Eco Concerns

While mankind squabbles over the prices of oil in the Middle East, the consequences of Zoloft and Yaz side effects brought about by our pill addiction, and our fixation on the lives of Hollywood celebs, anthropogenic climate change continues to impact the world, and with it, the global economy.

Because of the rapid growth of the human population, global warming has increased the surface temperatures of Earth by 0.6 Celsius over the past century. This phenomenon encouraged an abrupt change to weather cycles around the globe, causing an aggravated climate change/anthropogenic global warming. The extreme change in climate gives way to unusual weather events happening in various locations where it doesn’t usually occur, and it causes global temperatures to either go above or below the average level.

The erratic weather produced by global warming became a severe detriment to the agricultural sector globally. Destructive weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons destroy tons of crops each year. These heavy losses due to unpredictable weather patterns raise questions to the food security of countries that specialize in agriculture, as well as creating a dent in the job security of those who depend on it for their living.

The destruction of crops also affects food prices: while those who tend to these fields might find higher prices to be good, the urban poor suffers a heavy blow, as a major part of their salary goes to food. The costs of repairing the hectares of lands that are damaged by unexpected changes in weather add to the problem of mismanaged resources- resources which should have been used to fix the fields (soil, irrigation, etc) before these events occurred.

Higher prices mean that the poor cannot even afford staple foods such as rice. Other problems brought on by climate change not only affects the agricultural sector but the industrial sector as well, since factories and sources for raw materials are also affected by the extreme shifts in weather.

Increased rates in energy rates, lack of security for water resources, and even the diversion of crops to the creation of alternative fuels causes further damage to the agricultural sector, while events such as droughts, heat waves, floods, and freak fires causes health scares to both the poor and the affluent.

Surprisingly, in an inquiry made back in 2008, it was found out that none of the programs started to help alleviate poverty in the country addressed the problem of climate change. This may be attributed to the fact that there are several other programs that addresses this problem, and farmers themselves either do not know (or care) about the problems that this phenomenon causes to their livelihood, or they cannot do anything to help fight this problem.

The truth of this issue is that everything is interconnected: one problem leads to a myriad of other problems, as exemplified by that of agriculture. In an effort to marshal industrial progress, people create more settlements, and in creating more settlements, they produce more to meet the populations’ needs. This leads to the consumption of more resources, which leads to a higher production of greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gasses contribute to the rise of global temperatures, which alters weather cycles, and this causes problems for all sectors of society.