By Laura Vettleson-Trutza
Climate change is something that has been overlooked for a long time. It is also something that no one really thinks about, and sometimes they don’t want to think about it. There are also some that don’t believe in climate change. They believe that this has been happening for years, and this is all natural. In a way these people are right. It is natural for this change to occur. However, that is if it’s over the past hundreds of thousands of years. We shouldn’t see massive change in climates over the course of a few years. That isn’t natural, but what is climate change? What’s causing it? How does it affect us?
Climate change is the the overall long-term change in a region’s usual climate involving temperature, weather, etc. The current trend and signs of climate change began about the mid- 20th century by human activity. The primary causes of this were and still are fossil fuels. When fossil fuels are burned, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This carbon dioxide then remains in the atmosphere, increasing the Greenhouse Effect. The Greenhouse Effect uses carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to help trap heat from the sun’s rays to warm the earth. This Greenhouse Effect isn’t bad, and in fact it is used to keep the earth’s temperature stable and suitable for maintaining life. Without it, all the heat from the sun’s rays would reflect of the earth’s surface, leaving the planet cold. However, as we all know, too much is a bad thing, and this can cause massive rising heat around the globe.
I like to think of it as eating too many sweets. Having some is fine, but eating too many can make you gain weight and overall, it isn’t very healthy. After eating all those sweets, you now have to cut back on eating them and work them off through exercise in order to burn off the fat. It is not exactly the same as climate change, but in a way it is. You burn many fossil fuels, so we have all of this extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and to get rid of it, we would have to cut back on fossil fuels we use. If were to stop today, it would take a very long time for our planet to return to normal.
You might be wondering how climate change will affect you. So what if you have to pay for a slightly higher air conditioning bill in the summer and get stuck working outside on a few hot days. What difference does it make? It actually makes a much bigger difference than what you may think. Overtime, climate change will cause a lot of damage, ranging from extreme weather to even a change in of our continents. These warm temperatures have been causing our glaciers to melt. Now you might be thinking, “So what if a couple of ice cubes melt?” How does that change anything? Well, it does actually. If all the ice caps melted, it would cause devastating damage. Not only would animals found only in the Arctics lose their habitats and possibly go extinct, but all the water from those ice caps would cause a rise in sea levels and would change the shape of each continent in certain areas. The state of Florida, for example, would no longer exist. It would be completely submerged underwater. The bad weather from climate change can also damage crops, causing a shortage in some foods. It especially could be damaging to people’s homes from storms like hurricanes, tornados, severe thunderstorms, etc.
I personally think climate change is a huge problem, and it should addressed and looked into more. Lots of people, especially certain politicians, like to push it to the side or say it’s not important, while believing the country’s current economic state is more important. Don’t get me wrong, the economy and economic state of our country is very important, but if you look at it in the long run, is it really all that more important than our planet? Think about it. The things we do today will definitely affect the future state of our planet, and that future is what the next generation has to live in. The economy only really affects us in the short-term and can be fixed faster than fixing our planet. Are we all going to be selfish and think to ourselves “Well, that’s not my problem,” when we were the ones who started the problem in the first place? Will we do nothing to try and help it?
Sources:
Nasa. (n.d.). Climate. Retrieved at https://climate.nasa.gov/
National Geographic. (2013). Rising seas melt new shoreline. Retrieved at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/ and
https://www.livescience.com/37743-greenhouse-effect.html
Laura Vettleson-Trutza is a student at Mabel-Canton High School. She is one of seven area students participating in the Journal Writing Project, now in its 19th year.
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