Butterfly Effect
Film «After tomorrow» is not a fairytale, Remember about «After tomorrow »
Elmira Kasymova

“How can frequent thunderstorms connect to your forgetting to switch off light when you go out?
It is like Butterfly effect. She had flapped here, and typhoon started on the other side of the earth…
Any human`s action, the fact of his living and his energy consumption is butterfly’s flapping, that could result a catastrophe. 
When people work in routine day to day, lead a secluded life, they don’t worry about it”- says Kanat Baigarin, director of Climate Change Coordination Centre. - We have to remind it to plain men.

Climate Change Coordination Centre was created as the joint Kazakh-American project. Project ended, and on its foundation members have created the independent organization.

A lot of facts point to global climate change.  For example, for the last hundred years temperature in the world has raised to 1 degree, and in Kazakhstan - to 1.5 degree.

Scientists have simulated possible scenarios of temperature raise for the next hundred years. A lot of islands will be covered by ocean; climate changes on our planet will be irreversible, as a result there will be extreme nature phenomena.

-Today European scientists, ecologists tell the entire world:” Let’s create such life conditions that temperature won’t raise higher than 2 degrees”- says Kanat Baigarin. - In other words, rising for 1 degree isn’t under discussion.

One of climate change’s reasons is wasteful and ineffective use of resources. Greenhouse effect had been and will be on the planet. In other words there is a stratum, keeping heat. Because of emissions the stratum becomes thicker, and this brings to the fact of more energy absorption in the Earth atmosphere, which leads to temperature rise. And it can bring to climate change, removal of climatic zone, appearance of arid zones, and extreme weather phenomena. For example, strong heat, cold, hurricanes. On our planet we have already had periods of temperature rises higher than nowadays, but those processes have been lasted for longer time periods. What have happened with climate for the last fifty years is strange occurrence for the Earth history.  Speed of climate changes is too fast. And the main thing is that this happens not due to natural processes, but in the result of humans’ actions and its economic activities.

This degree is invisible for us, but it influences on everything, - says Kanat Baigarin. - For example, recent May thunderstorms- so frequent and strong – I guess it’s abnormal. 

How to struggle against increase of greenhouse effect? We have to save energy, resources and thereby decrease emissions. According to Kanat Baigarin’s opinion one person in Kazakhstan spends more water than in Europe, though we have less water supply.

If you don’t forget to switch off light, going outside, you are already doing a step towards planet cleanness, - says Director of Climate Change Coordination Centre. - We have no culture for resource economy. We just waste energy. {We just are doing energy gluttony.} One of sustainable development thesis is – save nature like as it is. We won’t keep anything not only for our children, but for our grandchildren. Future generation will suffer from all our mistakes.

Kazakhstan is among five leaders by pollutants emission per capita. Totally we produce 260 million tons of emission per year - 12 ton per capita.

If somebody economizes of necessity, in Kazakhstan, on the contrary, we have a lot of resources. This enervates us, - the ecologist considers. – But when suddenly we face conditions of resource shortage, we will be less ready to that. The single solution is to use energy-saving technologies, alternative energy sources.

Some energy experts say: “the more consumed energy, the better. We need no energy-saving”. It is not allowed make everything in vulgar business, after all a seller and customer both breath one air, says Kanat Baigarin.

-nobody abolishes energy consumption, but it should be rationalized.  We should use natural gas, wind power stations, helium plants, where possible- he believes. At least we need to aspire to it. There are people who understand this. Conception of sustainable development has been appeared in Kazakhstan. We have the Law “On energy-saving”, but it doesn’t work. It is just a paper. And the Law “On renewable energy” we have discussed for ten years. We need real mechanisms. And International legal documents have them, for example in the Kyoto Protocol. We have signed it, but haven’t ratified.

In any country energy-saving technologies can’t be applied without the government support. Ecologists consider that it’s necessary to develop a country program. Everybody must say: “I will use clean energy”. Finally it could affect on the image of our country. It would be possible to say: “Yes, Kazakhstan extracts oil, but at its extraction we use high technologies, ecological clean sources”.  

In winter and spring you can see a stratum of smoke above Astana. It is emissions from combusting fuel, diesel fuel, and even worse coal.

Why can’t we install, where it is possible, wind stations or helium installations?  There is good wind corridor in Erementau. It will be possible to create a wind farm on 50 megawatt. It will cost 60 millions dollars, -says Kanat Baigarin. - Just 30 years ago around Astana there were wind farms. But then they were dismantled, supposedly of uselessness.
Ecologists don’t think that film “After tomorrow” is a fairytale. Surely, plans won’t be frozen in the air as in the movie but such catastrophe (in stretched time) is possible on the Earth.

Homo sapience – intelligent human being far from understanding of his mission on the planet, while fighting with outward things and each other, forgetting that he is the part of it. Meanwhile the nature is losing in this survival competition. We Kazakh people- nomads have to remember how our forefathers lived in harmony with the nature. And scientists are well aware of a high degree of energy efficiency of the economy and life, organized for centuries on the great steppe.

We are not speaking about going back to the past, but here we are focusing on a high culture of living in harmony with humans, his safe relations with the nature.