In keeping with their concerns about social responsibility, for humanitarian and ecological causes, Google has released a series of Google Earth tours.
This initiative on their part is a precursor to the UN Conference of Parties 15 meeting in Copenhagen, this December.
The first of these tours is called ‘Confronting Climate Change’ and has narration by Al Gore. This tour presents scientific data collected from the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change. This tour gives details about the rise in temperature models, precipitation changes, water stress, food scarcity, sea level rise etc. in the world. There will be a series of such tours presented and the first of these teaches about mitigation techniques and the adaptation strategies which have to be dealt with by people all over the world.
One of the chief causes of rise in the carbon dioxide levels in the air we now breathe, is the large scale tropical deforestation which is being carried out in the world. While this is being done ostensibly for the purpose of farming and cattle grazing, it is severely harmful to our future. The next set of tours which have been released by the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, have been created from regions which have been reasonably successful in limiting the deforestation and have also helped the locals in their efforts at reforestation. These regions are Borneo and Madagascar.
Alongside these moves, Greenpeace is also working in collaboration with several large Multinational Firms in the food industry to set up a mutually acceptable ban on the farming of soybean plantations, which are among the primary causes of Amazon deforestation.
