Will’s Blog

Just saw this news article while playing around with this news map application.

It’s a flash based web interface which shows news stories from Google News. The most talked about news items get a bigger box (talked about items are ranked by how many related articles there are). A very interesting approach at laying out the daily news.

It also shows you how much attention is given to each individual issue. And some issues do deserve more attention than they are otherwise given.
Perhaps with the blogosphere, we can use it to highlight other important “issues” that are otherwise not given much coverage by the mainstream media.

Here is a comment to one of my blogs posts over on the Melbourne Metroblog (comment written by Winza):

As a water-poor country that’s susceptible to climate extremes in terms of droughts and floods, we need do more to protect our natural resources. It is not just water that we need to protect because everything’s connected – land clearing for example would have adverse impacts on water quality.

And even though we have the technology to mitigate pollution and climate change, we still need to be cautious about what we’re about to do or what we’re about to buy because the more we consume, the larger our ecological footprint and the bigger the impact on the environment.
…
Not many people right now are considering about the future of our planet and we can’t really do anything but to spread the word and to think before we act.

Alright, back to the two articles I linked to earlier, one is titled “Coverting All Cars: Hydrogen Would Have Big Impact“, the other “Pollution Free Hydrogen based fuel for Energy“.

Without having read the two articles, what would that suggest to you?

To me it suggests one big thing, converting all current vehicles from Petroleum based over to Hydrogen based fuel would have a big impact on how much pollution we are creating.

I remember when I visited Bangkok for the first time in 1996, people were walking around with white masks on. My uncle told me it was due to how much pollution there was in the air over there. Pollution generated by the vehicles (motorbikes, tuk tuks, cars, buses and so on…). I don’t know if the situation has improved of late or gotten worse. I’m almost certain it has gotten worse, which is a shame.

When the news item on China trying to buy an American oil firm, we started talking about firstly, the demand for more vehicle transport (moving away from the humble bicycle) and then onto the pollution factor that this will cause to the breathability of the air over there, as well as the effects to the environment. They may not see the effects now, but they will in time.

As China continues it’s rise, from a financial standpoint it’s pollution generating factor will be on the increase. But this is not just a factor for China, but also for surrounding countries as well.

I really don’t want someday when a view like this is only a distant memory for our decendants generations from now rather than something they can visit easily. We should be protecting and preserving what we have now so that future generations can see what we see.

Let’s now not trash our planet.

Think of the consequences.

This post from the WorldChanging blog on The Tsunami and Climate Change states:

the Tsunami was not caused by climate change, but we can expect to see more disasters like it if climate change gets as bad as now expected.

Climate change may already be having profound effects: unusual weather disasters killed 75,000 people in the developing world in 2003, and hundreds of thousands more lost their homes. Things are expected to get much worse: by the 2080s, as many as 200 million people may have been made refugees by climate instability. If the models are even half right, big swathes of the world are going to be experiencing massive disasters on a pretty regular basis.

We know that the planet’s climate is changing. We know that we’re largely responsible. We know that the poorest people on Earth will be hardest hit. We also know how to do many things to help them live better now, and better withstand the heavy weather that’s on its way. The only question is whether we care enough to put our knowledge to use.

This divide between rich and poor nations aren’t going to get any better, and if it does, we have a bigger worry on our hands than who is rich, and who is bombing whom. All this living in fear of terrorists. What does any of that matter if we don’t do something to salvage this mighty planet of ours?

What will it take for people around the world to take notice of the natural disasters occuring worldwide due to climate change, much of which can be attributed to pollution?

Will another Boxing Day Tsunami type disaster to wake people up? Why should we wait until something happens before we fix it, rather than doing something now to prevent it from happening?

Wealthy countries should be spending money helping their poorer neighbours with implementing strategies to reduce pollution, as well as looking at minimising the pollution being output in their own country.

Wake up world! This beautiful green planet of ours is changing, much of it we can help slow the process of. The standard of living worldwide is in need of a lift, and pollution is just one of those things that is dragging it down.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 27th, 2005 at 11:41 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.