Words: 3415
Norman Pongracz: Nature’s strange game What happened? I still remember those days in spring, those strange times. I think of the noise of workers, the apparently scared people, who lived on the bank of the river Bodrog. This time of the year was always special in Sarospatak, my home town; this part of the year was the flood season. Groups of people, helpful volunteers gathered, and started to build an obstacle on the two sides of the river, to prevent the frightening mass of water flowing, and drowning the city.
Everybody was very optimistic, the people thought in general, that we can avoid letting the water ruin our homes, in other words we can prevail against the nature. However, in the row of floods we had every spring, we realized, that nature will not adjust itself to our life, and we have to regret that this cannot work in a long term. After weeks of struggle with the Bodrog, the closest homes to the river were destroyed, everlastingly swallowed by the muddy water, and never built up again. I felt disappointed that time.
The people in every age, sex and occupation, worked without stopping from day to day to mitigate the damages, but we could not defeat nature. And then the news was coming about the other parts of the country: cities had been sunk; wild animals died freezing in the water, because they did not have any place to run from the flood. Hundreds of people lost their homes, their hope during the spring days. Some poets said that the spring is the season of resurrection, but for these people it was the period of agony.
The damages were huge: some statistics estimated the cost of flood 250 million dollars annually, and these were just the cost of rebuilding the homes ??? if they can be rebuilt. There were serious casualties among the wild animals: priceless Stags and other beautiful creations of nature died because the flood destroyed their shelter, and they could not escape from the cold water. In those days despair sat silently on our life. Everybody asked: And who was for blame? What happened in the past few years that changed our life so much?
What transformed Hungarian history to a sad history of floods? It is true, that there were some heavy rainstorms in the past few years, more than long time ago. My grandfather always reminded us: “everything was “less” when I was young: less rain, less cold, less hot weather, everything…” There were occasionally arid times, when the burning heat was threatening the lives of citizens, and plants. Some scientist said that this is due to our overpopulated, built-up cities, which transports rainwater in a faster way to the river.
The rivers capacity of transferring water decreased, due to the fall of animal husbandry in the region, which let the plantation spread at the expense of the river. Our greed for places near the rivers, the uncontrolled expand of cities had this grave effect on our environment. And some others argued that this was our fault. “The greenhouse effect” ??? as they called it ??? caused the warming of our region. Our factories, the anti-environmental lifestyle added small proportions to this new phenomenon. We created this hot balloon, and it popped out. Our senior scientist claimed the importance of climate-change.
They have written dozens of several articles about the expected thirty percentage temperature change. The average people were shocked; their life just turned upside down. There was also a third opinion: that everything is just fine, and the climate change would occur even without us. I was amazed, that I found men and women in my country, who had considered this new phenomenon “nothing special”, and opposed the need of new behavior. However I am not angry on them, because basically everybody had the same false perception about nature’s laws for a long time.
We felt, that nature is playing a strange game on us; the regions average temperature was increasing; even so miles from my home town, the great plains were becoming deserts, while around my city everything was “preparing itself” to sink, because the stronger floods. The weather acted like an angry child: it was unpredictable and extreme damaged everything in the way, but not just physically: they massive body of water ran over many hopes. The countries held conferences all over the world, summoning the best of the scientist, to solve the increasing problems of climate change.
Kyoto Protocol was born in Japan, to prevent the increase of carbon dioxide, which was considered to be the main cause of the global warming. Some nations however considered this as a threat to the stability to their economy, so they rejected it, making this project a less successful policy. However this was only the first big step; that humanity has done to handle the problems of climate-change. In some ways politics and science did great effort, to create the sustainable growth concept, they just had forgotten to act in favor of this new ideology; in the recent years we have not seen anything mportant to happen, and conditions were getting worse. News from all over the country and the world were indicating that nature’s strange game is changing our future and society. As I said earlier: we felt that while the past was about the humanity, the future was in the hand of the planet and the environment. The seasons had been becoming more and more extreme in the past few years: the summer’s sun is burning down the forest, the winter’s snow is freezing the country to the bones, and we cannot find any ease during the spring and fall.
The older people are sensitive to extreme weather, for them the climate change can be lethal. There are more epidemics due to the increased temperatures, which gives better living conditions for different types of bacteria’s and viruses. The extreme weather also started to deteriorate our physical surrounding: the roads need repairs more often, the life in the cities are becoming unbearable without air-conditioning during summer, and even more problematic in spring: not long time ago the river Danube almost flooded Budapest, the capitol city with almost 2 million people living there.
I was staying and studying in that time in the Capitol city, and I felt the heavy preoccupation on my friends shoulders. While we were caring mostly about the cities problems, in the countryside, the annual flight of migrants, another beautiful part of our life has changed forever. Soon the newspapers were filled with articles about the effect of climate-change on our life, and everybody became aware of the dim future. Lot of people realized that we entered in a new age, where we have to take care not just about our life, but the quality of environment.
And if we cannot find a proper solution, we have to face the consequences. We burned down forests to have places for our homes, we created factories emitting toxic gases to maintain or increase our quality of life, to create job for people. We built our homes near the river, which limited the way of rainwater getting into the water, and the water to get through the region, because basically we decreased the floodplains. Now we have to pay the price. Can we fix the climate change somehow? The jump What is going to happen? To tell you the truth, I can still hardly believe to the well known sustainable growth.
I feel personally that we used nature’s resources, and we will continue to use it: we are slowly outgrowing this planet, and God knows what will happen in the next few hundred years. However we can slow down this distressing process of global-warming with commitment and a helpful concept. We only need to care, watch over our environment. First of all in my opinion we need to show people what are we facing. Climate change is not a mystical ideology; it is not invisible attack of nature: it is here, and it is knocking on our doors. The society have to make the members know, ??? not fear, know ??? that we have a serious problem.
This is also our chance to show the future generations that we can work together and make our surrounding a much more comfortable, and friendly place. In this case we need efficient education! Schools and programs for all the family, where they can see, that defending our environment is an honorably act, and it has its rewards. The recycling of our used assets, the collection of trash selectively changes our future, and our children future. Even with little things, like turning off the lights, when we go out of our room, we can make a difference.
For achieving a big issue, we need a chain of small careful steps. Anyway we are walking on our future. Children are the ones who will become the new environmentally aware generation one time, if we make some effort to educate them. I feel big opportunities in the different types of environment-centered-schools and kindergartens. Due to the contributions among the member countries of the United Nations, there are dozens of new schools and kindergartens made from year-to-year, which provide the children environment-friendly surrounding, and environment-centered education.
The eco-friendly kindergarten programs ??? also called forest-kindergartens give children lectures about environmental defense, they make excursions in a certain period to show the little ones the beauty of nature. These installments give a look at the precious things beyond computers and toys. This concept is the first one that gives us a chance to form the children minds, so they can become more sensitive to their surroundings and their health. The other green-kindergartens and green-schools put our kids into an environment friendly place, where ??? beside the basic knowledge – they can acquire an environment-centered thinking.
This can only be efficient with the contribution, and conscious help of the parents. For the adults, the solution is harder. We have to show them, that being environmentally aware is both economically and medically useful. Grown up people have their own means of achieving a better world, and it is only them, who will decide whether to act or not in favor of the next generation. People may adapt some methods above mentioned, which can slow down the extreme changes in nature, but we cannot stop it.
Except if we create an eco-society, a group of people, whose main purpose is reaching harmony with nature, through looking after our environment, educating the future generations, and educating ourselves. When it comes to act in favor for our future, we, individuals can cooperate. Government will not do it for us. Of course they can make laws, and they can force people to act in a certain environment ???friendly way, but this will not worth anything without the commitment of the individuals. In the same way large corporations will not do it for us, if they cannot see the stubborn will of change in their employees.
The main issue is the ideology: there is no way of bringing back the old times, when there was bigger harmony with nature, without teaching the individuals how to care. One of my friends consider herself environment-aware, but she refuses to turn off the TV when she leaves the room. My other friend basically turns on the lights and leaves it like that for all day. Even if he is not staying in the room. Isn’t it sad, that people wait some kind of miracle to happen, to solve their problems? Speaking is the easy way, doing your task is a bit more complicated. First let us take a look around in our homes; turn down the heating a bit.
Use thermostat, to maintain higher cost savings through controlling temperature. Use double windows instead of a single one, so you can reduce the energy loss. Do not open the windows for a long time. Use proper heat sealing. Even placing the fridge and the freezer to a proper place can save you money. The concept, that everybody has to understand, that defending our surrounding from the climate change, and preserving the harmony of nature can be done only by step-by-step. First it may seem to be inefficiently small step, however without trying it even gets worse later on.
And we can continue for a long time: turn of the light if you do not need it, and use energy sparing bulbs. Do not use low power state in computers and other machines (for example Television), instead shut it off. If you do not use, pull the cell phone charger out. Use ventilation instead of air-conditioning. Use more green energy, maybe you should consider putting some sun collectors on the top of your home. We can achieve marvelous things, if we look at the details. But only if we look deeply enough, we can tell ourselves, that we done something today for the planet.
We can even use environment friendly diapers for our babies, so the number of opportunities is high. I am representing the generation in this issue, which can do the most for this goal, and who can suffer a lot, not doing anything. Soon lot of men and women form my age will be head of enterprises, and then we will have to make decisions. More I think about this, I wonder: is this fair? The past generations did not realize the importance of environmental awareness, and now most of the hard decisions that are needed to be made, are resting on our shoulders.
As an entrant in the business world, I and my generation need to reconsider carefully our choices of creating enterprises, and working for one. It is very important to be clear about our goals, and our ways to achieve them. If we do something wrong in the beginning: it may not worth doing it anymore. The sad thing is that ??? according to the interview, what Sun Microsystems made among hundreds of companies ??? most of the CEOs and dozens of workers and employees does not really understand what does environmentally aware mean in business.
I personally think, that because we are before becoming a part of the business culture, and before settling down with wife and children in private life, we have the opportunities and the ability to assess unbiased ways of living friendly with our environment. However there are some ways of doing something for our surroundings, and our children: the biggest act, the corporations can do for nature, is saving energy, decreasing the consumption of paper they use, or they can take part in car-pooling as many times as they can, or participate in the selective trashing.
If the companies can show the employees and their family a good example of conscious acting in favor of nature, it can ground a new way of thinking. In every aspect, we will be the ones, who will determine the fate of all that conferences, political and non-political efforts that were made to maintain stability and harmony with the nature. As we begin our work we will enter the blood-flow of decision making about ourselves and our surroundings.
We can ??? we have to ??? prove that humanity has solution to climate change, and we will adjust, progress towards greater goals. Of course the business main goal is the profit. The question is in this aspect is, whether we can maintain profit and competitiveness through thinking environmentally. I am afraid that individually people may not realize that our values and focus have to change in order to undone the damages what climate-change has done. It will be a very hard time ??? if not the hardest ??? to create a new concept of environmentally aware business thinking.
In the recent years there were large vast of governmental or international programs about environment defense, which can help companies adapt the new ideology: the Hungarian KEOP (Kornyezet es Energia Program ??? Environment and energy program) and the related ZBR (Zold Beruhazasi Rendszer ??? Green investment system) support the environmentally and energetically efficient investments. The European nations are also developed a new type of engine for cars, called Euro 3 and Euro4, which can lower the gas-consumption of certain types of cars.
The governments through international contract can create the framework for the job, we are facing: the carbon dioxide trade contracts (EU ETS) help the less developed countries to adjust themselves to the Kyoto Protocol. The European climate Change Program (ECCP) helps to coordinate the future fights against the emission of noxious gases. My opinion is that all this effort, programs and conferences cannot really work without another sensitive issue regarding our work of maintaining harmony with nature. Probably this work – that has to be done – is the biggest effort for decades in the life of humanity.
Let us state it straight: we need to take responsibility for our actions we do. I does not matter how big is the tasks that we have done, or we will be doing for this bigger purpose, we have to admit as our own. Without taking the responsibility, the groups of people will only be reckless children, who may understand the essence of problem, but will not make effort to figure out a proper solution. Besides the climate changes bad effect, the greatest evil is the “scientist” who is experimenting with nature without caring about it.
I assume that nobody would like to hear the old joke again: the surgery was successful but the patient died, because in this case we only have one patient. Taking responsibility is to stand out from the crowd and start doing something for the next generations. Modern age new heroes will be the ones, who can sacrifice something for bigger purpose. If we want to defeat the bad effects of climate change we have to defeat ourselves first. If we can achieve, that people will know about climate change, and think about it, we done our hardest task.
But I would not recommend anybody to have big expectations for the next few years: this will be a hard time in society, with a lot of arguments and pain, and desperate fight for our rights, and the right of nature. Because nature has rights, maybe not written ones, not in law stated ones, but ones, that nobody else can have: our environment is the cradle for our civilizations, and if it vanishes, it will be the grave too. We can conclude that if we do not act, we will end like the frog in the water which is getting hotter very slowly.
The frog stays, and after a while it dies. We have a logical thinking, we have the opportunity to make decisions, and take the responsibility for our steps. So thinks about the things that are going on and start to act. Take a shower instead of bathing, while washing the tooth turn of the faucet. Recycle bottles, paper crates, and use recyclable boxes. Re-use your shopping bags. Take a walk instead of using cars, or if you need to take longer distances use public transportation or car-pooling. Use less paper.
This is just small proportion what we can do to make our planet a better, more comfortable place, but even with small steps we can help the environment and ourselves. Bibliography: http://ec. europa. eu/environment/climat/campaign/what/climatechange_en. htm http://www. mta. hu/index. php? id=634&backPid=417&tt_news=1027&cHash=7658580a00 http://index. hu/tudomany/kornyezet/nes1949/ http://www. greenfo. hu/zold_navigator/item. php? kategoria=103 http://www. harmonet. hu/cikk. php? rovat=258&alrovat=261&cikkid=9969 http://www. iacesprofit. hu/? s=32&n=68&mr=1639 http://www. sulinet. hu/tart/fcikk/Kebi/0/24351/1 http://www. kekduna. hu/modules. php? name=News&file=article&sid=117889 http://74. 125. 47. 132/search? q=cache:z72xUhA1y7YJ:www. kovet. hu/view/dl/154-894. html+kornyezettudatos+oktatas&hl=hu&ct=clnk&cd=30&gl=hu http://www. infinit. hu/content/view/149/46 http://www. arviz. hu/ http://www. fn. hu/uzlet/20070321/haromszor_tobb_arviz_magyarorszagon/ http://ec. europa. eu/environment/climat/campaign/resources/links_hu. htm??(usefu