Let's Talk about Climate Change

Howdy folks, let’s just get right into it today, we’re going to talk about climate change. For many people, that sentence alone is enough for them to click away, but please bear with me because climate change is so incredibly important to acknowledge, understand and then work to prevent.

There are people (the President of the United States included) that deny climate change, or global warming is happening, and I get that. When it is 0 degrees and feels like -18 for weeks at a time, it is hard to believe that the earth is actually getting warmer, but trust me – it is.

What is really going on, is that the earth is like a greenhouse. So picture this, it’s May, and you want to plant some flowers so you go to your local greenhouse and that feeling that hits you when you walk inside, kind of warm and humid, that is what is happening to the earth right now.

Our atmosphere is trapping gas that is causing the earth to heat up, like the roof of a greenhouse allows sunlight in, and traps the heat. This happens naturally, but lately, humans have been burning fossil fuels, like oil and coal which are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

So what? We have more CO2 in the air, big whoop.

And that is where we fall flat. Many problems arise from the warming of the earth, one of the most obvious being melting ice caps and increasing in sea levels. There was a time when scientists predicted a storm strong enough to flood the 9/11 memorial site in New York City. When that study came out people were abhorred. How dare they suggest something could happen to demolish such an important memorial, plus there wasn’t water anywhere near Ground Zero.

Then Hurricane Sandy hit. And the 9/11 Memorial was flooded, along with much of the subway system in New York.

This is just one example of how climate change has effected our lives, to look in more recent history we can observe any of the hurricanes from 2017 – many of which were abnormally strong storms, we could turn to the wildfires in California, on a scale the state has never seen, or we can even look to the past few weeks in most of the United States with most states reaching temperatures below freezing, including, snow in Florida. (If you would like more examples, check out NASA’s website)

All of these things are directly related to climate change. But there is a way we as a population of the one planet capable of holding life, can work to fix what we have started to destroy. So, without further ado, here is my shortlist of ways to prevent climate change.

First and foremost, it needs to be widely recognized as a problem and to make a change, people must first understand what is happening instead of deeming global warming as #fakenews.
From there we can jump to actual process, which includes reducing the amount of garbage in landfills.
Limit emissions, this can be anything from your car (many car companies are already changing their vehicles to be more eco-friendly.)
Make the switch to renewable energy. Many companies offer the option to switch your power to renewable engery like from wind farms. (If you’re from the Pittsburgh area consider switching to Green Mountain Energy [not an ad, they are just really good for the environment])
Eat more locally grown food, not only will it help your local economy, it’s good for the earth.