GREENHOUSES

People in Greenhouses

People in Greenhouses

A Close-Run Thing (Twenty-Three)

Since there was a huge climate change crisis in 2004, humanity seemed to be in a hopeless muddle in developing a response to it. This made the decision for Russia to sign the Kyoto Protocol a lot easier. The first signs of a problem arose in the 1970's, when readings of ozone concentration in the stratosphere above the Antarctic began to look decidedly odd. At first it seemed to be an error with their instruments since the readings were so bizarre. A hole in the ozone layer seemed to be humorous since scientist said that this looked like the end of the world. A “hole” in the ozone layer as an area of atmosphere with less than 220 Dobson units of ozone. By the year 2000, the hold and grown to 11 million square miles. A second hole appeared in the 1990's. Without ozone's very high sun-protection factor, ultraviolet radiation would kill you fast, by tearing apart you DNA and breaking other chemical bonds within your cells. Bromine destroys ozone at an accelerated rate. Although it only last for about a year, the destruction in that one year is huge. It is not just human bodies affected by UV, for the impacts of its increase are felt throughout the ecosystem. So vulnerable are many marine species that without stratosphere ozone they would go into a swift decline, precipitating a collapse of the oceans' ecosystems. People are very lucky that humans did not find bromine cheaper than chlorine, or, they would all have had cancer by the time they made the discovery of the hole in the ozone, in the 1970's (Charles, 2006).

The Road to Kyoto (Twenty-Four)

There are two big reasons for the Kyoto Protocol to be the most bitterly contested international treaty ever to be realized, these two reasons are economics and politics. Since the populations in developed worlds are growing at such a high rate, and the energy use is growing at even a faster rate, the Kyoto Protocol will have a big influence on the outcome of that competition, and a fierce struggle is ensuing between the potential winners and losers. Since there are some people that are certain it is essential to Earth's survival and others that fiercely opposed on economic and ideological grounds, there is an enormous divide. There are only a few countries that have still not yet signed the Kyoto Protocol. The USA, Australia, Monaco, and Liechtenstein, they are all starting to feel the pressure to join. It will only take a matter of five years for people to notice the reduction in greenhouse gases. Since CO2 is the most significant greenhouse gas, the Kyoto Protocol has set a budget that each pollutant as to how much CO2 they can emit each year. If they go over then, they will have a penalty. There will be cuts of 70 percent by 2050 to keep atmospheric CO2 at dual the industrial ...