Our Planet with Anthony Mugo

One of the key pillars of Kenya’s President, H E Uhuru Kenyatta’ "Big Four" strategy aimed at securing his legacy is food security, the others being universal health, access to housing and manufacturing. Despite Kenya being an agricultural country, food shortages have been experienced on regular basis with some communities facing malnutrition and even famine that is in some areas severe enough to cause loss of human lives. This situation has often required emergency measures of an international scale. It is estimated that 98 per cent of agricultural production in Kenya is rain fed. Therefore the leading cause of food insecurity is shortage of water due to drought. According to the National Climate Change Action Plan (2013 – 2017), droughts are expected to become more frequent with increasing global warming. Before the adverse effects of climate change started to be felt in the country, drought used to occur in cycles of 5 – 10 years. With climate change however, this ...

In recent years, there has been much talk about increasing the use of “clean” energy and even more preferably “green,” clean energy. Demand for use of clean and green energy has been spurred by the raised global consciousness about the dangers posed by use of non-renewable fossil fuels: petroleum, natural gas and coal to power industries, transportation and homes. Except for the so called climate change deniers, majority of the world’s population is in agreement that something needs to be done urgently in order to reduce emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and to forestall global warming that has resulted in the climate change being observed today. For many people however, the quest for countries to increase the proportion of energy in use from a mix dominated by fossil fuels to one with more clean and green energy raises the question, what is green energy and what is clean energy? Many people use the phrases “clean energy” and “green energy” interchangeably. Respected inte...

Beginning in 1958 an American scientist known as Charles David Keeling devoted his life to meticulously and regularly track precise levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until his death in 2005. He monitored carbon dioxide that is present in the atmosphere (atmospheric carbon dioxide) from a laboratory located on an isolated island volcanic mountain in Hawaii known as Mauna Loa. The exact place where Keeling undertook this work was the Mauna Loa Observatory set up by the  U.S. Weather Bureau (now a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA).  In the course of this period, the Mauna Loa Observatory has generated data that scientists have been using to draw firm conclusions to the effect that carbon dioxide emission levels over the last four decades have been increased by human activities generally and the burning of fossil fuels specifically. This accumulated carbon dioxide together with other greenhouse gases is responsible for global warmi...