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By Park Sung-ik
The earth we live on is 4.5 billion years old. So far, many creatures have lived and disappeared. However, there is something that humans are misunderstanding. It seems that humans think they will live on Earth forever, but they won't. For example, just as dinosaurs lived for 190 million years and disappeared, we humans can disappear at any moment.
At this moment, the sixth extinction has begun. Humans have become the cancerous beings of the global environmental destruction. Humans are destroying the earth everywhere. Before the industrial revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide was 250 ppm, but in 2006 it was 380 ppm. In the last 600,000 years, the amount of carbon dioxide has never exceeded 300 ppm. At 400 ppm, it is said that the earth's weather can no longer be controlled.
Since the industrial revolution, 700 million people in developed parts of the world, such as the United States, Europe, and Japan have raised the amount of carbon dioxide by 130 ppm, and in the future, BRICS with a large population, namely Brazil, Russia, India, and China, will actively emit carbon dioxide. So our earth will get hotter and the future will get darker.
The white snowfields of the Arctic and Antarctic serve to reflect sunlight. In other words, the North and South Poles are "Global Automatic Thermostats." Now, because of global warming, the Arctic and Antarctic ice is melting. Also, the snow in Siberia is melting and becoming a black land. Siberian methane gas is said to have a global warming effect 20 times that of carbon dioxide. In other words, global warming is accelerating.
Korea is already experiencing a subtropical climate, so it will soon be time for tropical fruits to be produced and monkeys to climb trees.
When the equatorial heat rises and the water vapor increases, typhoons form. That is, hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, typhoons in the Pacific Ocean, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean. Of the three, typhoons are the most powerful. The typhoon strikes Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and China, with South Korea being least affected by it. There are only one or two typhoons a year in Korea, but Japan blocks them, so there are few natural disasters. Japan is a country that is severely damaged by earthquakes as well as typhoons. In that respect, Korea is a good country to live in. The reason why there is little damage in Korea even when a typhoon comes and rains a lot is because there are many trees in the mountains. According to the U.N.'s announcement, South Korea is the only developing country that has succeeded in reforestation in 30 years.
The decisive reason why the earth is getting hot like this is because of oil and coal. We South Koreans misunderstand that we are an oil producing country and waste energy. If South Korea's energy consumption is 100, OECD countries are 72, Japan is 35, Germany is 85, the United States is 75, and France is 81. Wearing short sleeves in winter is not cool at all, and it is thoughtless. Europeans wear thick coats in winter. The streets of Seoul are more splendid than Las Vegas, and people do not go home and wander around the entertainment district outside. The streets of Europe are dark and people go home early to stay with their families.
Park Sung-ik (parksi48@naver.com) is a former teacher at Pungmoon Girls' High School.
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