Scenario Planning for Globalization - Essay Example

? 16 June Scenario planning for Globalization Story The pine forests of British Columbia which covered a significant portion of land in the past, have been reduced to negligible. The woods have been eaten up by the mountain bark beetles, which have long sustained in these woods and have always been destroying the clumps of pinewood. The number of mountain bark beetles in the pine forests of British Columbia has abruptly increased to dangerous levels in the last 20 years or more. A significant reduction in the density of forests was first noticed in the early years of the first decade of the 21st century. This reduction was first attributed to the growing number of mountain bark beetles by a forest ecologist, Scott Green from the University of Northern British Columbia. In the past, the pine forest used to recede in summer but would regain its density in the winter. But over the past 20 years or more, the mountain bark beetles have reproduced in such large numbers, that winters have hardly done any job to reduce their number, and the extinction of the pine forests have sustained equally through winter as they did in the summer. Recent research has shown the influence of rise in temperature upon the tendency of the mountain bark beetles to breed. With an overall rise of 2?C in the global temperature since 2010, the mountain bark beetles have increased in number by millions. Forest ecologists are of the view that if the present rate of greenhouse gas emission sustains for another decade, the mountain bark beetles would become the biggest threat to forests all over the world. Story 2: Over the last two decades, droughts and floods have frequently been occurring as a consequence of the 2?C rise in the global temperature since 2010. The biggest sufferings have been noticed in the Arctic. For the last twenty years or more, the temperature of air in the Arctic has increased at a speed twice as much as that for the other parts of the world. Accordingly, an overall increase of 4?C has been noticed in the Arctic. More than half of the total volume of summer sea ice in the Arctic has liquefied and flowed into the water over the last twenty years. This has majorly happened as a result of insufficient temperature controlling measures taken since 2010, since the scientists then expected this volume to recede not before 2100. The reality squeezed that period of ninety years into twenty years and the precautionary measures that were designed according to a ninety year period have proved just too insufficient. As a result of the massive loss of ice in the Arctic, polar bears have become extinct for the last five years. They are nowhere to be seen but the intensive care units designed by the WWF for the preservation of extinguishing animal species. The veterans are proposing new medications and techniques to increase the breeding rate of polar bears, but many are skeptical about the usability of these techniques since the polar bears can not be provided with natural habitat in ice after birth. Once released, many would die because of the loss of habitat like their ancestors. Story 3: The ice sheets have melted away with an enormous speed since 2010. The drought and spread of epidemics noticed in the last five years is fundamentally attributed to the rise of sea levels. The number and enormity of tropical cyclones has been greatly affected by the heat developing in the seas. Number of storms has generally remained the same as they were five decades ago, though typhoons and hurricanes have dangerously increased both in number and intensity. In the US, parts of Gulf Coast and East Coast have been hit hard by the typhoons, while coastal flooding has become a routine in New York. In the two consecutive years; 2028 and 2029, Queens and Brooklyn have seen some of the worst natural disasters of the past 100 years. The two foot rise of the sea level has also generated many hurricanes in Shanghai, Bangkok, London, Venice and Cairo since 2025. People have migrated in large numbers from the poor countries in order to secure their assets and maintain or improve the standard of living which has potentially increased the burden upon the rich economies of the world manifolds. A lot of money has already gone into developing technology and electricity from wind and biomass, and cars powered by electricity. Rich countries have already had a hard time coping with the lag of supply of oil against the increased demand, their economical strength is being increasingly shattered by a need to take care of the immigrants from the poor countries, not to mention the tens of billions of dollars that go in the aid of poor countries to survive through the effects of global warming and develop the necessary technology in accordance with the treaty of 1992. Story with maximum chances of occurrence: Of the three stories discussed above, story 1 and story 3 are least likely to be true. Story 1 overemphasizes upon the impact of global warming upon the breeding pattern of the mountain bark beetles. There can be several reasons for the increase of breeding among the mountain bark beetles that include but are not limited to man induced lack of diversity in the type of trees in a forest. Mountain bark beetles particularly feed upon the bark of pine trees. Their growth can be halted by increasing the diversity of forests. Besides, mountain bark beetles’ growth is a reason to small to attribute the extinguishment of forests to. In the third story, rise in the sea level by three feet in this century is an exaggerated estimate. Scientists today have conflicting views upon the level of rise of sea level till the 21st century, and many do not believe that it would be enough to instigate an uninterrupted flow of hurricanes and typhoons all over the world. Nonetheless, glaciers are melting away at an enormous speed and polar bears are losing habitat as a result of that. They can be predicted to extinct fairly soon if the glaciers keep melting at the present rate, specially when research has found that the rate of increase of temperature in the Arctic is twice that in the rest of the world. So story 2 is most likely to occur by 2030. Read More