Environmentalists Urge Renewable Energy at UN Meeting

During the United Nations meeting on Sunday, environmental activists urged nations to push through the development of renewable energy to prevent environmental problems and nuclear disasters like what happened in Fukushima, Japan.

One of the issues being raised at UN meeting in Bangkok Thailand was the formation of Green Climate Fund which was basically for helping the developing nations to get clean-energy technology. Nations had agreed to organize $100 billion a year, starting in 2020 however a “transition committee” to scheme the fund which was supposedly formed last month however it was still being discussed together with how the fund would be exactly be raised.

The technology committees and other institutions who would be implementing the resolutions were still negotiating. The World Wide Fund for Nature said that the talks in Bangkok needed to compromise at Cancun and "boost the overall ambition levels of the talks if we are to avert the worst consequences of climate change."

Greenpeace, another non-governmental organization, said that in light of the Japan disaster, governments represented in Bangkok were obliged to speed up changes in their energy sectors and promote green technologies.

"The world does not have to choose between climate disasters and disasters caused by dangerous energy like nuclear. We can choose a safe future where our societies are powered by renewable energy," it said.
As the conference began, activists from Asian and African countries began a weeklong protest outside the United Nations building, carrying an effigy of Uncle Sam to symbolize the role of the industrialized world in climate change. They said rich nations owed a huge climate debt to be repaid to developing ones by funding and technology transfer.

The global effort to avert climate change began with a 1992 U.N. treaty, when the world's nations promised to do their best to rein in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases emitted by industry, transportation and agriculture.

Progress, however, has been slow and many scientists warn that dramatic reductions in emissions will be needed to substantially slow the melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, the rise of sea levels and other consequences of global warming.

Global Warming, Is it a Fact or Just a Fiction?

Some people who have studied global issues are doubtful about global warming. They frequently say there was no such thing as global warming and it is all a big hoax. However, others disagree and believe that since the industrial revolution, we are having a negative effect on our environment.

The best place to start is to look at what we have already been led to believe. The Greenhouse effect is the relationship between the earth and the sun. The sun provides the earth with the heat and energy it needs and the earth releases back that energy into space.

The greenhouse effect comes into play as the gases in the earth trap that energy so that it cannot be released back into space therefore, warming the earth’s environment. The greenhouse effect is a natural process and vital to our survival, without it, the earth would be cold.

Gases such as Methane, Carbon dioxide and water vapor all trap energy from the sun and enable the warming of the earth. It is commonly known that plants provide Carbon dioxide (C02), but not so commonly known that plants also remove carbon dioxide. This is because, when a plant dies and is buried into the earth, these plants become fossil fuel which is coal and oil. When coal and oil is burned, this then removes the carbon dioxide from the air around it.
Two hundred years ago, before machinery was invented and cars filled our streets, global warming wasn’t an issue.
The natural gases which came from the earth would trap energy to warm the earth, however, since the industrial revolution, more gases are being produced, which means more energy is trapped and result is global warming.
Activists and researches cannot agree as to whether or not humans are causing global warming, but I think we can all agree that when something unnatural occurs, it affects the natural.
If we are producing more gases than what is known as natural, then you would expect that this would have an effect on our environment, but whether or not this affect is causing global warming, well, we will have to leave that down to the scientists.

It is said that in the last century the earth has warmed by 1%, although this is not a massive amount, it still could be an unnatural 1% which would have an effect on the earth’s climate. The truth of the matter is, the earth works in a certain way that even the best scientists in the world cannot fathom it. We can never assume we know it all just as we cannot 100% rely on what we already believe we know as there could be many unknown factors that have not been taken into account.

It is natural to believe that we are having some kind of effect on our environment in comparison to 200 years ago, but is the cause of global warming? I guess we couldn’t say either way, but what we do know is that we need to keep it in mind and do what we can to help in environmental protection.