How can we prevent catastrophes like the bomb of 10,000 suns over Hiroshima or the warming blanket of one sun trapped over the earth?
As you probably already know, the earth is warming up. The cause of this global warming is the amassing of carbon dioxide and air pollutants in the atmosphere. That accumulation creates a thick blanket over the earth which traps the heat from the sun. The main cause of this ever-thickening blanket in the atmosphere is automobile emissions and coal-burning power plants.
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| Photo Denis Boulanger |
The sun has been our source of heat for thousands of years and still is to the present day; the fuel oil we use today is energy from the sun from thousands of years ago stored in the earth. It is interesting to note that the further back we dig into the bank of energy left by our sun (oil, coal) the more powerful and intense the energy we are able to produce (uranium is basically star dust). Maybe the question is this: Can we find ways to use the present energy of the sun and do less digging back into the fossils? Can sun and wind energy and fuels made from plants help us to find the balance we need to transform the warming blanket back to clean air?
Al Gore’s movie, Inconvenient Truth, suggests we need another paradigm shift in our thinking, not of the Copernican kind where we just have to accept the truth of the relationship of the sun to the earth. The new shift may require us to accept a new relationship between the sun’s energy and our personal needs.
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Do you ever wonder what you can do to help? What about the simple light bulb? According to the NRDC, by using just one compact fluorescent light bulb “you will keep 700 lbs. of carbon dioxide out of the air over the bulb’s lifetime.” According to Al Gore, the biggest stumbling block in our struggle to clean up the atmosphere is the political will to do it. Buy the fluorescent bulb and contact your local representative.
Bernice Sorge