“The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” – Utah Phillips
In the recent years, we’ve been bombarded by some of the greatest movies that tackled natural disasters. Films like The Day After Tomorrow, Dante’s Peak, Twister, and The Core, gave us heart-racing moments and showed us why we shouldn’t mess with Mother Earth. They are all fiction, but in today’s emerging society, we are already living what used to be fictitious. Climate Change still remains as the biggest threat to the survival of mankind. Films portrayed it well—but real life is even more daunting, so much so, that it starts to scare every single human out there.
Extreme weather patterns, such as devastating typhoons and hurricanes—like Typhoon Haiyan and Hurricane Sandy—scorching droughts, and freezing snowstorms, are just some of the effects of Climate Change. A study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre on harvest and climate data in wheat-producing countries, between 1980 and 2010, revealed that excess rain is the culprit of wheat destruction. With wheat supplying roughly 20 percent of all dietary calories worldwide, torrid rains allow for pest breeding that destroys plants and decreases annual harvest.
More drama ensues, they say, as the effect of Climate Change on agriculture is just part of a bigger story about a threat that could annihilate all humanity. The continuous disturbance in the climate pattern equate to catastrophic wildfires in places like Alaska and northwest Canada. Arctic warming is regarded as the cause of these wildfires, disrupting the natural cycle and causing Alaska to heat up by about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)—twice the rate of the rest of the planet.
Who should be blamed for this depressing state of our planet? The role of humans as caretakers of Earth dates back during the Biblical times. However, man-made activities such as illegal logging, mining, cyanide fishing, and pollution make us the proprietors of this nightmare. As our society continues to evolve—thanks to technology—our planet also continues to degrade—no thanks to our misuse of it.
Organizations like Greenpeace and UNESCO commit to battling Climate Change with their utmost capabilities, but is it enough to save this already-dying planet? The future remains unclear. And while fictitious disaster films become more and more of a reality, the change should start with us. We are living in the age of doom, a time when everything else is crippling, a time where we start counting the end of days. Disaster films frighten us. But when it slips out of the big screen, that’s when reality bites—and it bites real hard.
SOURCES:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-wheat_us_59663fece4b03f144e2fc6ff
