The last few months have seen two major environmental disasters in Australia – one the deadly forest fires that ravaged through the Australian state of Victoria in the first week of February, 2009 and second - the oil spill that occurred off the coast of Queensland on 10th March 2009
Let’s talk about Bush-fires first. An estimated 210 people have been found dead with the numbers still going up. A Bush-fire is more prevalent in the south-eastern parts of Australia than at other places.
While fires can begin directly from natural causes – like lightning for instance, most of the times the cause is human activity. Careless people, sometimes, leave behind a fire after they depart from a picnic and it takes very little effort for this fire to spread.
Forget about a proper large-scale bush fire; in India, the general practice of disposing waste is to gather it all together and just burn it up on a large scale. Apart from the extent of pollution that this causes, it also leads to the burning of non-biodegradable substances that give out a very foul smell when burnt. Plastic bags, perfume and soft drink cans, all produce excessive pollution when subjected to this uncontrolled manner of disposal.
To come back to the original point, here are some ways of enduring that a fire doesn’t start or spread:
- Do not leave behind a fire, while departing from a picnic, camp-fire etc. Even if it doesn’t spread, remember it causes unnecessary pollution
- Do not burn metal substances, electronic gadgets, plastic materials or other man-made materials as these react very differently to fire
- Alert or inform the authorities in case of any uncontrolled fire that has spread
The next major environmental topic that I want to talk about is that of oil spills. Very recently, a ship suffered an accident due to a hurricane and this resulted in a spill of 230 tonnes of Fuel oil, 30 tonnes of other fuel and 620 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
Again, while environmental activities are largely under the mercy of nature, not every such disaster is due to an unforeseen event.
In 1991, the Iraqi forces burnt 900 million barrels of oil in Kuwait to delay the attack by the American troops. This has been the largest oil spill in history.
Many other oil spills are also a result of accidents that happen at sea.
Marine life is the worst hit. The oil penetrates and opens up the structure of the plumage of birds, reducing its insulating ability, and so making the birds more vulnerable to temperature fluctuations and much less buoyant in the water. It also impairs birds' flight abilities, making it difficult or impossible to forage and escape from predators.
Marine mammals exposed to oil spills are affected in similar ways as seabirds. Oil coats the fur of Sea otters and seals, reducing its insulation abilities and leading to body temperature fluctuations and hypothermia.
And last but not the least, it is we humans who are affected ultimately. An oil spill is usually accompanied with fire and when we are talking about large amounts of fuel, it creates so much air pollution that an entire city could be covered with dark smoke for days together. What’s more, when the sea waves bring the oil to the sea shore, it is the people living near the coast-line who are the most affected.
Here are a few points that one can observe in case an oil spill occurs near your area:
- Vacate your place nearby and avoid consuming drinking water locally until the situation subsides
- Alert the right people so that they can take relevant action
- Do volunteer if possible in cleaning up the environment. It’s everyone’s responsibility today!!!
While, other environmental issues like global warming, plastic usage etc take years to affect our world, an oil spill or a large bush-fire has the potential to destroy vast tracts of our ecosystem instantaneously. The speed and order of mass damage is huge and sometimes difficult to face and tackle.
It becomes all the more important to tackle this issue by simply being aware and acting responsibly so as to save the environment from as much disaster as possible.
