Here in Central Illinois, this summer was a scorcher and very dry. Yet if we watered the trees and the plants, we could almost forget that the globe is warming. Not so in the Arctic, where the ice is receding faster and faster, at about 9% a decade and could vanish by the turn of the century. Scientists suggest polar bears and other Arctic species may be lost forever. See this article in the Guardian.
We cannot, of course, expect to expand the human population as we have been doing without having dramatic impact on the Earth. We are not likely to give up air conditioners, cars, refrigerators and computers in order to save the polar bears, even if we should. But we can certainly do much more than we are currently doing to lessen the harm we do. Imagine a world where cars were used only for travel between cities not accessible by train or plane, where energy efficiency was considered of the highest priority in appliances, vehicles and heating and cooling systems, where manufacturers were required to improve efficiency of resource use and energy use in their manufacturing processes and their manufactured products. We can dramatically reduce environmental degradation, if we will only try.
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