{"id":45061,"date":"2015-06-29T12:17:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T19:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=45061"},"modified":"2015-06-29T12:17:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T19:17:46","slug":"press-release-climate-change-will-kill-all-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/06\/29\/press-release-climate-change-will-kill-all-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Press Release – Climate change will kill all of us"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Actually, the forest is complete life, and it is the forest that gives strength to human beings to fight for the welfare of humanity.<\/em>\u201d<\/em>
\nChief Almir Narayamoga Surui<\/em> tribe leader<\/em><\/p>\n

A father carries his three year old dead child from the heat wave in Karachi, Pakistan. More than 700 lives have been taken due to the highest recorded temperature in fifteen years 44.8 degrees celsius in Pakistan and more than 2000 dead in the neighboring India. Karachi a city of 20 million people who lives with limited access to electricity, limited for only few hours a day, the rich has got the generators and most of them would survive while poor has no option but to die as they cant switch on any cooling device. The demand of the 20m people in Karachi cannot be met by the electricity grids, unable to keep up with the demand.The technologically sophisticated globalized world we live still unable to protect these innocent victims affected from the heat wave. It is a sad plight to see people being killed for heat. We have global leaders and top corporate sector who earn billions who talk of the values of human life but unable to do anything.<\/p>\n

\"climateKills\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to a prominent scientist David Auerbach\u00a0Humans will be extinct in 100 years due to overcrowding, declining resources and climate change\u201d. The goal for the century is to keep the temperature below 2\u00b0C will be difficult with the current trends. A 5\u00b0C increase, as predicted to occur by 2100 at the moment, would cause widespread flooding, famine, drought and mass extinction according to Auerbach.<\/p>\n

This author at the foothills of Davos in January was fortunate to interact and listen to Al Gore former US Vice President who spoke to the young global leaders, explaining what CO2 does to the climate and what we all need to do to protect and create a world for the present and the next generation. One hundred and ten million tons of CO2 every 24 hours is released to our atmosphere every day which seriously needs a change in our individual way of life, specially to reduce man made pollution around the world. The affect of climate change to Island nations will be drastic and its time we all take\u00a0 serious measures to curb environment pollution. Not further going towards projects such s Norochcholai coal power, since the entire world is moving away from coal and transitioning towards renewable energy the area we should concentrate when making future decisions. Private sector a key contributor to our economy should make protecting the environment a top priority including to their corporate social responsibility.<\/p>\n

\"climateKills2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera with Chief Almir of Surui from Amazon Forest<\/p>\n

This author met with another environment activist, tribal leader Chief Almir from Amazon forest at the World Entrepreneurship Forum. He is using google earth to protest Amazon forest and his indigenous Surui tribe. The Surui have put aside their bows and arrows and taken up new technology charting the Surui territory using Google Earth software, annotating the reserve with tags and photos marking villages, hunting grounds, and sacred sites, along with areas targeted by logging and mining companies. Outsiders could see the effects of deforestation and the attacks on tribal land. Chief Almir hoped to plant one million trees. A great individual using technology to protect the environment.<\/p>\n

The role is for all of us at Government, civil society, international organizations and everyone has an individual role to save their own children and the future unborn children. Individuals should be encouraged to use public transport, foot cycles and walking in city limits. Government should focus to provide infrastructure facilities required for this. Limitation of vehicle imports and to encourage comfortable public transport to urban areas should be considered. The import tax should be reduced for electric vehicles and people should be encouraged with incentives given to consume less harmful products for the environment. Importance of renewable energy and climate change should be a taught with practical examples at schools and to all stake holders of our society. UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon clearly states It\u2019s not only government. Government cannot do it alone. The UN cannot do it alone. There should be full partnership\u2026 then we should have civil society coming together. Even one normal citizen \u2013 they have a role to play.\u201d Saving our environment should be top of our agenda. Politicians should be an example for the people such as Ida Meier Auken Norwegian parliamentarian who use her foot cycle to goto parliament and fights to keep a better environment in her own country. The upcoming election in Sri Lanka people should consider voting for candidates who are environmentally responsible and does minimum harm to our environment without any banners, posters and usage of recyclable material. Its important we address and take small steps to minimize this climate catastrophe which will kill all of us.<\/p>\n

(This article was first published by the Colombo Telegraph<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/climate-change-will-kill-all-of-us\/)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera \u00a0Actually, the forest is complete life, and it is the forest that gives strength to human beings to fight for the welfare of humanity.\u201d Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui tribe leader A father carries his three year old dead child from the heat wave in Karachi, Pakistan. More than 700 lives have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}