Post by Giuseppe Dalu. During the fifties was spread the idea that consumerism would bring development and prosperity, but already in the sixties we began to see two side effects:
1. Negative impact on the environment, and the “disposable” approach very soon led to the problem of waste disposal, still unresolved;
2. Increasing the gap between rich and poor countries, and also between rich and poor people within the same country.
McNamara realized, and denounced the fact that 20% of the population was using no less than 80% of the world’s resources (Robert S. McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, president of World Bank from 1968 to 1981). Volunteerism was encouraged (ie Peace Corps) and other smaller initiatives, with a too limited scope and duration to produce tangible effects.
To ensure protection for the environment, in the early seventies the United States created the EPA (Environment Protection Agengy), but the first warnings about global warming were ridiculed. The E. P. A. was more involved on the deterioration of the ozone layer (ozone depletion) caused by the widespread use of fluorocarbons, and the need to assess the impact of supersonic commercial flights in the stratosphere (Concorde).The pollutants reside in the stratosphere for years, instead those from the troposphere are removed from the clouds and thunderstorms, in about a week It was nevertheless a significant step forward to realize that the man was able to introduce global environmental changes. However, the United States refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which scope was to fight global warming. The protocol required time and ways to limit the release of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
In 2006 came the warning cry of the British scientist James Lovelock, who in an interview to the newspaper “Independent” argued that the warming of the earth have now reached the point of no return, and that mankind would have a little less a century left. The impact of climate change within fifty years will make life possible only in a very limited portion of the planet, condemning billions of people to certain death. The prediction comes from a very original approach that observes all the external factors acting on the atmosphere, for example, the melting of the poles, resulting in a rise in temperature of the oceans, because the ice no longer reflects the sun’s rays.
Greenpeace, while stressing that the news for the environment in recent times were decidedly negative, appreciates Lovelock’s position as being excessive.
But it isn’t. Lovelock is a climatologist and has examined only the climate changes caused by man, and did not take into account the exponential increase in population, the huge mass of desperate people ready for anything, the rapid spread of weapons of mass destruction, the existence of dictators who pursue power by sacrificing the welfare of their people.
Global warming may actually trigger a chain reaction with disastrous consequences never seen before, and this already in the years 2030.
Now, it is a race against time.