Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
What will these ponds look like in a century? The answer depends
on our actions over the coming years. If we succeed in stopping climate
change, in 100 years they may be as beautiful as they are today. How-
ever, if CO
2
emissions continue unchecked, the combination of warm-
ing, changes in ocean chemistry, and sea-level rise may turn them into
dead salt marshes.
Death is already approaching a second lake. The Aral Sea in Central
Asia was once the fourth-largest lake in the world. But over the last half
century, it has shrunk from 26,000 square miles to about one-tenth
that size (roughly akin to New York State shrinking to the size of Con-
or war or ruthless exploitation under runaway capitalism. The cause
was primarily bad economic planning driven by perverse incentives:
The centrally planned “socialist” Soviet Union decided to divert the rivers
nutrition, the lake is slowly dying.
This tale of two lakes tells the story of this topic in the simplest way.
We humans control the future of our planet, with its lakes, forests, and
oceans brimming with life. Our living earth has many enemies—global
warming is our focus, but it takes place alongside unchecked market
forces, war, political woodenheadedness, and poverty. We fi rst need to
understand the destructive forces at work. Then, through a combina-
tion of scientifi c analysis, careful planning, good institutions, and appro-
priate channeling of market forces, we can preserve the unique heritage
around us.
This topic examines but one of the issues that we must address to
preserve our world—global warming. Humans have been contributing
to a warmer globe on a small scale for centuries. But the present cen-
tury is a critical period in which we must curb the unchecked growth
in greenhouse gases, particularly those that come from fossil fuels. If
we have not largely reduced the impact of these gases by this century's
end, the environmental future of the earth is grim.
