Wacky Environmental Ideas

It is a known fact that the Earth is going through tough times. The state of the environment is getting worse and worse and as a result a change is mandatory. Over the course of time there have been many ideas which the people thought that would be able to stop the degradation of the environment. Some of them were good, but many of them were kind of crazy. You will get to read about them in what follows.

One of the strangest methods of getting rid of pollution is to ban the plastic bags and the light bulbs. It might sound ridiculous and harsh, but the reality is that many countries including China, Australia, tried to use the method. China wants to get rid of the plastic bags because they consider them to be very pollutant, whereas Australia wants to ban the sale of certain types of light bulbs. There are alternatives to the plastic bags and incandescent light bulbs, such as the paper bags and the fluorescent light bulbs.

It has also been suggested that a good way of reducing the pollution would be by placing mandatory caps on the power stations. The idea is not bad; because it has been proven that the placement of such caps on the power stations will reduce the pollution very much. However there is a problem regarding this solution, and that is like in most of the cases, money. Many countries have agreed to bring the level of emissions down, but one of the countries which opposed the proposition for financial reasons is the United States of America. It is unknown if they will make a change, now since Obama has become president, the 44^th president stating that one of his tasks is to reduce the country’s pollution.

An engineer at the University of Leeds in England developed a very ingenious solution for managing the garbage. He created a method of recycling the garbage and shaping them into block shapes, which would then be used for building houses. The idea might sound wacky, but the building blocks are much easier to manufacture than the regular ones which are used for the construction of the buildings, and do not pollute as much as those.

Some people suggested that we should burry the carbon dioxide. There are huge quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the gas is one of the main reasons why the temperature of the earth is in a constant incline. The method of containing the gas and placing it somewhere else is not a new one. In order for the method to work, the carbon dioxide emissions would have to be separated from the plant emissions, then compressed, and injected into an underground tomb. However there is no certainty that the gas will not leak from there, and the costs for such an operation are unknown as well.

Some experts believe that the foods we eat are responsible for the pollution. They believe that we are responsible because we eat such foods as red meat, which cause lots of gas emissions. They also believe that we are not active enough, and that if we would exercise for half an hour each day instead of driving, the difference in gas emissions would be huge. It is said that if all the Americans with ages ranging between 10 and 74 would walk for 30 minutes each day instead of taking the car, the carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced with 64 million tons.

Worms were also suggested for stopping the pollution. The people suggested that we should keep worms and feed them bits of sandwich crust and apple cores from the garbage which would then be turned into compost. You could then use the compost for different purposes, such as for the plants. In case you are not too fond with keeping warms in your house, then you can always obtain the compost through the old fashioned way, which is by keeping the garbage outside and letting it to decompose.

It is believed that certain aerosols have the possibility of cooling down the atmosphere. One such aerosol which supposedly has this quality is the sulfur. These particles have the possibility of intercepting the solar radiation and to send it back in space. The scientists suggest that we should insert more sulfur in the atmosphere, which would have the desired effect. The plan has a flaw though, and that is that too much sulfur could cause acid rains, which would be very damaging for the environment as well. Even if the acid rains would be under control, the sulfur would have to be injected in the atmosphere frequently; otherwise its effect would not be present.

Another method of protecting the earth would be to get the oceans moving. I know that the idea sounds ridiculous, but environmentalist and futurologist James Lovelock believes that it is very plausible. He stated that we should introduce pipes in the water which would simulate the mixing that occurs in the water, and as a result, certain minerals are released in it. He stated that the method would only be temporary, because the global warming will continue for a while even if the emission of greenhouse gases would be stopped.

Some suggested that we should insert iron into the ocean. The iron has certain benefits such as aiding the development of photosynthesizing plankton which have the possibility of using the carbon dioxide from the water in order to feed. Some have tried to insert iron into the ocean, but many people are skeptical about this solution. They believe that the iron will not be absorbed by the planktons. Others believe that the iron will affect the ecosystems.

Some scientists believe that one good method of protecting the Earth against the global warming would be to put a ring of sunlight-scattering particles or micro-spacecraft in orbit around the equator. These particles would act similar to the sunglasses we use, meaning that they would protect the Earth from certain radiations.