Many do not pay heed to global warming. They even deny that there is such global warming - "Look at the great snowfall! Look at how cold it is!", they say in winter. Others flaunt their scientific wisdom and proclaim that warming is natural as part of the planet's climate cycles. Indeed, there are climatic cycles and there always have been: ice ages and heat ages (that we may call in our times the "greenhouse age"); and it is even known that there have been mini cycles in the midst of the respective ages.
Natural climatic cycles take many thousands of years to develop and mini cycles take many hundreds of years to develop. What we are experiencing is a global warming that is taking decades and not centuries or millennia. Our civilization cannot cope with such an accelerated change.
And we are responsible for the tremendous acceleration of the natural cycle due to the acute mistreatment to our environment promoted by the abuse and neglect of human beings who are also causing progressive deforestation and the resulting desertification that is swallowing huge territories.
On the left we have a map that shows (in white) more than half the Earth's surface covered by deserts or whole regions that are experiencing increasing aridity to become deserts. And this image is from 8 years ago. It is much worse now. In dark green we see some small sectors where reforestation efforts were being made, but they are not constant to at least partially recover some forests. The places where forests are being destroyed are highlighted in red.
The most industrialized countries bear the greatest responsibility of this planetary tragedy, but let us not forget that the underdeveloped countries of Africa and America are also very much responsible by destroying forests and promoting an increasing desertification of entire regions.
Furthermore, among developed countries, communist-style totalitarian regimes have been the worst. They are masters of cover-up, but sooner or later the truth shines through. This was the case when the Soviet empire collapsed and the world learned of the serious environmental and ecological damage that this superpower had caused in a few decades, even to the point of making the Aral Sea disappear from the map and reducing the Caspian Sea to almost a third of its size.
Although Tibetans are gagged and subdued, reports keep leaking to warn the world of the fact that the Chinese government is damming rivers, mining mountains and forcing Tibetans off their ancestral lands to exploit their natural resources in a way that has no concern at all for the environment.
The fact is that more than 1 billion people across Asia who count on Tibet's river system are facing serious risks. The Chinese are damming these rivers and global warming makes things a lot worse for the many countries depending on that water source.
The International Campaign for Tibet started this year an effort to submit a petition to the United Nations calling for greater protection of Tibet's environment by entrusting Tibetans as the best stewards of their own land. A land that is being taken from them.
However, they have only gathered 7,000 signatures so far! It is very sad and extremely tragic that we show such indifference. But it is the same indifference that we show regarding so many environmental abuses without moving a finger or raising our voices.
We strongly urge our readers to always respond vigorously to legitimate campaigns that aim to defend and improve the environment and to take steps to reduce air pollution, to contain seas, rivers and aquifers contamination and to stop the accelerated destruction of forests.
Is it a world contaminated and desertified the inheritance that we want to leave to future generations?