My Son’s #ClimateStrike
I’m lending my Medium platform to my son today. He won’t be out of school for the March 15th Climate Strike, but he wanted his voice heard. For a recent research assignment, he chose climate change as his topic. Here’s what he learned.
Fixing our Planet: What Needs to be Done About Climate Change by Colin Mogilefsky
On the small isle of Kiribati, a remote society far out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, global warming, more commonly known as climate change, is not a concern for generations to come like on the mainland. The International Panel on Climate Change has stated that sea levels will rise 1 to 4 feet by 2100. Kiribati lies only about 6 and a half feet above sea level. At the current rate, much of the island will disappear and require the small population of 116,398 people to be evacuated. Sea level rise is only one of the effects of climate change, the warming of the planet through greenhouse gas emissions. This has been a prominent problem since the Industrial Revolution, and only now are we starting to see the repercussions of our way of life. Climate change is caused primarily by humans, and we need to do something about it.
Considering how much humans output in terms of pollution, it’s no surprise that we are almost the only source of climate change. NASA states,
A minor but very important component of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is released through natural processes such as respiration and volcano eruptions and through human activities such as deforestation, land use changes, and burning fossil fuels. Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by more than a third since the Industrial Revolution began. This is the most important long-lived “forcing” of climate change.
The actions “deforestation, land use changes, and burning fossil fuels” are all daily human activities, if not directly. We are constantly taking down trees and sometimes entire forests, which impacts the environment because trees turn CO2 back into breathable oxygen, so with less trees more CO2 is allowed to remain in the air. When people industrialize land or even just build houses, many different things can affect the climate from the power used to build something or the removal of plants that are on the land. When it comes to burning fossil fuels, although we don’t burn fossil fuels in our homes, most of the energy provided to it by electric companies is likely generated by the burning of fossil fuels. We have also “increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by more than a third since the Industrial Revolution began,” which shows that climate change is not a new thing and has been a long time coming. Although our climate footprint as a race has reduced drastically, in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution much less efficient energy sources were used that heavily damaged the atmosphere. Humans cause the majority of greenhouse gases, and now is the time we start seeing the consequences.
If left unfixed, climate change will cause a number of effects via the global climate. In addition to the melting of polar ice and sea level rise, NASA says that climate change can also result in “more frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought in some regions and an increase in the number, duration and intensity of tropical storms.” All of these natural disasters can cause destruction, homelessness, and overall a bad output to society. Most people think that only those on the coast are in danger because of sea level rise, but in fact increased temperatures will affect those in the highlands as well, either through fires, droughts, or changes more attuned to humans, like economy crashes or influx of population from the evacuated coasts. Right now we may not be seeing any huge effects of climate change, like constant hurricanes or a dry, hot wasteland, but we are seeing some on a smaller scale. Wildfires are increasing in frequency, and hurricanes happen either more often or at a higher magnitude. In just a few decades, humanity’s debt to the world will be paid, one way or another.
To fix climate change, we need to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. According to Bob Litterman from The New York Times, “the most important and urgent action required is to minimize future warming by creating appropriate global incentives to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.” The use of the phrase “create global incentives” shows that as of right now, nobody has a reason to reduce their carbon output. Fossil fuels are simply the easiest to get to, if not the cheapest. A 2017 study by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) shows that solar and wind power are far cheaper than any other energy source, with prices as low as $0.04 per kilowatt hour, the energy equivalent of running a microwave for an hour. The only trouble is the process of getting the entire world to make the switch. Most things in our lives use carbon power, from light bulbs to cars. Some things are easier to change, like the source of a house’s power. However, things like cars need a much more drastic change in society. If we plan on making it through climate change, we need to change our whole way of life, from producing less waste to changing the entire automobile industry to switching every last cable onto a renewable energy source.
Transportation also has a big impact on the global climate, however. Diego Arguedas Ortiz from BBC says that, “Cars are more polluting compared to other means of transportation like walking, biking or using public transport.” This shows that if we can make society go car-free, reduce the emissions produced by cars, or even just use cars less we can shrink a huge chunk of global emissions. When you use public transport, although you are still causing emissions, you aren’t driving alone in a car. Since there are considerably more people in one vehicle, using a bus can emit up to 33% less than a car per passenger mile(FTA). According to the US Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) transportation amounts to 28% of the emissions in the US. Although going car free isn’t a huge solution like using all-renewable energy, we could definitely delay the apocalypse if we were able to even reduce the carbon dioxide output by cars. Walking and biking has plenty of other benefits as well though, like improving your health and getting you outside and active.
Those in the upper class of society produce have a larger carbon footprint than anybody below them. As David Roberts of Vox states, “This shows that…the top 10 percent wealthiest in the US emit more than five times as much CO2 per person as those on the lower half of the income scale.” If the wealthy could stop flying so much or just stop using so much of anything, they could single handedly delay the end of the world. A lot of things people do produce carbon dioxide, but the wealthy fly a lot more than those with less money. In doing so, the richest 10% account for almost half of the U.S.’s emissions. In the same article, Roberts says that “the top 10% wealthiest in China emit less per person than those on the bottom half of the U.S wealth distribution.” For some reason, the wealthy in other countries, even ones far more industrialized than the U.S., emit less than our wealthy here in the U.S. This can most likely be attributed to the fact that people do a lot more business here in the U.S. and so fly more, drive more, and just do more stuff overall. The U.S. still emits less than China, but individuals in the U.S. do much more to affect the Earth.
Humans are negatively affecting our planet, and it’s time to start acting to fix it. No other race on this planet is affecting the climate more than us, and we are the only ones with the tools to stop it. If we don’t, we will inevitably go extinct from disasters of our own creation. To fix the planet, we need to reduce global emissions and keep those with money from emitting so much. If the next generations and those that follow can learn from the science that is out there, we can protect our planet from the path to doom we have set it on ourselves.
