2017-02-09



Ten thousand years is about the period of time between one Ice Age and the next. That’s pretty a long period of time if you ask me.

Ten thousand years is about the period of time between one Ice Age and the next. That’s pretty a long period of time if you ask me.

But I don’t want you to worry much about this since daily challenges of these modern times are enough causes of headaches. But, shouldn’t we worry about the temperature of our earth? If your child is running high on temperature, you worry, naturally.

Then you seek the reason, then the solution. I remember I could not sleep last night because the heat successfully melted sleep out of my skin. When eventually I woke up today and realized how cold everywhere was, I asked: what is happening here? Not being able to sleep well last night will rob me of some hours today, that's certain.

It’s the same way Heat or Ice keeps robbing the peoples of this wonderful world of happiness. You can easily think of Katrina, Sandy, and Tsunami. Now you are thinking! Each time it happens, the costs are often enormous: emotional, financial, and even spiritual. People ask God: why do you allow this? They impatiently do not wait for any answers before throwing their God in the sea and getting a dog – a trusted friend – in place.

Found enough reasons to worry about Ice and Heat Ages now? Remember those horribly cold years in Europe when the ice touched many hearts and brought them to a still? Another Ice Age is around the corner. Brace up, man! If your country is up in the Northern part of America and Europe especially, you are in for a big deal.

I do not want you to be thrown in the doldrums because of the fear of a heart-freezing future. Technology, hopefully, wound have gotten away around the whole thing before it surfaces again.

Nonetheless, whether technology comes up with a synthetic solution or not, we should also be ready for the Heat Age. Scientists have warned that this will probably come in full scale by the year 2050.

We don’t need more proofs to understand the precariousness of the Heat Age which in my opinion is already here. Ice thaws, seas overflow and wash the joys of the world away. Tears flow – we count ours losses.

This is not the height of it. Giant countries of the world are storming out of conferences meant to address cutting down greenhouse emissions. Trust China! The ones who remain in the conference hall are not wholeheartedly ready to practice what they preach. Asia, the United States, and Europe are the major culprits of the greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the emissions come from energy production and use, fuel-consuming vehicles, on the heels of this is agriculture.

“How will the economy grow if we reduce the rate of productions?” They have asked silently. Europe and America have continued to lecture the world on how healthy it is to make the world green again by cutting down factory emissions when right in their own backyard, the fumes rise higher into the sky day-by-day.

America’s former president, Barrack Obama put “Climate Action Plan” policy in place to help bring about a considerable reduction in carbon emissions. Trump’s administration has thrown this into the trash can and has it replaced with The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Like Obama’s CAP, EPA too is erected to protect the environment, “air and water” as the document stated. EPA officials have been directed not to make any disclosure concerning climate information documents to the public.

This sounds like a war on the environment. People need a sound knowledge of their environment in order to protect it. Obama online archive is now home to the climate information taken down from the white House site.

All this has elicited a number of reactions from different people. An expert climate promoter, Alden Meyer while speaking to BBC News on behalf of scientists dismissed the new government effort as an assault on scientists.

He opined “President Trump and his team are pursuing what I call a ‘control-alt-delete’ strategy: control the scientists in the federal agencies, alter science-based policies to fit their narrow ideological agenda, and delete scientific information from government websites.”

Whatever policies the first world countries adopt in the fight for the soul of our universal environment, they should follow it to the letter. Termite countries are watching and will naturally take a leaf out of the book of the elephant countries.

The question remains: how do we feed to our fill without harming our planet? Greenhouse gas emissions cannot just stop like that. Modern life is intricately tied to it. The reasonable thing to do therefore is to cut it down. Which country is really ready for this? We realize the economic implications of cutting it down.

However, we can promote the use of biofuels, reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, reduce fluorinated gases, recover gases from landfills and promote electricity from renewable energy. It is good news that some parts of the world are already thinking in this direction.

There is no country of the world that is absolutely protected from the effect of the Heat Age. You are getting boiled in your room in Mali, some children are getting swept away by the sea in their school in America.

So you see, everyone pays. We always pay for the Heat and the Ice. They are not accidents of nature but constructs of our actions. Ice the heat and Heat the Ice. Perhaps, a commingling of two Ages would give us the desired temperature. Perhaps the Ice Age would never come again.

Perhaps the heat would lessen or intensify. Perhaps more will still die the death of nature. Perhaps science and technology will be our Eden. Perhaps.

Written By

Omidire, Idowu Joshua has written for several online magazines and edited for publication firms and individuals.

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