The Real Threat of Environmental Despair

Environmental issue is spiking up significantly the past couple of years. Environmental issue, indeed, is not only happening in big cities, but urban life arguably triggered one of the most significant damages to the environment for over the past decades. Environmental issues in big cities are in fact, complex and consist more than just one problem. Among those problems are bad air condition, water pollution, urban green space, fossil-fuel energy consumption, climate change etc. These all problem are linked to each other like a chain, and they are all in urgent needs of salvation. None of them can be solved without attempting to fix other ones. Over the years, environmental problem has grown into such complex and problematic issues, and often it feels like these are more likely to be an enigma. Despite the continuous attempt that we do to fix things up, those problems seemed to be just the tip of an iceberg. The whole picture of the problem is actually bigger that we might realise and a problem this big requires schematic thinking, big cost and extra effort to solve, either it is by breaking it down into several smaller problems and try to fix those one by one or trying to fix them all at once simultaneously. The problems I mentioned before are crucial and utterly need our attentions, not only to create a solution for them but also to gradually start actions in order to prevent them blooming into a bigger problem and put the whole environmental safety in a danger.

Although the environmental issues in big city has proven to be a complicated problem, the spotlight, however, during the recent years has been highlighting the significant rise of earth’s temperature.  According to the Climatic Research Unit of NASA (2017), the ten warmest year in 136 years of earth’s temperature record, happened since 2000. The warmest, though, occurred in 2016.  Figure 1 shows us how the temperature of earth had changed between 2000 to 2016 which was the warmest period of the entire record. It was shown that during the last twelve years, from 2012 to 2016 the Earth’s temperature has been increasing steadily, and the most noticeable, yet the most concerning one happening in the North Pole. If this temperature trend relentlessly keep on increasing like this for the next years, it would definitely jeopardise any form of life within that area 

Time lapse of  Earth's Temperature Over the Past Decades (NASA, 2017)

The cause of this heat problem is, admit it or not, is the immense number of carbon gas emission trapped within the Earth’s atmosphere. The Union of Concerned Scientist (2017) mentioned that the number one cause to the increasing earth’s temperature is the rocketing number of fuel-burning emission that has been released to the atmosphere and accumulated within it. All countries in the world contribute to the release of carbon emission to atmosphere, and without a further prevention, this could trigger terrible disaster. NASA (2017) showed that every year, the number of carbon emission which is released to the atmosphere is growing constantly, which is very concerning. The high use of motorised vehicle is most likely to be the major impact of such emerging problem

Global Trend of Carbon Emission Released to the Atmosphere between 2005 - 2016 (NASA, 2017).

The geography of transport system (2017), states that the impact of motorised vehicle to the environment is categorised into three categories. Direct impact, indirect impact and accumulative impact. Direct impact of the high number of motorised vehicle on the street is clear and well understood. Gas emission in result of the motorised vehicle’s fuel burning system is harmful to the environment, particularly to the atmosphere. Indirect impact of the fuel burning emission is also clear but it is rather more difficult to understood. This kind of problem is linked with the cardiac and respiratory problems. And the last, yet the most dangerous one is accumulative problem. This is an utterly serious problem. 15% of total carbon emission which is harmful to the environment has come from the burning of motorised vehicle’s fossil fuel and accumulated within the atmosphere. It is not entirely surprising, due to the fact the number of motorised vehicle that is seen to flood the road every single day. So why? it's only a gas. some might argue that the relentless growth of the vehicle number on the streets is impossible to suppress. The modern era demands us easiness and efficiency, 

So what does this carbon gas thing had anything to do with climate change and what's the effect to human life. This will help to illustrate. Let's take a page out of the natural event that is happening lately. To any living environment, this kind of event is heartbreaking and we must confess these simple causes of climate changes have triggered some massive phenomenon. 

What Carbon Gas does to the planet (American Geophysical Union, 2013)

We live in this blue vulnerable planet, yet some people still act as if they couldn't care less about these problems details. Carbon gas release is growing uncontrolled and it deals more and more damage to the atmosphere. If 2016 was happened to be the most heated year in the history of earth, who would've known what 20, 30 and 50 years can bring. For any environmental scientist, it is clearly devastating to see the living environment suffering a major downward. Without further prevention, this event will slowly and steadily kill the whole ecosystem of the planet.

To marine life, the most concrete proof of this catastrophic event is the mass coral bleaching in one of the most well known and the biggest coral site in the world, the BBC (2017), reported that the The Great Barrier Reef suffered its second unprecedented year of massive coral bleaching. This humongous event is mostly caused by the climate change event occurring in back-to-back years since 2015 ago. This is by far the worst coral bleaching that struck one of world's biggest coral site, up until now it is still doubtful whether or not the sit will recover from this event. Coral bleaching happened when the water temperature within the coral reef habitats is increasing in a significant period of time. This raise in water temperature (even a slight raise, but with in a long period) caused the loss of coral's life source algae and resulted to the damage of 1,500 km square of coral reef ecosystem. James Cook University's Marine Biologist, Terry Hughes stated that the climate change has changed the great barrier reef forever (The Guardian, 2017). Surveys performed by Marine Park Authority, Queensland Parks, Wildlife Service, Australian Institute of Marine Science, ARC Centre for Coral Reef Studies found that up to 70% of the shallow water coral reef is declared died. The Survey performed by those organisations also shown that the coral bleaching event that struck northern and southern part of the Great Barrier is worse than expected. Shallower water allows the sunbeam penetrates completely to the water column, therefore transfers more heat. With the horrific condition of our earth's atmosphere which in fact the only shield it has from sunbeam, the ocean is just a matter of time from "boiling". 

Courtesy of National Geographic

Survey performed by the ARC Centre for Coral Reef Studies

Some scientist as reported by The Guardian (2017), stated The Great Barrier Reef might not be the only coral reef ecosystem which existence is jeopardised by the climate change. This time, the coral reef ecosystem in US territory, specifically in Hawaii and Florida is reported. As a worst case measure, 100 years from now, these coral reef ecosystem in mentioned area will only exist in our imagination, it's just a question of time, said Georgia Tech Oceanographer, Kim Cobb. The events of Coral bleaching in Australia and America has rang a loud alarm to most of the scientist. Scientists have come to an understanding that the event has elevated from regional to global occurrence. As scientists are trying to breathlessly catch up to figure out the suitable solutions to inhibit the extinction of the world's largest ecosystem, time is ticking away. We are in tight race with the environmental despair, and should we not succeeded in preventing this event, our grandchildren and theirs might not be able to encounter the beauty of coral reef ecosystem firsthand. 

So what should and must be done from this extinction nightmare to come true? As stated by the Nature Conservancy US, we don't need to be scientist to play role in reducing the impact of climate change to coral bleaching. There are numbers of things we can do to slow this event down if stopping it does not seem to be possible. The easiest one is we could participate intensively to the reduce of  

carbon emission released to the atmosphere. The rain is becoming more and more acidic in recent years as stated by GBRMPA Australia (2017) in the major causes of Coral Bleaching events article. Storms and rainfall contribute a massive input of precipitation to the ocean and as the acid rain is coming the ocean acidification phenomenon is getting real. Other steps such as minimising the use fossil fuel will also reduce the amount of gas released to the atmosphere. Start minding to choose public transportation over private ones. In terms of quantity, the less vehicles are there on the road, the less carbon emission released to the atmosphere, and the more heat pollution we can conserve. Conserving water will cut the wastewater runoff towards the ocean. Close the tap while it's unused, and minimised the chemicals as possible. Still a lot more can be done, according to Nature Conservancy US to prevent the whole environment, not just coral reef, from suffering more damages. There are no shortcut in preventing it but again we can keep our glimmer of hope by slowing it down.

This Coral Bleaching event is not the only one this planet suffers from climate change. Every year, environmental despair is taking the life of earth viciously. This event is only the tip of an iceberg. So it's over to us. Till the moment I write this article, it is still believed that Earth is the only liveable planet for human population. It's time now for the population to pay the "rent" mother nature never actually asked. Gain awareness. Stand.

"Lad with handful of dreams & wishful thinking.. "