Despite the Big Bang and Big Crunch theories on the creation and doom of the universe, the factual position as it stands today is that the earth's temperature is fast increasing due to global warming and its temperature. If not controlled within a reasonable period of time it will shoot up to more than 6°C during the next two centuries, at which temperature the human race on earth will surely be wiped out.

Earth's survival depends on the sun's rays, which after passing through the thermosphere, mesosphere stratosphere and troposphere reaches the earth's surface in about eight and a half minutes. The ozone layer in the stratosphere protects the earth from high temperature by allowing only a small fraction of the sun's rays to reach the earth's surface which is sufficient to keep the earth warm and in habitable condition.

Greenhouse gas in the atmosphere absorbs ozone and due to thinning of the ozone layer more and more solar rays penetrate the earth's atmosphere causing a continuous rise in the earth's temperature. Coal, oils, gases, petrol, produce energy necessary for the industrial development of a region.

Global warming is not a regional phenomena but a global catastrophe. During the last 100 years the earth's temperature rose by about 1°C. By the end of the current century this will go up to 3°C and by the close of the next century, it is expected to shoot up to well above 6°C when CO2 concentration may exceed the damaging potential, resulting in

'Melting of the entire polar ice causing disappearance of most islands in oceans specially in Indian Ocean. There will be fast depletion of Himalayan snow/glaciers as it is the largest ice-mass after Arctic and Antarctic. All the existing rivers descending down the Himalayas and supplying more than 10 million cubic meters of drinking water to countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Burma and Afghanistan will overflow causing devastating floods in plains and coastal region of the countries.

'This will be followed by a drought with no drinking water for residents of the area. All forests and plantations over mountains and up country will completely dry up resulting in further increase of global warming. This situation will bring more suffering to inhabitants of poor and developing countries than to developed countries.'

The extensive studies on the subject carried out by renowned world scientists give a very grim picture of our future life if the global warming phenomena is not successfully controlled in the near future. Global warming is basically a scientific phenomena and can successfully be tackled by scientific means by replacing the existing energy sources with new energy sources that do not produce greenhouse gas. According to the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, the US alone produces about 40 per cent of the world's total CO2 emission at an approximate rate of 20 tons per person.

If green house gas production by all G8 countries are also taken into account it is likely to exceed 50 per cent of the total CO2 emission contributing to global warming. This emission needs to be drastically reduced to less than 5 tons per person. In China, for example, CO2 emission rate is only 3 tons per person.

The Kyoto Treaty of 1997 — now ratified by most world countries — proposed replacement of existing
energy sources all over the world with renewable energy sources like wind power, solar power, tidal power, hydro power, bio-fuel power which do not produce greenhouse gas.

With these measures, the Kyota Treaty expected CO2 contents in the atmosphere to reduce by at least 5 per cent over the next 10 years. However according to latest statistics, the CO2 content in the atmosphere today, instead of decreasing, is higher than anytime in the history of the earth.