Intro:
30 years ago SAM moved into a home that was on a toxic plume. Motorola had tainted the ground water with TCE a degreaser they used to clean parts. She started organizing to get justice for the cancer cluster in the area and to clean up the water. She has taken an interest in the environment. This speech is about Global Warming.
Speech:
Imagine it is the year 2216. What would the earth be like? Would it be overrun with water? Would the land that is left be barren? Would there be any animal or human life left or would it just be ants and cock roaches?
Mr Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and honored guests. This is the grime reality of the path we are on. The earth is warming and it has accelerated since the Industrial age. Global warming is about the green house gases. They are manufactured by nature. The green house gases form a blanket around the earth that keeps us warm. Without these gases the earth would be frigid and life as we know it would not exist. Since the Industrial age the blanket has thickened causing the earth to start warming up.
What’s the difference in a few degrees anyway? Last summer here in Arizona we lost lives because of the heat. Is this just the beginning? It just so happens that Arizona’s temperatures are raising faster then any other state. A few degrees has made a difference has affected the weather; hurricanes (Matthew), tornados, earthquakes and simonies have all become more frequent and more powerful. Don’t forget about droughts and flash floods.
Flash floods usually happen when there is a lot of rain. It can break damns rush through a community taking lives and leaving people homeless. They back up sewers causing an outbreak of cholera and dysentery. This usually affects children. There is a grim reality. Losing your home and watching your children suffer with these ailments.
A few degrees can make a difference if there is a frost. If there isn’t a frost in an area, the bugs, bacteria, germs, viruses do not die off. They thrive. Mosquitoes don’t have to wait for the spring to hatch. They keep multiplying. Then we spray pesticides with that it kills the good bugs like the bees. This causes new diseases like Zika and Ebola. I don’t even want to swim in the pond I did as a kid cause there is something called the flesh-eating virus out there.
70% of the earth is water and only 2.5% of that is fresh water. How much of that is clean? Pollution is another speech.
There is a scientist Dr Katie Walters who noticed that the Siberian lakes were expanding in size. It is because of the permafrost is melting. Methane is percolating from the soil. Methane is a green house gas. There isn’t as much in the atmosphere as the carbons but it is 84 times as potent. She monitored the methane in the water and she found it to have 5 times as much methane as predicted. The ocean is doing the same thing. Our oceans are turning acidic. This is destroying the coral reefs and killing the fish.
A few degrees are melting the glaciers and ice in the arctic and anarchic. Wildlife use to thrive in these areas and are now struggling to survive and it is our fault.
It is not just the water. Dr Alan Savory a scientist from South Africa points out that over 2/3s of our land is barren. Areas that are not desert or have arid climate. He calls this desertification. One way we cause this is the way we herd our livestock. We bring them into a thriving area where they completely deplete the vegetation leaving it totally barren. They move to another area. When it is this barren, when it rains the water doesn’t penetrate the ground it evaporates off. The ground is exposed and carbons escape into the atmosphere.
A few years ago read in an almanac from about 1908 that they were concerned about the amount of horse manure in the streets. It was causing a nauseating smell and your shoes would get dirty crossing the streets. We solved it when we invented the automobile.
We can fix this too. It is in our power. We do not have to colonize Mars.
Dr Savory shared he has found a solution. He noticed in nature when animals herd to protect themselves from their predators they move into an area, trample the grass, graze as they want then move on. Leaving the dune and urine. When it rains, the grass holds the water and carbons in the ground. As you can see he transformed a barren area into a thriving area.
We are moving to alternative fuels and forms of energy to stop using fossil fuels. There is even talk of harnessing the methane gas from the ocean as an alternative fuel.
We need to make this a priority and hold our leaders accountable. Then we can imagine the year 2216 to be the way we want it to be for the future generations to come.