Global Warming, Global Problem
Picture this: a future with rising summer temperatures hitting over 100° F every single day in the summer, major heat waves becoming more frequent, and some of your favorite vacation spots underwater? How would that affect your planned summer activities? I’m fifteen years old, and I love going out in the summer. There are so many kids and teens who love the just-right weather. What if you had plans to go hiking? Would you still be willing to hike up a mountain in that heat? Sadly, that might even be the case in a few decades; in the past thirty-seven years, our planet has had some devastating changes due to global warming. Bad news for anyone who lives on the coast, because thanks to rising sea levels, they will soon be underwater. However, if you’ve always dreamed of living on the coast, just give it time– the coast might come to you!
Can you swim?
Nineteen of the warmest years have occurred since 2000; the year 2020 is tied with 2016 for the warmest year on record since record-keeping started in 1880. If we continue to live the way we are living today, most of our cities will be underwater by 2070. Animals will continue to go extinct because their habitats are getting destroyed by the global temperature increase.
Global average sea levels have risen nearly 7” over the past century. Rising sea levels are caused by 2 factors: the added water from melting glaciers and ice sheets, and as seawater warms up, it expands. Some climatologists believe temperature changes will cause more frequent heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather events. Global sea levels rise about 3.4 mm per year. The cause of this? Humans.
An unearthly future is approaching
To some, this may sound alarming; since the 19th century, humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, mostly by burning coal, oil, and gas for energy. This summer, hundreds of people have been killed due to the sudden rise of heat waves all across the world; many floods are happening in Germany and China, as well as wildfires occurring in Turkey, Greece, and Siberia. Even if nations started greatly cutting emissions today, the earth is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades. Nearly 1 billion people worldwide will start living in more frequent life-threatening heat waves.
With the planet heating on the rise, more natural disasters are likely to happen in the next upcoming years. Take Hurricane Ida for example: she took down the power grid in New Orleans, where 300,000 households were left with no electricity. Hurricane Ida later also dropped 7 inches of rain on New York City. Imagine the basements and homes that were flooded during this.
Who’s to blame?
Some people argue that humans are not the cause of climate change because the earth has undergone natural periods of warming before humans. Whilst that is correct, since the 19th century, the earth has started heating up more rapidly than before. Humans have done many things that contributed: burned fossil fuels, cleared forests, and loaded the atmosphere with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat. The last decade is most likely the hottest the planet has been in 125,000 years. The world is not ready to face the reality of the actual consequences that their actions have caused.
President Biden shared his plan in regards to fighting this global problem. Biden shared his “Build Back Better” plan, which will be drafted on Capitol Hill soon and is expected to include funding to deal with the warming planet. President Biden even has a response to this. He says, “Folks, the evidence is clear: Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here. It’s not going to get any better,”. He argues that we can stop it from getting worse. We can still save our future. If we all worked together, and if climate change got more news coverage, we could change our fate.