Climate Change

 By Emma B.

 

Imagine our future generations; they won’t forgive you for what we are doing to this planet. They will have to suffer through things we have the opportunity to change, like unpredictable weather, unbearable summers, and the extinction of animals. Do we want our future to look like this?

        What is Climate change? Climate change is the rapid heating of Earth due to human activity. The planet is warming, from the North Pole to the South Pole. The heat is melting glaciers, causing extreme weather and risking animal population and habitats. It’s also melting ice worldwide. Much of this melting ice contributes to sea level rise. Global sea levels are rising 0.13 inches a year. Some Arctic populations have decreased by 90 percent or more. 95% of the world's oldest and strongest ice is gone. Precipitation (like rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average. Yet, some regions are experiencing more severe drought, increased risk of wildfires, and drinking water shortages.

Your favorite places are being affected. The Dead Sea will take on its name if we continue to procrastinate. The Great wall of China (China is currently the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, responsible for 30% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions), The Grand Canyon, Greenland, The Maldives, the Amazon River, (Robert Walker, a quantitative geographer at the University of Florida's Center for Latin American studies, has said that unless something unprecedented happens, he predicts that the Amazon rainforest will be wiped out by 2064). These places may not get destroyed anytime soon, but eventually they will, and future generations will have to deal with it due to our poor actions.

We have come up with a lot of natural resources to our advantage. Although this has led to many wonderful inventions and advancements, like the device you’re using to read this, we have also increased our consumption of natural resources.  That also means we have released a lot of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses occur naturally, but excess gas can be harmful to our planet. Human activities have increased the release of non-naturally occurring greenhouse gases because we have stepped up our demand for burning fossil fuels. The consumption of greenhouse gasses traps heat from the sun, and the more heat they trap, the warmer our planet gets. As that happens, we feel the effects.

Our animals are dying. Cheetahs, pandas, asian elephants, polar bears, and penguins. Statistics show that since 2010, 160 species of animals have gone extinct, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. An estimation shows that by 2050, over one million species will be lost. Scientists also estimate on average that 150 to 200 species of plants, insects, and birds go extinct every 24 hours. Some animals/species go extinct because they cannot withstand harsh temperatures, so they have to move habitats.

Ecosystems are being affected, meaning they can no longer fulfill the needs of animals anymore. This means the sources they need to survive are disappearing, and the impact of this is very unfortunate. As animals are set on the move, it is difficult to find a new ecosystem in which they can easily adjust to. Due to the warm and harsh temperatures, tundras have been turning into forests. This means animals like arctic foxes, polar bears, and wolves that live in the tundras can no longer survive in this habitat. This is because most animals that live in the tundras have thicker layers of fur and feathers. They are used to withstanding below average temperatures, and placing them in a new habitat that they cannot adapt to harms the animals.

“We can no longer delay or do the bare minimum to address climate change. This is a global, existential crisis, and we’ll all suffer the consequences if we fail,” says President Joe Biden.   Do we need this? The world needs to wake up and take this matter into their own hands and realize if we don't care for our planet, at the end of the day, it will be our fault. We're the first generation to know we're destroying the world, but we might be the last that can do anything about it.