Environmental Awareness.

I was attending a lecture when our professor informed us that some environmentalist Bill McKibben from U.S has come to give a seminar on Global Warming. I was so irritated to hear this. Who wants a lecture on EVS, damn? Its going to be so boring. When I reached there the whole conference room was filled with annoyed students like me. We sat and Bill began his presentation and I was captivated by his speech.

He told us that carbon content in atmosphere has reached 390ppm(parts per million) while the number estimated by scientist and geologists for healthy environment is 350ppm. This increase in carbon has resulted in so many hazards all over the world. It has raised the temperature of earth by 1 degree Celsius. All glaciers are melting due to which the sea level has raised. Also the climate has become uncertain. Mumbaikars witnessed tides 5.5m high, the highest tide of the century. Also the rainy season came very late this year in the end of June. Now 2 days back torrential rain and floods claimed 227 deaths in India, out of which 200 died in Andra and Tamil Nadu. All these are known to be the effects of global warming.

He also told us that America which has 4% of world population itself produces 25% of world pollution. All of us were bewildered. This is because of their surplus use of resources like petrol, coal, natural gas, electricity etc. India is getting affected because it is estimated that India must have 33% of land under forestation, however today there is only 12% forest land. Thus we not only need to protect the existing forests but also bring more land under forestation.

The good news: This year the world’s leaders will meet in Copenhagen in December to reach agreement on a new climate treaty, we need them to go farther than they’ve planned to go: we need to make sure they’ll pay attention to the latest science and put forward a plan that gets us back to safety.

So here’s the plan. On October 24, we need you to organize an action in the place where you live, something that will make that most important number visible to everyone. People in more than 1000 communities around the globe have already announced plans—they’ll be school children planting 350 trees in Bangladesh, scientists hanging banners saying 350 on the statues on Easter Island, 350 scuba divers diving underwater at the Great Barrier Reef, and a thousand more creative actions like these. At each event, people will gather for a big group photo that somehow depicts 350--and upload that photo to the web 350.org. As actions take place around the world, we'll link all the pictures together electronically via the web--by the end of the day, we'll have a powerful visual petition linking together the entire planet that we can deliver to the media and world leaders.

If you want to contribute and help us in safety of our earth and human beings then join us on http://www.350.org. We will help you to initiate and spread the message in your area.

Thank you.