I Stamped All Over It: Carbon Footprint and Its Impact

I drive my sedan on and off from work, I lay my print. I burn the extra energy turning the heater on to make myself cozy at nights, I lay my next print. I use and dump all the plastics, I lay another print. I keep iterating these over years only to loose count of these prints and see myself stamping all over. These prints christened as the “carbon footprints” have had an impending affect on the ecological system I live in. The “carbon footprints” are a measure of the carbon dioxide (green house gas) that is emitted into the atmosphere not by a natural phenomena but rather the resultant of our individual daily chores. These foot prints aggrandize to alarming levels and rings the death knell.

The presence of excessive carbon dioxide gives us the popular green house effect; The outcome of this effect being global warming. The earth has seen varying temperature changes across all the regions, the prominent being the polar ice caps at the tip of the northern hemisphere. It has seen a raise of one degree centigrade temperature rise to three degrees centigrade over the last fifty years. Majority of the industrial development being on the northern hemisphere has heated up the situation. Global warming has intruded significantly into our Eco-system; Rise in sea levels, depletion of the ozone layer, warmer climatic conditions, outbreak of epidemics, droughts and unusual rainfall, scorching forest fires etc.

Scientists from the newcastle university, UK who have been analyzing the weather conditions have predicted that unusual and extreme rainfall could cause the regions on the river side to be flooded often in the future, ten percent of the UK population reside on river side. This year regions of southern India have experienced a drought not seen in the past thirty eight years and have experienced a flurry of showers resulting in massive floods not seen in the past fifty years within a span of mere fourteen days. Kenya has seen the worst drought in sixty years in 2001, affecting over four millions people. South Africa’s soaring temperatures has dried up the regions to ignite fires along the coast of the western Cape province. These can be reasons enough to be alarmed about the current situation and pay heed to the forth coming catastrophes.

This unnatural phenomena can neither be evaded nor reverted but can be subdued to a great extent. The solution is simple, stop stamping and hopping around unnecessarily. Though abstract the solution can be broken down to a multitude of steps; avoid unnecessary driving or use low fuel consumption automobiles though you have to compromise on the comfort and/or pleasure, make use of car pool, use public transportation as much as possible, switch to renewable energy resources (hydroelectric, wind, solar etc), encourage using biodegradable forms of commodities (paper over plastic), encourage recycling of non-degradable commodities, Plant more and more trees etc these are a great deal of simple yet significant measures that prevent tampering our natural resources and Eco-system. Leave less carbon footprints to see yourself lay your foot prints on greener pastures.

Ikshwak Kandi Reddy
(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)
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[Image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41118122@N00/4052345790/]

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