Global warming

Until recently, when I thought about climate change I considered myself an agnostic. However, since watching a documentary on television recently I have been converted.

On the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau, which towers three miles above the rest of China, there are a large number of enormous glaciers which store one-third of the world’s fresh water.

The source of some of the world’s mightiest rivers such as the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Ganges and the Mekong rise out of the plateau, flowing to China, India and all countries of South-east Asia.

Fifty per cent of the world’s population depends on the water from these rivers. But the glaciers on the plateau are melting so fast that they could all be gone in a relatively few years. The temperature has risen by 2 degrees in 20 years and is set to rise by 5 degrees by the end of the century.

The world is sleep-walking into a catastrophe where future wars could be fought not over competing ideologies but over the fast-diminishing resource of water. I do worry not for myself, for I am too long in the tooth, but for future generations if something is not done immediately to curb global warming.

VINCENT MCCANN Ferniehill Gardens, Edinburgh

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