Last year we saw how devastating Hurricane Katrina was, killing numerous people and wiping off the beautiful city of New Orleans. Couple of years ago we witnessed the same natural carnage in Caribbean islands, what is it that is making these hurricanes so frequent and extremely devastating.

Some environmentalists are blaming it on global warming. According to them we are closing to the tipping point of global warming and further warming will result in domino effect deluging thousands of low lying areas in the world, severe transformation in regional weather and subsequent changes in flora and fauna.

According to Chief scientist David King, only a 3C rise in temperature will mean half the world's wildlife reserves and corals will be endangered, the tropical forests will dry up, and perhaps a billion people will starve as the most fertile plains of India, China and Africa will die down in productivity due to rising temperature.

What it augurs for an average American

Unlike the other developed countries, the Bush Administration didn't signed Kyoto Protocol to reduce green house gas emission in United States. If the biggest polluter of the world will not take a lead in adhering to environmental standards then it is unjust to ask that from the poor third countries.

The climate changes according to most scientists will be severe in United States. Our now productive wheat fields will slowly die down due to increasing heat. We will have lesser snowfalls in the northern region of the country leading to higher water problem in the area.

The rainfall will be infrequent but will be heavy, normally called flash rainfall in scientific terminology. One of the examples of such flash rainfall is Mumbai (India) 2005, it rained around 100 cm in one day and the coastal city became a floating bodies city as the infrastructure failed to cope with it.

Increasing temperature will put added pressure on our already fragile power infrastructure. As we have seen in the latest heat wave how thousands of people went without power for most part of two weeks in Queens New York.

The full effect is hard to predict but one thing is sure, we all have to take guard and pressurize government to follow the Kyoto Protocol otherwise our children will be deprived of seeing white Christmas here in New York.