Climate change has become undeniably one of the most important challenges for our generation and the ones that follow. From melting ice caps and rising seas to mega fires, we’re witnessing it all. People have now turned to technological advancements in hopes of preventing further damage, but aren’t those the very reason this started in the first place? Is it really possible that the main cause of the crisis can also help avert it? Here’s more on this by Perspectoverse’s Sanskriti Kundra.
Ever since the 2016 Paris agreement, nations worldwide are aiming to keep overall temperature increases under 2c. Scientists and Climatologists everywhere are brainstorming and trying to come up with ideas to use energy more efficiently while causing minimum damage, modern environmental technology has also enabled us to capture the naturally occurring energy and convert it into electricity or useful heat through devices such as solar panels, wind and water turbines, which reflects a highly positive impact of technology on the environment.
Electric vehicles, also known as “EV’s” use energy stored in rechargeable batteries. They do not produce carbon emissions, which contribute to the ‘greenhouse effect’ and lead to global warming. Furthermore, they do not contribute to air pollution, meaning they are cleaner and less harmful to human health, animals, plants, and water. EV’s are becoming more and more common as well as affordable, and are believed to replace petrol and diesel cars by 2040.
The idea of directly extracting CO2 from the atmosphere seems a bit ridiculous when you think about it at first, but it is in fact possible. ‘Direct Air Capture’ or DAC is the process of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and generating a concentrated stream of CO2 for utilization. The air then gets pushed through a filter by multiple large fans where CO2 gets removed. It is thought that this process can be used to manage emissions from distributed sources, such as exhaust fumes from cars. Full-scale DAC operations are able to absorb the equivalent amount of carbon to the annual emissions of 250,000 average cars. Many argue that DAC is essential in helping solve the climate crisis, as carbon dioxide in the air has been the main cause of the problem after all.
Global warming due to climate change makes it harder to grow healthy crops since the soil in certain areas becomes infertile and basically useless. Now, we’re all familiar with the process of photosynthesis, but the world’s first Bisolar leaf puts an interesting twist to it. BioSolar Leaf uses sunlight to grow microscopic plants that can grow in high concentrations within the arid and infertile ground. These tiny plants, in turn, produce healthy food ingredients while generating oxygen and sequestering high amounts of CO2.
There can be all the technological advancements in the world, but all of the work put into them will go in vain unless we put in a little work ourselves. It’s necessary for us to be educated and to take initiative by making most of the information we’re being provided. Climate change is the crisis of our time and the innovations to help get it under control are just one step towards a better future for our planet. The overuse of resources by humankind is what started this crisis and now it’s time for us to end it.
Written by Sanskriti Kundra
Illustrated by Urvi Agarwal
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Good job
Keep going 🤗
Good luck for ur future endeavours