Pollution Haze in Asia Could Affect World Food Supply

Thick brown clouds of pollution hang in the sky from the Persian Gulf to Asia in what the U.N. is calling the newest threat to the global environment. The regional haze, made up of soot, particles and chemicals, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, giving it the power to threaten health and food supplies across the world.

From MSNBC:

The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia — including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply “dimming” the amount of light by as much as 25 percent in some places.

Caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants, the brown clouds also play a significant role in exacerbating the effects of greenhouse gases in warming up the earth’s atmosphere, the report said.

“Imagine for a moment a 3-kilometer-thick band of soot, particles, a cocktail of chemicals that stretches from the Arabic Peninsula to Asia,” said Achim Steiner, U.N. undersecretary general and executive director of the U.N. environment program.

“All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet because this is where the stories are linked in terms of greenhouse emissions and particle emissions and the impact that they’re having on our global climate,” he said.

Some of the particles in the atmospheric brown clouds, such as soot, absorb sunlight and heat the air. That has led to steady melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which are the source of most of the rivers in Asia. If they keep on melting at their current rate, the glaciers could shrink as much as 75 percent by 2050.

Scientists are stressing that this isn’t a regional problem – it’s a global one. The cloud masses can move across continents within three to four days, affecting weather and bringing health problems to other parts of the world.

With all of these warning signs, it would be pretty dumb of us not to take serious, immediate action on problems like this. We can only hope that the combination of major threats to the environment and the economic crisis will spur a green movement that will span the globe. That’s what we need to fight this – commitment and involvement from the entire world. Can it happen? I sure hope so.

Link [MSNBC]