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Heat

September 24, 2018

In this country, this summer was abnormal. Every day the temperature was over 35℃ in almost all areas. Before this, in the rainy season, there were heavy rain days. Floods and landslides occurred in many places, and many people died. This year's temperature highs and number of floods were the highest on the record since the weather agency started. He lived in the northern district; but, even so, he had to feel the disgusting heat every day. He knew that this was from Global Warming, the Greenhouse Phenomenon, and the rise of CO2. But, he felt weird because of two reasons: One: Recent energy changes: Around his everyday life, it was clear there were many solar and wind power generation systems. There were so many solar panels appearing here and there. He had heard that in China many huge solar generation plants were made. He also heard that geothermal sites (to use the underground stable temperature to cool the air in the summer and to warm the air in the winter) were popular in China and America. Now his country started to use renewable energy more. Two: Recent electric car development: Another was electric cars. He knew that some EU countries and China decided to change all cars to electric cars in several years or within a decade. This was very drastic because now almost all cars were driven by gasoline. But he could see many electricity charging spots for cars being constructed here and there.   Some people started to use electric assist bikes thinking that using a 1ton car to transport a 70 kg body was not efficient. In addition, if auto driving cars started, car sharing would become normal, and the number of cars would decrease drastically. He supported these ideas.   These types of occurrences became more frequent after an environmental documentary movie was made. In 2006, there appeared a shocking movie named 'An Inconvenient Truth'. In the movie, Al Gore, the former Vice President of the US, explained, using a lot of data, charts, and graphs, how bad the high levels of CO2 affected and would affect the earth's environment in the future. This movie shocked people all over world. If the increased pace of emitted CO2 continued, the earth would become one big catastrophe. The following year, Al Gore got the Nobel Peace Prize. After that, countries all over the world started to carry out various environmental policies. He had believed that the policies help ease the effects little by little. But, this year's record abnormal rain and heat... "Hasn't the amount of the CO2 in the world decreased?" He started to search for it. Soon he found a 27page document by the Environment Ministry of his country. It was named 'Stop The Global Warming'. It was published last year. The gist of the report is as follows: ・IPCC's report in 2013 read that it was almost sure that extreme heat will appear in the world. (IPCC is the abbreviation of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change created by the UN and WMO (the organization concerning world-wide weather) ) ・The rise of the earth's temperature continued since 1890, as well as the rise of sea water temperatures. The ice is decreasing, and the sea level is getting higher. ・In this country, the temperature is getting higher. The number of 'Intensive Hot Day' (the days that are higher than 35℃) is increasing. Heavy rain days are increasing. ・This tendency will continue unless CO2 is reduced. In this country, there will be more higher temperature days, more heavy rain days, there will be more floods. In the world, the dry areas will become drier, the wet areas will have more heavy rain. He was amazed that it was just the same as the things now happening in this country and in the world. There were many floods in countries which have a rainy season. The dry areas, like California, there were a lot of mountain fires. The report mentioned about the amount of CO2. ・The emission of CO2 was stable throughout the world; although it was decreasing a little in this country. But, the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. ・In the Paris Commitment, his county's goal of 2030 is minus 26 % from 2013. By 2050, minus 80 percent from 2013. 2050?! There was the record of heat this year, and every year for another 30 years! The report specifically mentioned about side effects of high temperatures and high sea water levels other than natural disasters.   ・The harvest of crop will decrease. ・The quality of food, vegetables, fruits, grains, will become bad. ・The quality of livestock will become bad. ・There will be more viruses containing diseases.   ・More construction of seaside walls and dams will make the local governments' budget worse. Now he was reading today's newspaper: ・In Brussels, Belgium, bus drivers demanded to be allowed to wear shorts when driving. Brussels is located in the northern latitude of 50 degrees. ・In Myanmar, there were heavy floods, and 132,000 people had to be evacuated to safety areas. ・In Mexico, there was a sudden strong wind when an airplane took off, and the airplane had to make an emergency landing. Although the plane crashed, all passengers were evacuated safely. He sighed.

*phenomenon :現象
*geothermal :地熱の
*catastrophe :破局
*other than :以外の