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destroy cities and islands. And at the same time the blossom of flowers may heal a person's soul. And sometimes you can't stop admiring flower and animals.
Humanity has always been connected with the world that surrounded it. But industrialization and the use of Earth's resources have become very dangerous recently. People use the Earth's resources, polluting water and air and don't think about future. People pollute it to satisfy their needs in metal, gas, petrol, etc. Breathing the air in Mexico and Cairo may harm your health. And oncology is the result of air pollution. Greenhouse effect is one of the most serious problems nowadays. Climate changes because of it. As a result glaciers may melt and the land may be covered with water.
Fortunately people begin to realize the danger of environmental problems and try to solve them. There are a lot of groups that gather to clean some areas and to fight pollution. Worldknown "Green Peace" is trying to influence the world politics and to attract attention of the whole world to the problem of pollution.
Our planet needs care. It gives us everything it has.
There are a lot of global problems that influence the life of people. And measures should be taken to solve these problems. The UNO tries to do something to reduce the negative impact of these problems, but still there are a lot of problems that should be solved.
People pollute air, water, declare wars and use violence to gain their aims; they lie and test bombs, use all resources of our planet and don't think about consequences.
By the middle of the 20th century, it was becoming clear that human action had significantly increased the production of these gases, and process of “global warming” was accelerating. Today, nearly all scientists agree that we must stop and reverse this process now – or face a devastating cascade of natural disasters that will change life on earth as we know it.
Two years later, the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina in the United States was attributed in large part to the elevated water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. And in one of many terrain changing developments, 160 square miles of territory broke away from the Antarctic coast in 2008 — its bindings to Antarctica having literally melted away. The UN family is in the forefront of the effort to save our planet. In 1992, its “Earth Summit” produced the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as a first step in tackling the problem.
In 1998, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide an objective source of scientific information. And the Convention’s 1997 Kyoto
Protocol, which set emission reduction targets for industrialized countries, has already helped stabilize and in some cases reduce emissions in several countries.
The Kyoto Protocol set standards for certain industrialized countries.
Various disastrous consequences will ensue as the earth's climate grows warmer and warmer. Oceans will rise to submerge large expanses of land. Floods and droughts will increase to cause more human and economic losses. Agriculture will be impacted to aggravate hunger in Africa. Diseases and viruses will become more capricious to control. More species will become extinct. All these changes will find their final consequences in the human race's economic, social, cultural and political lives, resulting in a more turbulent world.
The future of the earth is worrying to everybody. In the not too distant future, the global climate and the consequent changes will become too disagreeable for the human race to bear. And the changes will happen to every nation, whether they are developed or developing ones.
The whole world should take joint actions to curb the worsening situation, for no single nation can do it alone. Different countries, however, see the problem from different perspectives.
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Cooperation between developed and developing countries is needed. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders' Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development issued in Sydney set a good example.
More important, however, is action. Global climate changes have left us little time to dawdle. And to tackle climate change is no less important an issue than the anti-terrorism campaign.
It’s not a new today that China is maybe the world's number one CO2 polluter should come as no surprise. But responsibility for China's soaring emissions lies not just in Beijing but also in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo.
China is beginning to realize the consequences of this policy, not least because it is suffering serious impacts from climate change including strengthening typhoons, desertification and melting glaciers. China's National Climate Change Program outlined measures China would take to combat climate change. This at least shows that the Chinese government acknowledges the problems of climate change as well as the responsibility of China to help tackling these problems.
The program does not include a mandatory cap for China's total greenhouse gas emissions. China should take up some form of obligation to cap emissions under the Kyoto framework. However, a cap will only work if developed countries seriously commit themselves to help developing countries in areas such as clean technology transfer.
The Centre for Asian Pacific Studies (CAPS) and the Environmental Studies Program (ESP) at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, are jointly organizing a conference on "China and Global Climate Change." The conference will address the problem of how to reconcile China's growing greenhouse gas emissions with the Chinese government's unwillingness to join binding international commitments to reduce those emissions. President Hu Jintao recently reaffirmed that China will not commit to mandatory emissions-reduction targets before the world's wealthy countries take the lead in addressing global climate change. He has also called on affluent countries to pay for emissions limitations in China and other developing countries.
Brazil plays an important and unique role in climate change. It is one of the ten largest economies in the world and — most importantly for climate change — home to one of the greatest ecosystems and forests of the planet: the Amazon. Brazil is the eighth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the third largest emitter in the developing world after China and India, according to 2000 World Resources Institute figures.
In international negotiations, Brazil points out that climate change is driven more by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than by yearly emissions, primarily because the most important greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) remains in the atmosphere for more than a century on average
Brazil therefore says that it will not limit its greenhouse gas emissions until the middle of the century. Brazil is vulnerable to climate change, not least due to its fragile, biologically diverse ecosystems. The tropical rain forest in the Amazon and the Pantanal wetland are of particular concern.
Changing rainfall patterns, especially in the drought-affected northeastern region of the country, will mean poorer water resources and a reduced water supply. Agriculture will suffer, aggravating the risk of famines. Less rain will also affect the hydropower supply, which, according to the International Energy Association, provides more than 80 per cent of the electricity Brazil generates. Floods, which are already a serious problem for various regions, may increase. Coastal areas, where the bulk of the population and economic activities are concentrated, will be vulnerable to rising sea levels.
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How climate change will affect agricultural productivity is not yet understood in detail. But possible effects on crops that are particularly important to the country's economy, such as corn, soybean, wheat, coffee and oranges, are a great concern.
Brazil has implemented many programs where the primary objective was not to limit greenhouse gas emissions, but this has happened as a 'side-effect'. They include the ethanol and PROCEL programs. Other programs, such as the PROINFA and the biodiesel projects, were created with the express intention of reducing emissions. The Brazilian ethanol program was first launched in 1975, when international sugar prices tumbled, and the oil bill of 1973 had increased the country's financial burden. The program remains the largest commercial application of biomass for producing and using energy in the world. It succeeded in demonstrating the technical feasibility of large-scale ethanol production from sugarcane, and its use as a fuel for cars.
Brazil's size in geographic, demographic and economic terms adds to the complexity of the climate change problem. Brazil leads many other countries in promoting renewable energy sources, which already occupy an important share of the energy mix and have great potential to grow further. Deforestation in the Amazon comes hand in hand with considerable biodiversity loss and the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This is a crucial problem that must not be denied. Brazil claims a right not to be bound by the requirement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce its emissions (even after the Kyoto Protocol has reached its term in 2012).
The effects of global warming on the Indian subcontinent vary from the submergence of low-lying islands and coastal lands to the melting of glaciers in the Indian Himalayas, threatening the volumetric flow rate of many of the most important rivers of India and South Asia. In India, such effects are projected to impact millions of lives. As a result of ongoing climate change, the climate of India has become increasingly volatile over the past several decades; this trend is expected to continue.
Several effects of global warming, including steady sea level rise, increased cyclonic activity, and changes in ambient temperature and precipitation patterns, have affected or are projected to affect India. Ongoing sea level rises have submerged several low-lying islands in the Sundarbans, displacing thousands of people. Temperature rises on the Tibetan Plateau, which are causing Himalayan glaciers to retreat. Increased landslides and flooding are projected to have an impact upon states such as Assam. Ecological disasters, such as a 1998 coral bleaching event that killed off more than 70% of corals in the reef ecosystems off Lakshadweep and the Andamans, and was brought on by Elevated Ocean temperatures tied to global warming, are also projected to become increasingly common.
There is a reduction in fresh water availability, disturbance of morphologic processes and a higher intensity of flooding and other such disasters.
Thick haze and smoke, originating from burning biomass in northwestern India and air pollution from large industrial cities in northern India, often concentrate inside the Ganges Basin.
Dust and black carbon, which are blown towards higher altitudes by winds at the southern faces of the Himalayas, can absorb shortwave radiation and heat the air over the Tibetan Plateau. The net atmospheric heating due to aerosol absorption causes the air to warm and convect upwards, increasing the concentration of moisture in the mid-troposphere and providing positive feedback that stimulates further heating of aerosols.
The harmful effect of climate change is looming large over India, a predominantly agriculturally driven country. As the nation reels under the vagary of extreme temperature and a heat wave, the surface air temperature is rising alarmingly at a rate of 0.4 degrees Celsius per century. The most worrying part of the prediction is the estimated increase in winter and summer temperatures by 3.2 degree and 2.2 degrees Celsius, respectively, by 2050. Such
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abnormal rises will surely have an adverse impact on agricultural production in the form of a reduction in total crop cycle duration.
In a developing and densely populated country like India, climate change puts additional burden on an already overstressed ecological and socioeconomic system due to rapid economic activities. To improve environmental quality and limit human health hazards from air pollution, New Delhi has a well defined goal of conventional and renewable energy and economic development. However, the flight of polluting industries from Europe and America to the developing world must be arrested at all cost. It is nothing short of a tragedy that a potentially polluting petrochemical hub will shortly come up on an estuarine island adjacent to the protected Sundarban biosphere reserve.
So, the climate is changing. The earth is warming up, and there is now overwhelming scientific consensus that it is happening, and human-induced. With global warming on the increase and species and their habitats on the decrease, chances for ecosystems to adapt naturally are diminishing. Many are agreed that climate change may be one of the greatest threats facing the planet. Recent years show increasing temperatures in various regions, and/or increasing extremities in weather patterns. The world mostly agrees that something needs to be done about global warming and climate change.
Alina Safronova,
5th year student, International Economic Relations Department, Far Eastern Institute of International Relations Scientific advisers: Elena N. Albey, Lydmila A. Fisyk, Instructors
PREVENTING ALCOHOLISM, SMOKING, DRUG ABUSE
AMONG YOUTH IN THAILAND, JAPAN AND RUSSIA
Do not spoil your health and do not poison your life!
Drugs, alcohol and cigarettes are a big problem today. Many people suffer from it. Alcohol serves as a means of entertainment and enjoyment for young people and adults,
and even a means of resolving all problems. For some of it has become a tradition, lifestyle. To date, many people due from drugs. They have a detrimental effect on human health.
Young people use drugs without thinking about consequences. The new generation is born with diseases (cancer, heart disease and others). For them, it provides a means to relax, to get adrenaline, relief. Cigarettes are also considered to be harmful to human health and have a bad effect on health. Today more than half the people in the world smoke.
Alcohol is bad in excess but not in moderation.
The logical conclusion to be drawn from this is that children should be introduced to alcohol gradually, by responsible adults, in enjoyable social situations. Given the destructive effects of alcohol on many people’s lives this could, in fact, be considered to be an important aspect of someone's education.
Unfortunately, it is all too common for school children to introduce each other to the use of alcohol which can be quite dangerous. Drinking whole bottles of spirits on the way to school and during break-times, bringing drinking at each others houses and stealing alcohol are quite common activities.
Schools have a lot to answer for it because they are instruments in setting children and adults against each other. Within the culture of a school it is not acceptable for children to fraternize too much with the teachers, and this carries over to the home: children cannot reveal anything to their parents that their parents may then report to the school or to the parents of their school friends.
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If we sat down to try to devise a system for getting our children hooked on drugs, cigarettes and alcohol we would be hard-pressed to come up with something as effective as the school system. Schools create a division between adults and children and this division makes children vulnerable.
Some of the reasons why children smoke are as follows:
-They are away from their parents.
-They are bored.
-Older children smoke.
-Teachers tell them not to smoke.
-Cigarette companies are clever at promoting their brands.
-It’s a way of rebelling without really rebelling.
-Getting the cigarettes is exciting because you have to pretend to be sixteen.
Just as no one knows how much children drink and smoke, no one knows the extent to which they use other drugs. The fact that they have to lie and be deceitful in order to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol means that, in their eyes, there is no real difference between these drugs and cannabis, LSD, Ecstasy etc.
They do not realize that by buying and using these drugs they are coming into contact with the world of organized and unregulated crime. The people from whom they buy the drugs seem to be their friends - other children like themselves - and it is not apparent that these young people may have severe problems that have put them under the direct control of committed criminals - people who will disappear if the drugs cause harm or death.
The Solution
These are not insoluble problems. It simply requires that parents re-establish a good communication with their children and are honest with them.
They also need to be a part of their children's everyday lives.
It is lack of proper information that makes children susceptible to drug taking: children do not want to inflict harm upon them and when they realize that this is what drugs do, they scrupulously avoid them. Children can only be given this information when they are treated with respect - you cannot just lecture about the dangers of drugs, there has to be a two-way conversation in which they can ask questions and receive honest answers.
Parents need to be involved in their child's everyday life because it is not realistic to expect a very young person to be able to withstand the pressure placed upon them by their peers if they are left for long periods of time without proper parental supervision.
Imagining that schools can control drugs problems is simply wishful thinking and it represents a failure on the part of parents to accept responsibility for bringing up their own children. As a parent you have to know what is happening to your child all of the time - until you are confident that they are old enough to look after themselves.
The practical implications of this are that school hours need to be shorter and that there has to be much closer cooperation between parents and the people teaching their children.
Alcohol, Narcotics, and Tobacco in Thailand
To examine the relationship between working status and behavior of substance use such as tobacco, alcohol, and drug among adolescents, a survey of 215 students in the seventh to ninth grades was conducted in urban area of Thailand. The sample consisted of 100 workers (46.5%) and 115 nonworkers (53.5%). The percentages of participants with some experiences of smoking, drinking alcohol, and drug use were 17.2%, 48.8%, and 3.3%, respectively. The participants with experiences of smoking and drinking alcohol in the working group were significantly higher than in the nonworking group (P<0.001), while the relationship between working status and drug use was weaker than the other relationships between working status and tobacco or alcohol use. The backward logistic regression analysis was refined until it included three independent variables: tobacco use, alcohol use, and household income. On the