A temperature rise of over 5⁰ C and a Sea Level rise of anywhere from 80 cms to several meters, resulting in inundation of major coastal populated areas and destruction of rich and diverse coastal habitats. Changed weather patterns that would cause unseasonable and devastating storms at some places and drought at others, leading upto 30 percent or more reduction of major cereal production causing an un-imaginable food crisis. Catastrophic shortage; (of upto 38 percent) in per capita water availability, diseases, epidemics, dust storms, massive population dislocations, food and water shortages, are some of the things we are warned to expect.

All this is caused, we are told, by the rise in CO₂ and other emissions caused by the burning of petroleum derived fuels by us, Humans, since the start of the Industrial Age. Of course the methane from our paddy fields and our cattle is also, blamed though surprisingly the much higher methane from other sources and also, active nitrogen are not equally highlighted.

In addition to this is the damage to the protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere which shields us from the harmful UV rays of the Sun. Again this damage is stated to be caused solely due to Humans using some Industrial products which release ozone destroying chemicals and aerosols into the atmosphere. However, the location of these ozone holes being above the most pristine areas on the Earth, near the South and North Poles, and not above the most polluting areas such as China and the forest burning countries in the Amazon Basin and Malaysia and Indonesia, is not properly explained. Perhaps this could be more to do with the drastic drop in strength of the magnetic field in the Polar regions, causing the ozone holes to form above them, and not due to pollution.

We Humans just can’t seem to get it right! But don’t despair yet we are told, there is no need yet, to rush to plan how to live like, or with the short life spans of, our ancestors barely a century ago, with our so much greater population, even if this was possible or even desirable. (Recall the complaints they had then, in the major cities such as London and New York, about the thousands of tons of horse dung and urine and the dozens of carcasses of dead horses that required removal each day and the stink and diseases caused by such waste matter. Note also, that lack of proper transport and adequate energy sources led to overcrowded tenements and sewage problems and once again, resultant diseases).

Petroleum fuel and plastics have given us the advantages of improved city and also, sub-urban lifestyles. What we need to do is to see how we can use them in a more responsible way. We should all do our mite to help reduce the release of harmful gases and chemicals by encouraging appropriate research into better utilization and proper recycling and incorporating a few small but meaningful, changes in our habits of use of energy. But to totally blame the very things that have given us this lifestyle and to call for impractical reversals promising that then everything will become right is perhaps something like ‘throwing out the Baby with the bath water’.

Now there is obviously no arguing with the benefits of being more efficient and conservative in use of energy, after all, energy is a limited resource. ‘Saving is Earning’, we have been told since childhood, and this is as applicable to energy as to money. We should all be careful energy users and be conscious and protective of our environment and continue our search for the technological advances leading to the development of more sustainable and renewable energy sources. But to decry the manifest benefits of the use of petroleum based fuels and products would only be being hypocritical. It may also, be noted that recent research shows the effect of the use of Fossil fuels or CO ₂ levels is very marginal.

Perhaps we are missing the ‘forest for the trees’ and not perceiving the many other real causes which perhaps are more responsible for the climatic changes and thus not directing our efforts to enable us to better understand and respond to them.

That there is, a noticeable and unseasonable rise in temperature in many parts of the Globe, an increase in the size of the ozone holes above the Poles, especially the South Pole, which have since been reduced,perhaps due to our efforts in eliminating the use of some distructive chemical, and a discernible change in the weather patterns across the Globe, is all evident and irrefutable. But this does not demonstrate any really disturbing correlation between the overall rise in the average global temperature and its cause as being only due to human activity. Evidently the CO ² levels are rising in recent decades, but this could also, be due to any number of other reasons, Geological, Biological and perhaps even Cosmological in nature.

The statement, that such effect is caused by Human industrial and transportation activity alone; and that we Humans will soon cause these effects to escalate into calamitous disasters that will destroy all Life on Earth, is not an automatic corollary.

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