroying the associated eco
system. This change in the environment has already destroyed 1/3 of the world
Mangrove forest in the last two decade. These events are not isolated but have wide
overall environmental ramifications.
The nations of the world have to act urgently to cut
down the emission of these obnoxious green house gasses to save our mother Earth.
Otherwise the days are not far when Earth will become as life less as other planets of
this Solar system.
“WE HAVE NOT INHERITED OUR EATH FROM
ANCESTORS ,WE HAVE BORROWED IT
FROM OUR NEXT GENERATIONS”