When the problem is a tangible and close one, it inevitably occupies the agenda completely. However there is a more tangible and closer threat than the tension and ups and downs of Turkish political life. This issue has been unable to make it to the top of our agenda, even though it threatens us as well as the whole of humanity. Yes, I’m talking about global warming and the dangers it creates.
Last Tuesday evening Garanti Bank, in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund-Turkey (WWF-Turkey), was responsible for a very significant event. Former US Vice-President and former Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore, who lost the presidential race in 2000 to George W. Bush in a very controversial way, came to İstanbul, allowing an audience of influential people and famous intellectuals to listen to him as he delivered a fabulous presentation on global warming.
Gore, 59, has completely left politics behind and has devoted his life to leading the struggle against global warming. He tours one country after the other, like a missionary who has a firm faith in his cause. He tries to explain, employing a very effective tone, what sort of disaster humanity will be faced with as a result of thoughtless consumption.
He targets governments as well as individuals. He presents examples of how political decisions can bring about disasters or relief. For instance he shows the border region between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The photograph indicates the Haitian part, which deems it an economic obligation to loot the forests, as a desert, whereas the Dominican Republic retains all its green growth.
Listening to Gore we more clearly understand how badly we are devastating Earth -- the only place we can live -- consciously or unconsciously, but together. Global warming makes people living in other parts of the world pay the price for our ecological mistakes, while making us pay the price for theirs, and is thus etching in our mind the fact that we are each global citizens who have to fight global warming hand in hand. Therefore a great responsibility to take measures against the threat of climate change falls on each and every member of humanity, living in any part of the world. The most important of those responsibilities is to form an agenda on the environment and global warming and pressure politicians to develop policies to this end.
The cursoriness of the environmental programs of Turkey’s political parties, which are rapidly heading toward elections, also shows the great distance we need to cover on this path. Turkey, which stayed away from Kyoto for economic reasons, must at once come to grips with the fact that it will be among the countries that will take the brunt of globalization. It must sign Kyoto and make the necessary macro-decisions on the political continuum. Therefore the political preference of voters concerned with environmental sensitivities as well as economy and foreign politics are gaining importance, because the road to pressure politics to struggle against global warming primarily goes by way of the ballot box.
The current scene before our eyes is that our world is rapidly becoming an unlivable place, owing to thoughtless consumption and short-term policies. Forests are disappearing, soils are undergoing desertification, lagoons are drying up, seasons are changing and polar icecaps are melting. All of this is occurring while some regions are devastated by typhoons, others are devastated by floods and, in some, increasingly massive droughts subject people to hunger and homelessness.
The sea level all around the world is rising due to polar melting, thousands of creatures are becoming extinct in the oceans due to the rise in temperature water and millions of people are estimated to become “climate immigrants” due to shrinking coastlines. And nobody yet knows how the world will cope with the problems created by millions of “climate immigrants” as it has been unable to fully deal with those created by a few hundred thousand of refugees forced to leave their homelands because of wars or internal conflicts.
The trouble is that this is not a catastrophe scenario -- it is a process of which we are experiencing a certain part as of this moment. And there is nobody else but each one of us to reverse this process.
Be a part of the solution!
I would like to share a few small personal precautions we can take in our daily lives alongside our actions, attitudes and preferences to reduce our carbon footprint as well as raise environmental awareness and pressure politicians to make changes.
Change your bulbs: Replace your regular light bulbs with energy efficient ones and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 75 kilograms.
Use motor vehicles less: Walk more frequently, ride your bicycle and choose mass transportation. Each day you don’t drive your car, you reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 0.75 kilogram per two kilometers.
Contribute to recycling: By recycling only a half of the garbage you throw away each year, you can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,200 kilograms.
Switch off your TV, don’t use standby: By switching your television off manually instead of leaving it on standby with the remote you can save as much energy as spent in total by your washing machine, dishwasher and air-conditioner.
Check your tires: Properly inflated tires will increase the distance you cover per liter by 3 percent. Each four liters of gas you save will keep 10 kilograms of carbon dioxide away from our atmosphere.
Use less hot water: With a showerhead that consumes less water you can save 175 kilograms and by washing your clothes with warm or cold water as much as possible, you can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 250 kilograms.
Avoid products in large packages: By reducing your garbage by 10 percent, you can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 600 kilograms.
Plant a tree: An average tree absorbs one ton of carbon dioxide during its lifetime.
