Climate – pollution  – How to decide which are the effective actions

Fatema Miah:

Climate change is an issue and it cannot be neglected or left without sorting action for solution. Solution, is there a certain solution found to be perfect to deter the future damage of the earth yet? No. Solution, is it right term? No, it’s not a straight forward general issue like broken down car or disfunctioning of a vehicle or electric item that can be repaired or to replace as a solution.

Action rather would be the right term over solution about the climate concern issue. Then again, in planning actions there are many perspectives and arguments of ways and about the aspects.  Overall, the ocean safety is seemingly not in debate per it’s functional features for earth safety, living and carbon retention. The oceans in all terms need the attention and action to be protected from Pollution.

Carbondioxide or greenhouses  is a concern. While talking about air pollution or the atmospheric carbon emission, our oceanic pollution and carbon emission accumulating and affecting the marine has been left for long and there carbon emission been accumulated and reached to deep down level. The plastic pollution has been an ongoing threat for decades now and been ignored to exceeded limit.

Chemical production, an industry encompassing sectors as diverse as lubricants, paints and plastics accounts for over 3.3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year, or the equivalent in other greenhouse gasses. The plastics alone account for the equivalent of 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. This massive quantity of plastic and chemicals poses a problem. Decomposition of plastic takes from century to milleniums.

After all, the effect of plastic to our environment and it’s causing chemicalised pollution to air and most importantly to our oceans, what’s been a concern and posing threat to marine lives thats  now acknowledged and our environmentalists and scientists demanding for an effective global action plan to tackle the problem.

A Germany University, research team looked into and have come up with an idea of to use the plastic and chemicals to store carbondioxide. They claimed, “this is an opportunity, because these raw materials are largely carbon-based. If we can use carbondioxide as a carbon source for these plastics and chemicals, then we can capture and store a large quantity of CO2 in the plastics and chemicals that otherwise would have been emitted, all while creating value.

Applying carbon capture and utilization (CCU) to the chemical industry is a novel idea. It would provide a renewable source of carbon compounds and has the added benefit of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. CCU also produces a large quantity of pure water as a by-product, a potential boon as water security becomes a greater issue.

It appears as this would be a revolutionary approach to restore and sorting the carbon.  Suh, who researches industrial ecology, saying on the other hand “because a huge amount of energy is needed in production and, once the products are used, a huge amount of waste will be generated.” This would be highly costly initially. However, eventually would it be worth the cost in the long run? What about the waste?

What’s more, putting captured carbon to use offsets some of the costs of capturing it in the first place, a major economic challenge to carbon sequestration efforts. Anyhow, handling the plastic and the chemicals are also costly and the carbon issue is a prominent threat to air and ocean are already threat to marine, biodiversity and human.

On the other hand, there is deforestation concern. Palm oil is used to create biodiesel fuel by cutting down the forests.  Bogs and swamps are infectiously contaminated,  causing infected diseases and effecting human health while bogs and swamps are needed for restoring the carbon overnight and to feed and keep moist for the trees, plants and grasslands. Moreover, 91% population are effected by excessive air pollution, contributing to strokes, heart disease and lung cancer in the low or middle income countries.

The greenhouse gases are the biggest contributors to climate change, followed on energy for transportation is another factor together with household, commercial and industrial energy. Another factor is the livestock. Livestock for food source is costing our vegetation land that more vegetation is used feeding our livestock and livestock contributing to greenhouse gas methane.

Should there be an action plan in relation to livestock?  Fatema Miah, Solihull, uk. fatemamiah@mail.com