Global phenomenon we're just taking for granted - II

Further citing TIME en toto: "During the last ice age, the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was just 180 parts per million (ppm), putting Earth into a deep freeze. After the glaciers retreated but before the dawn of the modern era, the total had risen to a comfortable 280 ppm. In just the past century and a half, we have pushed the level to 381 ppm, and we're feeling the effect. Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 occurred in the 1980s or later. According to NASA scientists, 2005 was one of the hottest years in more than a century".

Other readings reveal that the ozone layer depletion - the ozone hole - somewhere in the atmosphere over the South Pole is due to the accumulated greenhouse gas emissions from Earth. The ozone is oxygen forming an atmospheric layer that serves as a buffer or a "ceiling" that blocks the sun's ultra violet (UV) rays.

With the ever-enlarging ozone hole, mountains of glaciers and ice caps are rapidly causing massive meltdown which, in turn, spells abnormal climatic change worldwide.

With such grim picture facing the Earth, what can mankind do, if any, to save the world from nature's anger over man's inhumanity to man himself by over-abusing nature's bounty that sustains man's very life? Simplistically put, there must be concerted, determined, and no-nonsense universal crusade to address this gravest of earth's problems.

Scientific experts don't have a one-shot and immediate solution. None of that giant leap to reverse the atrocious recklessness man has brought on Mother Nature. It's not a matter of what can be done, but more of a climactic turn-around of undoing. Or to stop what man has done in abusing God's creations.

Jeffrey Kluger's article "The Tipping Point" observes: "Is it too late to reverse the changes global warming has wrought? That's still not clear. Reducing our emissions output year to year is hard enough. Getting it low enough so that the atmosphere can heal is a multi-generational commitment".

The ultimate theoretical solution is reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions into space. But, as the saying goes, it's better said than done. To quote the Bard of Avon: "If to say were as easy as to know what were good to do/ Chapels would have been churches/ Frenchmen's cottages, princes' palaces".

About 141 nations ratified the Kyoto protocol, a treaty to reduce CO2 emissions. Strangely, the Americans who constitute just 5 percent of the world population, but emit more than 25 percent of the Earth's greenhouse waste, have stayed lukewarm. In fact, Bill Clinton bashed incumbent George Bush in Montreal where multi-national crusaders against space pollution last met, for the latter's resistance to the Kyoto protocol.

So far, Pres. Bush's tepid concern has been limited to "research and voluntary emission controls" that hardly make a dent of what world scientists are calling for.

Coming to the domestic level, what has the government and its leadership been doing, if any, with regard to this universal crusade for reduction of gas emission? A smattering of remedial steps have been pursued, such as, the clean air act, the clean and green projects, the still inutile brouhaha on alternative energy sources, and the lip service on reforestation and greening of forest covers and the hillsides All these are very puny efforts and more honored in the breach than in the observance.

The living generations now have better come to grips with this catastrophic phenomenon, if only to spare the next and coming generations from the Armageddon-like fate due to the sins of their forebears.

There's still hope though According to Japanese scientists, the ozone hole over Antarctica may, yes, may disappear by year 2050 due to reduction of chlorofluorocarbon and other greenhouse gas emissions released into space.