We live in a world full of technology which does not coincide with nature. As a result, we’ve contaminated this earth of ours in more ways than one. Acid rain is one of the byproducts of such technology as we find ways to provide ourselves with more and more comforts at the risk of causing an imbalance in our life support system.
We need to understand how acid rain damages our environment and what we need to do to change the amount of pollutants directly responsible for causing acid rain.
There are numerous solutions to this problem, but we have to decide which of them will provide the best options for cleaning up the problem.
We can clean up our smokestacks and exhaust pipes by taking steps to minimize the output of emissions that cause much of our acid rain problems.
When burning fossil fuels to power our homes with electricity, the two pollutants that are released into the atmosphere are sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides.
Coal is responsible for most of the sulfur dioxide emissions, and can be reduced by first washing the coal to remove the sulfur dioxide from the gases that leave the smokestacks.
We can switch fuels that produce fewer pollutants such as natural gas. Catalytic converters reduce the nitrogen oxides from cars and by ensuring that they work properly this has helped considerably in reducing the oxides from entering into the atmosphere.
By using the wind as energy, solar power, geothermal energy, hydropower, and even nuclear power, will all greatly decrease acid rain as they all are much less likely to produce these harmful pollutants.
We need to depend less on oil as a means for transportation and heating our homes by switching to natural gas, or the use of batteries and fuel cells for which to power our cars which are major contributions to our acid rain problems.
Smokestacks can be fitted with water vapor that collects the soot and harmful emissions so that it actually washes these contaminates from the smoke thereby leaving less harmful gases being released into the atmosphere.
We can bring back our lakes and streams that have been damaged by acid rain simply by adding limestone, a natural compound to cancel out the acidity caused by the acid rains, but are expensive and have to be done often. However what price clean rain water we have to ask ourselves.
We can help ourselves as individuals to eliminate the problem by turning off lights and appliances when not in need of using them.
By using energy efficient bulbs, appliances and other things we use that depend on electricity, we can cut down what it takes in fuel to power these.
Keep your heat or air within a comfort zone but not to a point whereas it wastes both.
Try using public transportation, or use a carpool to get to work.
Buy a vehicle that may prove to be more dependent of a more environmentally friendly for powering the car such as hybrids or electric cars
It’s our health and lives at stake here, and we have to do what we need to do in order to keep our environment safe for our very existence.
