Letter: Destroying ourselves

Climate change is a very real issue in our world today and has taken many tolls, like on the world and our society. We are faced with climate change even if it doesn’t affect us at the present moment. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently said that “scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” We must take climate change into our own hands because every effort counts.

“Nova” states that more than 90 percent of climate scientists believe that climate change is caused by human expansion of the greenhouse effect, which is the warming that results when atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space. Certain gases in the atmosphere block heat from escaping. Most of these gases are man-made. A few of them are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Carbon dioxide levels are at the highest they have been in more than 650,000 years. Carbon dioxide is released through human activities such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels as well as natural processes like volcanos. Since 2007, the carbon dioxide parts per million has risen from 375 to currently over 400. With carbon dioxide levels greatly increasing come rising global temperature, increasing sea level and increasingly powerful storms. All these factors are going to change the world we live in very rapidly.

Although many people agree that climate change is a major problem, some people, on the other hand, have the opposite opinion on climate change. The skeptics of climate change have made arguments like “It’s not bad” and “Glaciers are growing,” and they also say that they can’t help or they aren’t the ones causing it. These people can remain oblivious to what is happening until it directly affects them, which will be happening soon.

Over the past 70 years, humans have increasingly harmed the land they live on, whether it be polluting the air with gases that are causing the world to rapidly warm itself or deforesting the places that need it the most. Humans are putting an end to themselves by producing harmful chemicals that are causing drastic changes to the environment. If the world could come up with a solution like desalinizing the ocean water or finding more renewable resources that helped not only the environment but also mankind, then we could possibly put an end to climate change.

Sophia Grewal

Edwards