by Renae
(Sydney Australia)
The international science body that regularly produces assessment reports on climate change; suggests 200 million environmental refugees will exist by 2050. In this prediction, flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural degradation were seen as major factors contributing to bulk of environmental refugees.
The problems of climate change are already here. In Australia, we are experiencing one of the worst droughts in recorded history. In places of prosperity (countries not only of third world status) are being affected by global warming and the troubles are only going to continue to grow and spread as time goes on. I am not sure of why John Howard and others stood making speeches that climate change are just a scare tactic and not a real problem. I think mostly it was said because it is seen as too expensive to change the ways of the world yet I think it may be a little more expensive later down the track when we have hundreds of millions of people without any place to live. We do not have the technology to live in space; there are no known planets that we can inhabit and this will not change in fifty years time. It is just irresponsible to think like this and to leave these problems for future generations. What will happen to our children? Our grandchildren; the whole human race?
If Australians already think we have a problem with asylum seekers coming here because they have nowhere else to go what will happen when another 200 million are displaced? I think we might just run out of deserted islands and jail cells to put them in. Don’t you?
Has it occurred to anyone that it isn’t just other country’s problems? It isn’t just islands and coastlines that will be affected. Australia is in a drought now and we have coastlines that will be underwater, towns that will be washed away because of climate change. Has it occurred to the people who complain about asylum seekers, that we ourselves may in fact become climate refugees ourselves? It is here already yet global warming has been desperately covered up as ‘natural disasters’ because people aren’t ready to let go of the money they spend on superficial objects. These supposed ‘natural disasters’ are getting more frequent and extra violent. Of course people with the money want their plasma TVs and their designer houses, exclusive cars and trips around the world. Funny enough it hasn’t occurred to these people that there will be no land to sit their possessions on, let alone a world to use them. It is only those who do not have access to this type of money who seem to care enough about the planet to do something. This shouldn’t be the way. We have only one earth, we were ALL given this gift and yet because money and power has taken over, we forget. We forget that life comes from the earth; we are here because of what earth has to offer. Where is the respect for Mother Nature or for God?
Not many people will care in fifty years about possessions; so many more will be concern with finding fresh water, wondering where their next meal is going to come from. No longer will these problems be limited to the underprivileged and poverty stricken areas, quite the opposite actually, it will be everywhere. Without the earth, trees, fresh water, animals there is no us. It isn’t hard to start the change. There are so many difference renewable energy sources that are even more efficient than what we use today. So many simple tasks we can carrying out each day to reduce our negative effects on the world. Of course in the short term it will cost a lot of money yet is it not right to invest in future generations? In the survival of the human race? In the earth’s best interests? For the earth above money, above power is truly the most valuable and precious source of life.