Crossing the Red Line

In Crossing the Red Line Bill McKibben talks about the harmful effects that global warming is having today on real people. The essay starts off by telling us one possible thing that might happen because of the greenhouse effect. The ice in the Arctic would melt and the fresh and cold water that results from the melting would flood the Atlantic and that would slow down or shut off the water coming in from the Gulf Stream. "As a result, while the rest of the globe continued to grow warmer, western Europe and eastern North America would turn sharply colder, and the relatively dry interior of Europe soon would have a climate comparable to present-day Siberia" (2005, p 143). Because of the severe changes in the climate, food would not be able to be grown much so wars would erupt throughout the whole world because of the want of food. Starvation, deaths from wars, and also disease would participate in balancing out the population of our overcrowded world. "The report is not novel--such visions of rapid and violent climate change have become common in recent years as our understanding of the wild weather swings in the climatic temperature record has grown" (2005, p. 143). Our environment is changing right now and people need to realize that but they also need to know that there are still ways to slow down or perhaps even stop this destruction of our environment.

According to McKibbin, the Bush administration has not even acknowledged global warming as a serious human problem and the agencies that are supposed to protect the climate and the environment have not done their job. I think that people need to realize that global warming is happening right now and not dump the problem on future generations. There are other sources energy and people might wonder why these energy sources are not seen much. There is wind and solar energy but the problem to both of these should be apparent. There are some days when the wind drops down and also when clouds hide the sun in the sky so energy cannot always be produced. There is nuclear energy but it is very expensive and also it is very dangerous if we make a mistake. The most promising "clean" source of energy might be hydrogen but it is not very clean according to McKibbin and ways always need to be found so hydrogen fuel cells can be fitted into cars. "--putting them in cars will require making them small and finding a way to distribute hydrogen around the country" (2005, p