Global Warming: Too Hot To Handle?

Dick Kazan Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 2:42 pm

At the suggestion of reader Alex, I am posting "Global Warming" as a topic for your comments.

A friend of mine pointed to the massive California fires as a sign of global warming. Sadly, these fires killed 12-people and burned about 800 square miles as they destroyed 2,000 homes.

For a time, several hundred thousand people fled their homes with 10,000 of them housed in San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers football team.

And soon when the winter rains arrive. major mudslides will hit where the vegetation used to be.

But California is just a small part of the global warming problem. in Georgia they are confronted by a catastrophic drought which threatens the water supply for millions of people. In upstate New York, their reservoirs are at all-time lows. And the Great Lakes are receding.

We know the Polar ice caps are melting and that the rain forests are rapidly disappearing. And every day, we dump incredible amounts of toxic wastes into the air, the ground, the streams and the oceans.

I'm no expert but it is obvious mother earth doesn't have an endless capacity to absorb all these wastes.

And here's a topic seldom discussed. War not only obliterates everything in its path, it is a huge polluter. But the good news is that great minds all over the world could develop solutions to our environmental problems if given the financial resources and a portion of the money wasted on war could get them started.

We have the intellect, the knowledge and the resources to solve them. It just takes the leadership, the will and the determination to do it.

In the meantime, you and I can do our part by driving fuel efficient cars, keeping our tires properly inflated which improves gas mileage, using less electricity, natural gas and/or fuel oil in our homes and turning off unused lights and equipment when we leave our offices.

We can also recycle rather than dumping our waste into landfills whose toxic chemicals seep into our water supplies and into the air. And we can buy products made from recycled materials. These are just a few examples of how you and I without waiting another day can help to make this world's environment a tiny bit better.

Dick