Tonight at 8.30pm more than one billion people around the world will be jumping into the band wagon to participate in the Earth Hour initiative by switching off non-essential lights. This efforts are most welcome to protect our only earth. After tonight, on top of living in darkness for an hour, can we do more? Maybe like eating one burger less per month. Wait a minute, what's the relation between our favorite burger and saving Mother Earth?
Well, below is an article prepared by my son for his school's English oral examination. Read on and he will tell us why eating one burger less will keep earth's temperature in control and protect Mother Earth.
GLOBAL WARMING AND US
Many of us love to eat burgers, whether it is beef burgers, chicken burgers, fish burger or cheese burgers. I am sure; most of us would have taken a burger recently.
Burgers are great stuff, at least for all the youngsters like us here. If we are supporters of burgers, has it come across to you how burgers affected the well being of our world today? Yes, I am talking about the issue of global warming.
Do you know that averagely, 20 thousands metric tons of carbon dioxide was released a year just to produce cheeseburgers in the United States.
For example, a simple cheese burger also contains carbon footprints because it needs transportation, cooking, keeping the meat cold and so on. Imagine how much carbon dioxide was released to produce other things that we consumed or used in our daily life? It will be very scary for sure.
The cows, goats, chickens also contributed in releasing methane - a type of greenhouse gas via its excretion. One unit of methane gas is equivalent to 23 units of carbon monoxide. Imagine how much these animals excreted per day!
The increase of temperature in our Mother Earth today was due to our overwhelming desire to fulfill our demanding modern lifestyle. Automobiles on the road, air-conditioners and cooling appliances in our homes and offices and gases released from industrial plants are some of the causes to global warming.
Scientists have established that the current episode of global warming of about 0.7 degrees Celsius in the last century has pushed Earth’s temperatures up to levels unprecedented in recent history.
According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Mother Earth will warm up between 1.4 degrees Celsius and 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that at no time in the past 1,300 years has our planet been as warm as it is now, while records from the deep sea suggest that temperatures are now within a degree of their highest levels in 1 million years.
According to Mark Lynas, the author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, - “six degrees may not sound like much, but such a rise in average temperature would be enough to destroy much of life and reshape our world almost beyond recognition.” Those who had watch the blockbuster “2012” would have a better picture of what he meant.
The world is not doomed yet. We can still do something to save our Mother Earth. The best way is the 3Rs which are Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. We can perform these 3Rs, especially reducing the consumption of goods and other items that causes global warming during its production and usage in our daily living.
We must change our lifestyle to suit the need of Mother Earth, not to hurt Mother Earth to fulfill our greed and lifestyle. I can do it, can you?
By : Ng E-Tjing, 13
So, can all of us eat one burger less every month for the rest of our lives? - Loka
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