Thinking Green

By Hyon O'Brien

Last month in Okinawa, I had a chance to walk around in one of the markets in Naha city. I was very impressed to see a T-shirt store whose products contained messages devoted entirely to environmental concerns.

One shirt proclaimed that ``Nature is not endless.'' Then on May 1, I read an alarming report by the Associated Press that massive ice chunks at a size larger than Rhode Island will be breaking away in the coming weeks from the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula as a result of atmospheric warming. These two prompted me to write this article that I have been keeping on the back burner for some time.

In 2006, a documentary called ``An Inconvenient Truth" written by and starring Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States, presented the planetary emergency of global warming. This documentary won 2007 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Al Gore received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming.

Watching the documentary I was quite alarmed by its warning. Over the years, even before this documentary, I have been made aware of this issue of global warming and climate change through other sources, but listening to Gore's point-by-point explanation hit home on this issue more than ever. By the time this documentary was made, I am told Gore had given about 1,000 presentations in different parts of the world to educate the public about the severity of the climate crisis. Imagine an actor after 1000 rehearsals and standing finally in front of a camera to record what he has to say. It was convincing and informative.

One film critic called the film ``one of the most realistic documentaries I've ever seen ― and, dry as it is, one of the most devastating in its implications." Another added that while it was ``not the most entertaining film of the year. It might be the most important" and ``a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hell-bent path to global suicide."

The film's thesis is that global warming is real, potentially catastrophic, and human-caused. Gore presents specific data that supports this assertion including, the Keeling curve, measuring CO2 from the Mauna Loa Observatory and the retreat of numerous glaciers since 1850.

It also showed a study by researchers at the Physics Institute at the University of Bern and the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica presenting data from the Antarctic ice cores showing carbon dioxide concentrations higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years.

The it revealed temperature records since 1880 showing that the ten hottest years ever measured in this atmospheric record have all occurred in the last 14 years.

In a slide show format, Gore reviews the scientific opinion on climate change, discusses the politics and economics of global warming and describes the consequences he believes global climate change will produce if the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is not significantly reduced in the very near future.

Now that we have established the fact that global warming is happening whether we are like it or not, what can an ordinary person like you and me do? Plenty!

Let's start with cars:

Use BMWs more often: ride Buses, Metros (and trains), and Walk whenever possible.

Learn to bike. It is great to hear that Korea will have 3,000-kilometer-long bike-only lanes by 2020.

If you must drive, try car pooling.

Never use a car as a waiting place by keeping the air-conditioner going in the summer months and heating going in the winter months.

Never let the car idle; turn the engine off if you are waiting to pick up someone.

Buy a hybrid car.

Buy an electric car: take a look at GM's Volt, scheduled to go on sale next year. Powered by batteries made by LG Chem, it will run cheaply and efficiently on household electricity. .

Around the house and office:

Install florescent lights in place of regular bulbs, which burn 4 times more energy.

Think solar and wind power in designing a house and an office. President Obama on a recent Earth Day (April 22) shared his plan to promote wind power: that wind could generate as much as 20 percent of the U.S. electricity demand by 2030 if its full potential is pursued on land and offshore. This energy plan would reduce greenhouse gases by 20% from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by the middle of the century.

Turn off lights and electric appliances whenever not in use.

Save water: take a shower instead of a bath and put a brick in the toilet water cistern to reduce the volume of each flush. .

Use e-mails, phone calls and videoconferences instead of physical meetings.

Bring your own mug to meetings and avoid using Styrofoam and paper cups.

Use reusable cloth wrapper (Korean bojagi) in place of wrapping paper.

Carry your own chopsticks on your travels. I heard that each year Japan alone consumes lumber the equivalent to building 100 houses by using wooden disposable chopsticks.

Eat vegetarian meals. Livestock are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation. This is due to the large amounts of petroleum used in creating ammonium nitrate fertilizer (for the corn they are fed) plus the cost of shipping that corn to the cattle and then shipping the cattle to slaughterhouses and retailers. Choosing vegetarian foods also drastically reduces agricultural water consumption and land use and favorably impacts on biodiversity.

Educate yourself and others around you about global warming. The more facts you have as to what mainstream science says about it, the more you can persuade others to make simple but effective changes in daily behavior. Each person can play a vital role in helping to reduce global warming. We are all in this together. Let's remember that nature is not endless unless we take good care of it.

Hyon O' Brien, a former reference librarian in the United States, has returned to Korea after 32 years of living abroad. She can be reached at hyonobrien@gmail.com.

[출처 : 코리아타임스]