Reflection - "Six Degrees Could Change The World"

Six Degrees Could Change The World is a National Geographic documentary which addresses and illustrates the impact global warming has just how dire the current situation is.

I went into watching this documentary aware of the impacts global warming has on the Earth; melting ice caps, floods, heat waves etc. What this documentary brought to light was that we're already in the s**t, this made me angry. These 'symptoms' are already occuring, recent natural disasters in this year alone further support this, but what the documentary revealed is that the global warming situation is now at a state where it is accelerating, feeding off the resulting conditions at an alarming rate, and what are we doing about it!?

Governments posture about their concern about the environment, but with all these arguments surrounding emissions trading and carbon tax, the truth is, nothing is actually happening, and to me it seems this 'concern' is just in the interest of winning elections rather than combatting climate change. All they are doing is delaying progress, with time running out, I believe something drastic must be done fast, before the impacts of global warming become truly out of our control.

This documentary displays the fragile balance our Earth regulates, and that every aspect is linked and repurcussions in one area can effect the entire world. The most confronting line in the documentary was the realisation that a six degree decrease in global temperature is what caused the ice age. This is a scary proposition.

Now, I've liked dinosaurs ever since I was a child, and the progression and evolution of wildlife and the transformation of the landscape from that time till now has always intrigued me. The dominance and then extinction of the dinosaurs to the rise of mammals, to me, that's cool. The resilience of wildlife and ability to adapt to a changing environment is what fascinates me, and I have no doubt that even with global warming, the world will still be inhabited by fascinating creatures. What scares me, however, is whether or not humans will be able to survive in this kind of world. The truth of global warming, the way I see it, is it could be the cause of the extinction of humans.

This may be a dramatic take on the situation, but, you know, it may not be so far from the truth. We have to take every step possible to STOP this from happening, instead of simply delaying the seemingly inevitable, whether it be designing sustainable products to providing methods in which sustainable behaviours can be encouraged, there is no single solution, it must be an amalgamation of methods which must ultimately result us as a species actually giving a damn about what is actually happening.


Image: "Six Degrees Could Change The World" DVD Cover
http://cdn1.iofferphoto.com/img/item/153/635/735/ru6b41FlUxHacAE.jpg