The threat of global warming

Those who shout the shrillest about global warming are the biggest culprits in creating it. The developed countries, who have less than one fifth of the world population account for more than half of world'spollution and environmental degradation. And they lecture the maximum on the subject, offering to help the third world countries in helping containing the problem.

These facts are borne out once again in the book Global Warming: There is Still Time to Act by Alok Bhattacharya. This book he says is based on vast amounts of notes he kept on the paper clippings when he lived in developed countries in the late sixties when ?their conspicuous consumption-oriented lifestyles started becoming environmentally unsustainable.? These notes came useful to him decades later, when back in India, the media started highlighting the issue.

The world got together in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, to work out a regimen for all to arrest this process of global warming which threatens the very Earth. The Kyoto protocol ratified by 106 counties has not been agreed to by the largest emitter of Green House Gases (GHG) ? the United States.

Now the developed countries are keen on putting the entire blame of the problem on the third world countries, especially China and India because of their population. Nature care, love for environment and avoiding wasteful lifestyles are in-built in the cultures of Asia, especially India. While the developed countries pile up plastic and other wastes, the Asian countries firmly believe in recycling. Now those countries have started exporting their waste to us for recycling and dumping.

The book goes through the issue of Global Warming thoroughly, not from the point of an ?expert? in the field but more as a person who has been a silent witness to it. Starting with what is global warming and what are the GHGs, it takes the reader through the various world meets and their outcome. A basic information book on the subject minus the jargons, with index that helps.

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