#itstooLate?
- Hunter Ramey
- Nov 5, 2018
- 9 min read
Hunter Ramey
Dr. Molly
English Comp 2
9/29/18📷
The best way to stop climate change is by first looking at the problem and figuring out not only what we need to do but are the methods we have now even working? Climate change is a very scary thing although maybe not for us but for generations to come and we have to figure out a way to stop it besides just plugging in a car. The earth is changing everyday and it is becoming more demanding of us and if we don’t do something now we won’t have a much later future for our species or our generations to come. Climate change has a ton of statistics ideas and theories behind it. From our health and how it will affect us to will it even happen and is it even true. Or another side would be are the methods were currently using helping or is it just slowing the impact down a short bit. Also we have to find new ideas the ones we have now are not going to help us in our fight but in fact they may even still be hurting us.📷
There are a ton of facts with climate change first we must understand climate change and what it is if we want to be able to stop it. Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather within the context of longer-term average conditions. Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have been identified as primary causes of ongoing climate change, often referred to as global warming There is no general agreement in scientific, media or policy documents as to the precise term to be used to refer to anthropogenic forced change; either "global warming" or "climate change" may be used. The Earth has warmed by an average of 1 degree Celsius in the last century, and although that might not sound like much, it means big things for people and wildlife around the globe.
The first one would be Burning fossil fuels. Over the past 150 years we have been burning fuels like gas and oil. The gasses created by this create this sheath or layer in our atmosphere trapping the heat from the sun and trapping heat warming up our earth more and more each year. The next one would surprisingly be farming because of cattle’s eating habits that contributes to the same greenhouse gas. Methane gas builds up in us just like the cows and methane releases in the form of a fart. It may sound a little hysterical but in fact when you think that there are almost 1.5 billion cows in the world that’s a lot of gas being released. Next up we have Deforestation as most of us know the trees release a cruitial gas into our air called oxygen that we need to breath. But at the same time it is taking bad gasses out of the air called carbon dioxide. Every time we make a new subdivision it cost trees we have to plant more trees if were going to survive.
Climate change will not only affect us but other animals who can’t adapt to this climate change as well. It is already affecting wildlife all over the world, but certain species are suffering more than others. Polar Animals – whose icy natural habitat is melting in the warmer temperatures are particularly at risk. In fact, experts believe that the arctic sea ice is melting at a shocking rate – 9% per decade! Polar Bears need sea ice to be able to hunt, raise their young 📷and as places to rest after long periods of swimming. Certain seal species, like ringed seals make caves in the snow and ice to raise their pups, feed and mate.It’s not just polar animals who are in trouble. Apes like orangutans, which live in the rainforests of Indonesia, are under threat as their habitat is cut down, and more droughts cause more bushfires. Another key animal is Sea turtles, their eggs rely on the temperature of the water and can determine whether the turtle is male or female. If there is to much of a change they could die out because there are only one gender left. It will affect humans because farmers won’t be able to make a living and if the weather continues to rise neither will the crops we need to eat each and every day.📷
Of course the next question is a very important one is it even possible to stop climate change? Not entirely, but it should be possible to stop the worst effects of climate change. The climate reacts slowly to all the carbon dioxide we’ve been adding to the atmosphere. It will take decades or even hundreds of years for the full effects of the fossil fuel we’ve already burned to be felt. So it isn’t really possible to fully stop climate change. But most scientists think it is possible to avoid the worst effects of climate change. We have a short time in which to act. If we can hold emissions down — and then gradually eliminate them — we should be able to prevent the really bad scenarios that scientists are warning us about.
Although we are working each and every day to find a solution for climate change there haven’t been many ways created. One of the most popular as i’m sure you’ve heard of is the electric car which you can plug in instead of releasing fumes into the air. you might assume that if you can't go car-free, driving an electric car is the next best thing. After all, vehicles that run on fossil fuel emit carbon every time you drive them. But if you live somewhere where the electricity itself comes from a climatically dirty power source—like coal—it might actually be better for you to drive a hybrid. Electric cars have never been closer to the mainstream, the market pushed ahead by California subsidies for electric car buyers, and a wide array of new models from established car firms such as Toyota and Chevy. Tesla’s focus on luxury, high-performance vehicles has also broadened their appeal; electric cars are no longer purely an environmental statement, but a tech status symbol too. Yet the “zero emissions” claim grates on some experts, who have continued to argue over whether electric cars are really more environmentally friendly than gas guzzlers, once the manufacturing process for the vehicles and their batteries are taken into account. Electric cars rely on regular charging from the local electricity network. The power plants providing that energy aren’t emission-free; even in California, 60% of electricity came from burning fossil fuels in 2015, while solar and wind together made up less than 14%. I couldn’t bear to hear them say the words ‘zero emissions vehicle’ one more time! Another thing we can do to slow down climate change is a huge one we all know about and it has to do with Coal. More than 1.2m electric vehicles were sold in 2015, the intergovernmental group International Energy Agency estimates, while campaign group Transport & Environment expects two million to be on the road by the end of 2019. The world’s Biggest market for electrical cars are the United States and China, though electric vehicles have a larger market share in some European countries such as the Netherlands and Norway. California’s electric vehicles can plug into a greener grid than most regions of the world – especially China, where coal generated 72% of all power in 2014 according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The US gets about a third of its electricity from coal-fired power, IEA says, and more than 40% of total electricity worldwide comes from burning coal.
Now while all these facts are a lot to factor in we need to laws to maintain them and make everyone contribute to the cause. Historically, national environmental laws have sought to prevent substantial changes to the environment—for example, maintaining air quality, habitats, and species for current and future generations. Increasingly, though, countries are realizing that climate change undermines the whole concept of maintaining the status quo. Environmental laws now need to consider how to manage the environment, public health, and human activities in a realm of continuous (and often substantial) change. They need to consider how to incorporate climate change impacts into planning processes and into environmental impact assessments (EIAs); they need to consider how climate change will affect critical habitats and protected areas, and when and how to change those designations; and they need to better prepare for both natural disasters and technological disasters triggered by floods, trees, and other natural disasters.
The Timeline is short for us when it comes to Climate change. The United nations released this directly to the media this week: The short version: We have about 12 years to actually do something to prevent the worst aspects of climate change. That is, not to prevent climate change—we're well past that point—but to prevent the worst, most catastrophic elements of it from wreaking havoc on the world's population. To do that, the governments of Earth need to look seriously at the forces driving it. And an honest assessment of how we got here lays the blame squarely at the feet of the 1 percent.
Contrary to a lot of guilt-tripping pleas for us all to take the bus more often to save the world, your individual choices are probably doing very little to the world's climate. The real impact comes on the industrial level, as more than 70 percent of global emissions come from just 100 companies. So you, a random American consumer, exert very little pressure here. The people who are actively cranking up the global thermostat and threatening to drown 20 percent of the global population are the billionaires in the boardrooms of these companies.
There are probably no individuals who have had a more toxic impact on public and political attitudes about climate change than the Koch brothers, and it would take an absurd amount of space to document all the money and organizations they've scraped together for that purpose. (Investigative reporter Jane Mayer's groundbreaking Dark Money does basically that.) And they have every reason to: In her book, Mayer notes that "Koch Industries alone routinely released some 24 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year”. That is a lot of waste and it won’t help our future if we don’t stand up and do something about it.
So as you can see Climate change is a huge issue with lots of factors behing it from the previous topic of all the waste by huge companies all the way down to us in our everyday home life. We have to stop just caring about ourselves and start caring about our future generations. The earth has provided for us and it’s time to provide back to make our earth stay around and in good shape for years to come. So next time you think Climate change will not affect us think again because it may already be Too late. As our group decided on our slogan we went for this because it is very true. #IT’STOOLATE? We need new ways and new ideas to save our species and we need all the help we can get! Without drastic change in the way we think and act about climate change it is already too late and our future will be doomed.
References
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