Lauryn McNair Assignment 16

For us global warming has existed as the talking man behind the curtain. The master behind all of our troubles that none of us are really aware. Living in America, or a least a It’s not all about you. Growing up with three, eventually four, siblings with a single mother, this, while not explicitly stated, was always implied. No we can’t have your birthday party at Gatti-Town because the other kids want to have theirs at Champs. No, we can’t go to the bookstore because your sister has a four hour dance competition in another state. Or my personal favorite, no you can’t get braces because we have bills to pay. All of my life has been characterized with individual sacrifices, which when looking back, weren’t really that bad, but at the time were unfathomable to me. These sacrifices that I made, or was forced to make, were all done for the overall well being and happiness of my family, whether I was aware of it or not. And I’m truly happy I made them. The older I get, the more I realize that “It’s not all about you” does not just exist in the comfort of my home, but in a global context as well. That every I action I choose or choose not to make, extends beyond just me. That I am not merely an independent body, but a strand in an impossibly interdependent web. This gradual realization that we are all connected, has led me to change how I view the world, or more specifically, how we interact with it. Global issues, like global warming, have become more than a name in the news, or a phrase thrown around in politics to gain votes. While researching I’ve discovered that the everyday things I do have a significant impact on other people. That the amount of energy I consume affects the lives of those a few hours away in eastern Kentucky. Or the amount of pollution I release into the air carries its weight thousands of miles across the ocean, to affect the lives of developing African nations. While I’ve just scratched the surface with my research, it’s become evident that global warming is a global issue. An issue that affects the social and economic livelihood of every human and can’t be simply solved with hardcore recycling or reusable plates. Limiting the impact of global warming and exploitation requires patience, education, and the ability of all of us to step outside of ourselves.

suburban part of it, has allowed me to not be affronted by the problems of global warming. For a long time I didn’t know that just as bad as the effects of global warming are the things that lead to it. Coal mining, mountaintop removal, oil drilling. These frequent practices which lead to the perils of pollution, are also harmful themselves. The most obvious affects are seen in the environment. Take surface mining for example. First plants, animals, and topsoil are cleared from the area. Then a layer of Earths surface is removed. This clearly has several implications. Entire populations of plants and animals are killed.  The disruption of land leads to soil erosion, ruining it for future agricultural purposes. The air is polluted with the large amount of dust released into the air. As horrible as these things sound, most people don’t care. We understand that these things are bad and in some distant way affect us, but the effects are so abstract, they have no meaning in most of our everyday lives. And by most of us, I mean middle class Americans in urban areas. Not too far away in our neighboring coal counties, this deals with their everyday lives very much. One of the biggest defenses for the continuation of exploitative practices, coal mining specifically, are the economic benefits. It supplies tons of workers with jobs all over the world in areas that are relatively economically impoverished. This large trade of extracting and producing energy further fuels the global economy and further feeds our ever growing industrial world. Even being the die-hard liberal that I am, I completely understand the economic depression that would result from removing coal mining and coal usage alone. I’m neither asking nor wanting that to happen. What I am asking, however, is that we take a look at how everybody is affected by coal mining. Unfortunately for us, environmental exploitation doesn’t just hurt the environment. It hurts us too. Outside of asking people to voluntarily dig themselves under the ground for $20 an hour, or ignoring the fact that it disproportionately preys on people in poverty with little education and few economic opportunities, coal mining still...well...sucks. While coal mining is an unbelievably lucrative business, a lot of the money generated doesn’t touch the hands of the communities it disrupts. Yes coal miners make a nice living, but even that lofty $20 an hour isn’t enough to make up for the damage done. Little to none of the money goes into the actual development of local communities. Already places plagued by poverty, coal mining further destroys the land and restricts future economic opportunities. The pollution released from the sites, while big on a global scale is even worse when it’s right beside you. Even efforts to make energy cleaner has made it dirtier for some. For instances, clean carbon is a proposed alternative energy source that overall removes or reduces the harmful products that are released when carbon is burned, thus reducing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted. Great, right? Wrong. In one case, all of the impurities that were removed from the coal were released in the local streams, further polluting and poisoning the local communities. While this doesn’t completely outweigh the benefits it provides, the lives it hurts can’t be discounted either. As mentioned before, global warming is a global issue and thus has global implications. India, one of the biggest users and producers of coal, epitomizes the social and environmental effects of coal mining.  An often overlooked effect of coal mining, is noise pollution. Noise pollution is now considered a “major health hazard” and it’s effects range from “partial hearing loss” to  “permanent damage to the inner ear.” Noise pollution, while most damaging when mining underground, is seen from other mining activities, such as blasting and being around loud equipment. The effects of noise pollution isn’t just limited to the coal miners in India. “According to the World Health Organization's Guidelines for Community Noise, noise is an increasing public health problem.” Among the effects of Conserve Energy Future’s list of causes of noise pollution are “hearing problems, health issues, sleeping disorders, effects on wildlife,” and even “cardiovascular issues.” Among the causes are “industrialization, social events, transportation, household chores, and construction activities.” If consequences that big are able to be derived from causes that seemingly small, imagine how coal miner, who are trapped underground with the reverberating sounds of deafening machines are affected. Outside of physical effects, coal mining has also contributed to social corruption in India. Illegal mining has become a more common occurrence in India. Illegal mining defined as “unethical and illogical cutting of coal seams beneath the Earth’s surface without prior permission.” Basically, average citizens mine for coal in abandoned mines, which increase the pollution and land disturbance of a legal mining job. It has also fostered mafia like crime in India. While this isn’t so much of a problem in the United States, developing nations face problems analogous to people in developing countries, further hurting the environment and living creatures. What you may be asking now is so what? A little hearing loss and increased crime on people we can’t really see for the economic viability of our nation? But as we continue to further industrialize, these problems only deepen. Think about how much you use the internet alone. The power to charge your device, the power to fuel the internet servers which provide internet to millions of people, all of this requires the constant burning of coal. We are consuming an unprecedented amount of energy. Meaning an unprecedented amount of coal mining and coal burning. Resulting in a toll the earth nor its inhabitants are used to. The examples provided are few out of a pool of many. The more we research, the more we learn of the size of the price we’re paying. A price, we’re just beginning to realize, we can’t afford.

    Of more common knowledge are the effects of actual global warming. We’ve all seen the pictures of stranded polar bears floating on miniscule pieces of ice in the arctic. We’ve all heard of the giant hole in the ozone. But how does that really affect us? I mean how bad is an extra foot or two of snow or wearing more sunscreen? Well it wouldn’t be all that bad if that was the worst of our problems. to fully understand the effects of global warming, we once again have to step outside of our comfortable ignorance. Stepping into Tangling, China we are affronted by the horrors of pollution. When a carbon burning power plant was running their city, 40 tons of ash was produced. The consequences of this was astounding. Tangling children when compared with children who had been exposed to less pollution, scored lower in intellectual test. Tangling children also had smaller head sizes, indicating a decrease in brain development. Even at birth, Tangling children were already at higher risk for cancer. We could chalk it up to these people being dumb and malnourished and move on. But just a year after the power plant being removed, all of the previous mentioned areas of said children, increased. That’s huge. Even the U.S. with all of it’s lovely restrictions and protective laws, can’t escape the harm. In the U.S. alone, 24,000 premature deaths related to coal-fired power plants occur each year. The damage done by pollution occurs before we’re even able to take our first words. Our first breaths. Not only does it harm us physically, but economically as well. Take Africa for example. Africa. The one word that immediately conjures up images of poor, starving black babies living in dirt shacks. We send our prayers, our money, our bibles. Anything to help those poor, uncivilized people. But what’s one of the best ways to help them? You guessed it. Combating global warming. Most people are hopefully aware that Africa contains countries that are modern and developed and isn’t a place of desistude and despair. But even with that being said, it still contains many developing countries, which are trying to get on their feet, while fighting through the legacy left by years of purposeful exploitation. In Southern Africa, for example, many Africans are small farmers. Which is logical since there is a lot of open land available. What isn’t logical, is why developing countries, such as those in southern Africa, who have had very little to do with emittance of greenhouse gases are being affected the most by them. But that’s exactly what’s happening. Global warming includes “gradual sea level rises, stronger cyclones, warmer days and nights, unproduction, and larger and longer heatwaves”, according to The Guarding. What does that mean exactly? Well, in developing countries that are based around agriculture, crop production would decrease, further increasing global hunger. In a study that predicted plant habitat change in response to global warming, they concluded that “nations of southern Africa are likely to experience greater economic hardships in coping with vast habitat changes..unless they achieve great economic development in a very short time.” So countries who were impoverished in order for other countries to industrialized are further crippled due to this industrialization. Unless we choose to act on global warming, a nasty cycle of poverty will continue to be fed.

So what do we do? Do we ban mining, drilling, and using of fossil fuels? Do we abandon our cars and computers and recede into the primitive days of face-to-face communication and walking? The answer is simple. We educate. We educate ourselves. We educate our peers. We educate future generations. Until we learn about global warming and how it affects all of us, we will never make the right decision about it. Until we learn about alternative sources and how to balance them with contemporary uses, either or environment or our economy will be suffering. And when we educate ourselves, we must do so with an openmind. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice for your 7 billion brothers and sisters. Don’t be afraid to take away some of the stress of your single mother earth; she’s the only one you have. And you’ve filled your head with knowledge and your heart with compassion, and you begin to care for each individual on this Earth, don’t be afraid to do what you feel is right. Even if it makes you less comfortable. Especially if makes you less comfortable. Because remember, it’s not all about you.

Sources:

Goswami, Sribas. "Impact Of Coal Mining On Environment." European Researcher 92.3 (2015):   185-196. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 June 2015

Dirty Business. Dir. Peter Bull. Perf. Jeff Goodell. Virgil Films, 2010. Web.

Division On Earth And Life Studies. Climate Change: Evidence, Impacts, and Choices. S.l.: National Academies, 2012. Print.   

  

Park, Chang-Eui, et al. "Regional Variations In Potential Plant Habitat Changes In Response To Multiple Global Warming Scenarios*." Journal Of Climate 28.7 (2015): 2884-2899. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 June 2015.

Osborn, Tom. "Why Developing Countries Are Disproportionately Affected by Climate Change -- and What Can They Do About It." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Mar. 2015. Web. 14 Dec. 2015