¡S.O.S PLANET EARTH IS SICK AND NEEDS A MEDICAL APPOINTMENT A.S.A.P!

There is no doubt our planet has been showing us throughout the last few years many signs of
sickness, and it is evident it wants us to know that something is not going well with our activities
or at least the way we are growing up our civilization is not right. The gigantic amounts of wastes
we have thrown to the environment is making it dirty, and not only that, it is getting harder to
make a living in certain places because of the extreme changes in climate, soil fertility and
weather; what is pretty scary for the survival of the next human generations. For all those facts
mentioned before it is imperative to us to change the customes we have inherited, the sources our
economy is based on and the way planet’s resources are being used; this as a whole is giving way
to the world wide concept known as global climate change or global warming.

As it was seen before, those are the effects of the illness, we will deepen these factors later, but
now let’s talk about the symtoms and causes that provoke Planet Earth’s malaise.

Symtoms

There are many evidences that tell us about the big problem we have nowadays, so that here we
have some of the most important and visible symtoms.

The planet is becoming hotter every time: becuase of the greenhouse gases, temperature around
the world is rising and it is expected to continue rising until the end of this century and beyond.

Sea levels are higher every day: this is consecuence of the previous issue, due to the heat, every
year a much bigger amount of water is going into the oceans since glaciers are shrinking and
getting smaller and smaller. All that water that comes from the ice such as the Arctic or Artarctic,
increases sea level and makes more dangerous living in cities near the coasts. In fact, floods will
occur more frecuently and many cities, crops and towns will be covered of water more often in the
future.

Droughts and heat waves will occur more frecuently: due to the rising in Earth’s temperatura,
climate patters will tend to change and in many places, the impact of these changes would be
catastrophic if poeple are not prepared to face the situation, since dry seasons will tend to last
more, soil moisture is going to lessen very fast so agriculture will be quite difficult to develop in
certain places and year’s seasons.

Hurricanes are going to be more frecuently: the way climate used to be is changing and its
consecuences too, every time hurricanes and other mortal catastrophies such as floods,
typhoones, rainfalls or tornados are being stroger and their area of influence is getting wider and
wider.

Those are ones fo the consecuences or symtoms of a disease that is killing planet Earth. Now, let’s
take a look what could be the sources of these issues. There are several micro viruses called
Greenhouse Gases that are surrounding the Earth and causing it a terrible fever called global
warming.

Causes
As seen before, global warming is the blame of many Earth’s struggles, but what actually causes
this warming? And the answer is Greenhouse gases. This gases are produced in majority or
manority amount by man, since the Industrial Revolution took place, the emission of these
sustances to the air has made life harder for all creatures and forms of life. Ones of the most toxic
gases emitted to the atmosphere are as follows: methane, ethane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide
and chlorofluorocarbons.

The roll these gases play in global warming is to keep the heat entering into the planet in order to
make it hotter. Water vapor is the most abundant Greenhouse gas so it is the most influential, but
in fact, all of them do the same and this is the mechanism how the process works.

Firstly, sunlights coming from the sun come into the Earth and warm the Surface of continents and
sea water. Secondly, much of the light and heat are reflected back to space and at this point is
where greenhouse gases perform their act; when heat is going back from the planet, it is trapped
by those gases and redistributed all over the world, rising more and more the temperatura of the
lower atmosphere.

Medication

Even though the future does not look very promising, we still have an opportunity to change what
we have done wrong and find possible solutions, and in order to do this we to give our world a big
dosage of change and innovation.

Use of renewable energy: main producers of greenhouse gases are humans, and the way we do it
is by burning fossil fuels in our daily life activities such as driving our cars, running factories or
producing other kinds of energy; for example heat, light or electricity. Changing our sources of
generating energy would do a huge difference in the emission of toxic sustances to air, wind
power, solar energy or hydroelectric power are examples of using renewable resources to produce
clean energy that does not have a negative impact in the environment.

Adaptation: though there are not national or international policys about how to face climate
change, most of cities nowadays include in their development plan posible risks due to climate
change. Also our habits will have to change in order to face extreme weather and changes in the
environment. Droughts, hurricanes, landslides and floods will become very familiar to us in a near
future so adaptation is the key to survive, and also we need to help ecosystems to adapt
themselves too.

In conclusion, we and our planet are going through an uncertain time due to actions we did and
continue doing that have affected the way we used to live our lives, so that change is imminent
and we have to get use to that. But we still have a choice to change our bad habits and give
something good to mother nature and to the next human generations, if not a free-trouble world,
at least a piece of the beautul world we used to have. We hope it is not too late to make a change
and keep all thigs and reasons we still have to keep living.