Ways to Mitigate Global Warming and Pollutions

Have you ever realized what kind of world you live in today? Have you noticed what kind of environment that is surrounding you in these? People are so busy with their own businesses that they often neglected their surrounding not to say about the environmental issues. However even we have neglected the issues, its do not mean that the issues do not cause serious impact to our lives.
It is true that our human daily lifestyles are the greater contributor to destroy our mother nature, but it is true also that the pollutant that we released to the environment have caused series of damages to our human bodies. This is because these pollutants can cause series of danger disease to human being, of which are including cancer, lupus, immune diseases, allergies, and asthma. For the higher levels of background radiation have contribute to an increased incidence of cancer, especially after World War II when America released an atomic bomb to Nagasaki and Hiroshima as well as in the Soviet Union during the 50’s and 60’s whereby nuclear weapons have tested by then.

Some illnesses are named for the places where specific pollutants were first formally implicated such as the Mina Mata disease, which is caused by mercury compounds. Contamination caused by pollution can also have damaging effects in the brain and central nervous system. Furthermore bad air condition or water pollution can also kill human being as we need to eat and drink out of the water. Ozone pollution can cause sore throats, inflammation, chest pain, congestion and skin cancer. Oil spills can cause skin irritations and rashes. Noise pollution induces hearing loss, high blood pressure, stress and sleep disturbance.
Right before the modern medical evidences to support the danger of pollutants, England was the first country in history that took serious control by banning the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1361, after its smoke had become a major problem to England. Among all nations the United States was one of the first that has been major public attention drawn to pollution issues between the mid-1950s and early 1970s. It was then that the US Congress has passed the Noise Control Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. In addition, United States also spending a few hundred billions every year in the research to develop new technology to mitigate global warming and restore back our Mother Earth. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international environmental treaty was produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) under at least 189 countries agreement in Rio de Janeiro in 1992; which aimed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas in order to mitigate global warming. The world primary agreement was currently amended, the Kyoto Protocol under UNFCCC. This Kyoto Protocol main objective is to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

There are several ways that can be done in order to mitigate global warming and world pollutions. First of all is to educate our next generation to be unselfishness as well as knowledge regarding to the danger of pollutions and the reason to keep the world clean. Meanwhile to introduce the Polluter Pays Principle of which is a principle in international environmental law that will require the polluting party to pay for the damage done to the natural environment. This is a concept that was probably first described by the Swedish Government in 1975 and was known as Extended Polluter Responsibility (EPR) during that time. This concept seeks to shift the responsibility dealing with waste from governments to the entities producing it, in order to stress the producers to improve the waste profile of their products, thus to increase possibilities for reuse and recycling and indirectly decrease waste. Secondly will be the actions to mitigate global warming, basically they can be categorized into four major categories that more concern on mitigating global warming, of which are reduction of energy use, shifting from carbon-based fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, carbon capture and storage, and geoengineering that included carbon sequestration. It is known that the greenhouse effect mainly is resulted from carbon dioxide emissions when fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal are burned. So the very first and simplest alternative to mitigate global warming is to reduce the usage of energy. This is the alternative that easily can be done by most of the people around the world. All we have to do are just simply to use lesser electricity current, and lessen in driving or practicing “car-pool” concept as well as made walking and cycling more attractive options. This indirectly will lessen the carbon dioxide emissions into the air as the demand for energy has decreased so the requirement for burning fossil fuels and coal will be lessened.
Second alternative to mitigate global warming is to shift from carbon-based fossil fuels to other natural alternative energy sources. This alternative is slightly more difficult and more expensive because this alternative might be requiring new technology that will need to have huge investments in research and development of it. However this alternative can start practicing in the transportation area by developing a hybrids (electric) and hydrogen car. For example the General Motors EV1, Honda EV Plus, Toyota RAV4 EV, Ford Ranger EV, Nissan Altra EV, and the Canadian Dynasty EV 4 door sedan that are the hybrids car; and the BMW H2R, DaimlerChrysler, Ford Focus FCV, Hyundai Santa Fe FCEV and Nissan — X-TRAIL FCV are the hydrogen car. These few models of cars are the sample of cars in reality that does not consume petroleum or consume low-carbon-dioxide sources of electricity that will lessen the emissions carbon dioxide.

Furthermore we can convert our energy sources from fossil fuel and coal to renewable energy such as solar energy, ocean waves and wind energy. Underwent fundamental revisions of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry’s Sunshine Project, Japan was given chance to develop new energy technologies with the aimed at the energy crisis that could built a society that would be free of environmental pollution. Indirectly that project has given birth to the New Sunshine Program which main objective was to develop innovative technology that could create a sustainable growth while solving energy and environmental issues. Japan was able to come out a program that generated electricity current by using solar energy through putting solar panels on the roofs of a million homes. This has made Japan a world leader in that technology, as well as Denmark's support for wind power ensured its former leadership of that sector through a wind turbine that can produces more than fifty times as much energy over its lifetime as is consumed by its construction and installation.

Besides shifting to natural alternative energy resources, carbon capture and storage is an alternative to mitigate climate change by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from large point sources such as power plants and subsequently storing it away safely instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. The Americans and Britannic are able to capture and storage the carbon in their modern conventional power plant by installing HEGA is an acronym for "high efficiency gas absorption", a carbon cloth filter and HEPA, which is an acronym for "high efficiency particulate absorbing" or "high efficiency particulate arrestance", a type of air filter that essentially that make by a type of paper. This paper can allows air to pass through while absorbing and trapping pollutants such as dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and any airborne particles that is within the size of 0.3 micrometres (μm) at 85 litres per minute (Lpm), as to prevent these pollutants from moving back into the air. Meanwhile a diverse group of microorganisms which named as Methylococcus Capsulatus and Pichia Pastoris are also been used currently to reduce methane and other pollutants. It is because these microorganisms are able to utilize one-carbon compounds and degrade the greenhouse gas methane, such as methanol or methane, as the carbon-source is some kind of their growing sources. The last alternative but not the least, is by using the geoengineering as the alternative to mitigate global warming. Geoengineering is the options that would involve large-scale engineering of the environment in order to counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry. This large-scale of engineering is including the carbon sequestration a term that describes processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere by enhancing natural sequestration processes; of which will be including reforestation or increasing ocean absorption of carbon dioxide. The reforestation is a process that means to restore back the areas of woodlands or forest that once existed but were deforested or destroyed due to man greediness in the past. For trees can help in cleaning the air, reducing temperatures and smog. As it is known that in the photosynthesis process, plants absorb or take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; store the carbon as sugar, starch and cellulose in its leaf stomata, while oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.

On the other side, increasing ocean absorption of carbon dioxide simply mean by using the ecosystem in the ocean to take in more carbon dioxide. This is because the phytoplanktons in the oceans are just like the trees that will use photosynthesis to extract carbon from CO2. Meanwhile the planktons and other marine organisms in the ocean will also extract CO2 from the ocean water and convert it to the mineral calcite, CaCO3, to build their skeletons and shells.

Despite the global warming issue, water control is also a must because the global water crisis is the leading cause of death and disease in the world, taking the lives of more than 14,000 people each day, 11,000 of them children under age 5. The only solution is to clean up the mess we put in the rivers, streams, lakes and oceans. We also known that cleaning up our watersheds and eliminating water pollution are not going to happen overnight, but there are still some options we can do; such as using carbon-based filters to remove THMs of which is the trihalomethane compounds that usually from the nuclear power plant and other toxins in the water contain.

Meanwhile with the latest genetic technology, under the use of Rhizofiltration of which is use to filter water through a mass of roots to remove toxic substances or excess nutrients; as well as phytoextraction technique mankind try to use plants to remove contaminants from soils, sediments or water. For example by using Brassica juncea, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, and Apocynum cannabinum to extract lead from the soils. Furthermore by using mycelia of oyster mushrooms to reduce polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAH), using fungal mycelia to filter toxic waste and using Wood-degrading fungi to breakdown aromatic pollutants (toxic components of petroleum), as well as chlorinated compounds (certain persistent pesticides).

Although we have almost destroyed our Mother Earth out of our greediness behavior, there are still ways that can be done in order to mitigate the global warming and pollution issues. And these ways are never be cheap at all as these ways require a lot of research and development that need a lot of money. Everything in this world is possible to happen so does the Mother Nature that still can to return to its previous condition, but it just has to up to the willingness of greedy mankind to pay up these expensive costs.