Today we had a taste of the future, literally. For the lucky many it was a taste in the back of the throat, a dry almost chemical taste. For the unlucky few it was streaming eyes, a cough & shortness of breath. For the very unlucky it was a trip to A&E. For most of us looking from our windows the local land mark were shrouded in a yellowy haze. Floods are a very visible reminder that global warming is real, we sand bag our houses, the news teams take endless pictures and stage live transitions from the waters edge where green fields used to prevail. Its a visual feast for Sky News and people can see the threat and it hits people in their wallets But this pollution is the real threat, it will kill us. Possibly not all of us but it could kill many of us, making our cities uninhabitable. Not just our cities, as i drove to Ely this morning through the wide open green fields of the East Anglian countryside the haze was awful. I was conscious of breathing, an act that for most of us is an unconscious reflex. For those of us that have suffered the SE Asian yearly smog due to the burning of agricultural land in Indonesia, for those of us who have endured Beijing. This is the future, the silent almost unseen killer. Imagine today, each and every day. If you wrap a tennis ball in paper it represents the proportionate of thickness of our precious atmosphere. Just that thin piece of paper to support all 7 billion humans and all life on earth. It is worse than that, as the sun is obscured even by a haze the efficiency of a solar panel can be reduced by 30 to 70%. Crop yields are reduced. Water quality diminishes. Today saw a 14% rise in emergency call outs for the ambulance service and it was just one day of poor air quality. The governments of the world cannot agree on the required and drastic action needed to reduce air pollution. Today we had a taste of the future, for a day. Imagine today for a summer, then imagine there is no longer any winter. This is our future and we need to act now just to survive.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 16:02:59 +0000
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