Climate is a crucial part of our planet’s survival. It is imperative that the global community stops the environmental damage that is causing a destructive shift in the delicate climate balance. President Obama’s recent landmark agreement with China’s president Xi Jinping to reduce carbon emissions indicates that it’s time to stop believing that climate change is a hoax and realize that global climate change is real and that something needs to be done by governments around the world.
Global climate change can affect everyone. All land masses and oceans on the planet Earth, inhabited with people or not, will be affected in some way. Humans aren’t the only ones at risk; plant life, animals, both land and marine, and other living things that are important parts of our ecosystem will be affected as well.
The main cause of our climate change is the burning of fossil fuels. The extraction and burning of these fuels causes a release of carbon dioxide and other dangerous chemicals into our environment. These chemicals are more commonly known as greenhouse gases. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has stated on its website that, “Though natural amounts of CO2 have varied from 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm), today’s CO2 levels are around 400 ppm. That’s 30 percent more than the highest natural levels over the past 800,000 years.” This is a drastic difference in normal amounts of CO2 that can get even worse if we continue to burn fossil fuels without restriction.
Our climate began to warm about a century ago when humans started to burn more fossil fuels due to technological advances in cars and in producing energy. These practices weren’t recognized as unfriendly to the environment, until around 1997 when 37 industrialized countries (not including the United States) signed the Kyoto Protocol which stated that global warming does in fact exist and that man-made CO2 emissions have caused it. The 37 countries who signed the document were then bound to it in order to reduce greenhouse gases.
Climate change takes place on a global scale and its effects have already been felt. There have been things like extreme weather that scientists believe are a direct result of changing climate. Over the past few decades, severe hurricanes like Super Storm Sandy, major heat waves and wildfires, and severe droughts and harsh winter storms, have been more predominant around the world.
People are one of the main causes of climate change, there’s no denying it. “The science is clear: Human activity is causing our climate to change,” says the EDF.
Yet, the biggest question that remains is: How can we change? Riding the bus or conserving energy is a start, but the real path to change is to persuade government leaders to change. Making new regulations that mandate that companies producing fossil fuel emissions reduce their production of these toxins into our atmosphere must be the goal of international agreements such as the one signed this week between the U.S. and China.
Addressing what humans are doing to harm the delicate balance of earth’s climate is only half of the battle. Persuading nations such as China to change is the most effective way to stop global warming in its tracks. The first important step has been taken, let us hope it is the first of many toward this goal.
