Climate change is occurring in many ways, which greatly affects the Earth.  Climate change is a term referring to all the changes that are occurring in the environment, which humans are causing through the emission of greenhouse gases.  Greenhouse gases are pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, that are caused by the advancement of technology.  This then leads to the question: “should people be concerned about our greenhouse gas emission and its association with climate change?”  The answer is YES, because greenhouse gas emission, or carbon footprint, is negatively affecting the Earth.  This can and will affect the human population if nothing is done about it now.  In just 25 years, if nothing is done to change the situation we have put ourselves in, we will reach the point of no return (Dhar).  My intentions are not to frighten you in reading this, but to express to you the great dangers we are in because of climate change.  I also know, for a fact, that we do not want our future generations to grow up knowing that they are growing up in a doomed world.  That is why I have, through my sources, gotten a better understanding of what is climate change and how it is affected by the increase of greenhouse gas emission, the consequences associated with climate change, and what can be done to stop it.  So, then I would be able to express to you what I have learned, in hopes that the thought of climate change would not terrify you and then you can help in making a difference, so that our future could be a bright one.

There are many side-effects of greenhouse gases that are associated with climate change.  But to just name a few, there is the “global temperature rise,” “ocean acidification,” and extreme weather events (Shaftel, Tenenbaum, and Jackson).  Global warming is the rise in temperature of the Earth, and this is caused by greenhouse gases trapping radiation from the sun and keep it from escaping our atmosphere.  This then cause for the average global temperature to be higher than it normally is.  Global warming can cause many negative effects on the Earth, such as the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica decreasing in mass, the rapid decline of Artic sea ice in the last several decades, and glaciers “retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa” (Shaftel, Tenenbaum, and Jackson).  These effects of global warming are directly correlated with the rising sea level; “the rate [of the rising sea level] in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century” (Shaftel, Tenenbaum, and Jackson).  This increase of the sea level has already affected many people. One example being the people of the Marshall Islands who have lost their homes to the rising sea levels (Dhar).   

Ocean acidification is also another side-effect caused by greenhouse gases.  This made me wonder, when did our carbon footprint start affecting the Earth so much, that we were literally making the Earth’s vast ocean more acidic.  The answer is that the technological advancements since the Industrial Revolution, which started in the late 18th century, was when the ocean started to become more acidic.  Since then, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by around 30 percent (Shaftel, Tenenbaum, and Jackson).  Another way of viewing this is our oceans absorbing 2 billion tons every year since the Industrial Revolution, which is way more than the ocean can regulate naturally (Shaftel, Tenenbaum, and Jackson).  This acidification of the oceans has resulted in the death of coral, that homes and feeds millions of fish which about because 1 billion of the human population relays on.  And if nothing is done to decrease our carbon footprint, then the oceans will become more and more acidic every year causing in the death of billions of fish, which could then result in the starvation of humans.  

Another consequence of the greenhouse gases on climate change is the increasing number and strength of extreme events.  Extreme events are weather events, such as: heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall, and hurricanes.  One example of how the greenhouse gases are contributing in the increase of extreme events, is how “the earth’s rising temperatures are fueling…more frequent droughts” (MacMillan).  The “ongoing drought in California”, for example, has “been intensified by 15 percent to 20 percent by global warming”, which is caused by the emissions of greenhouse gases (MacMillan).  There have also been countless human lives that have taken because of the increasing numbers of these extreme events.  In order to stop the effects of global warming and ocean acidification and reduce the frequency of extreme weather events, the human race has to figure out a way to drastically decrease its carbon footprint.

There are many contributors to the increasing of greenhouse gas emissions, but in recent years, plans and strategies have been proposed to help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.  Two of the biggest countries contributing to the grand human species’ carbon footprint are China and the United States.  China makes up about 28 percent and the U.S. makes up about 16 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.  These emissions are because of “our dependence on fossil fuel” (MacMillan). Though the U.S. is a big contributor of greenhouse gases, “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pledged to reduce carbon pollution from our [the United States’] power plants by nearly a third by 2030…through its Clean Power Plan” (MacMillan).  This is just one of many steps being taken by the United States to decrease the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.  Some of the United States’ other plans to lower its carbon footprint involve lowering carbon pollution from transportation devices, starting to depend more on solar and wind power instead of burning fossil fuels, banning chemicals contributing to global warming like hydrofluorocarbons, and motivating the usage of more energy efficient household items (MacMillan).  United States is not the only country trying to decrease the world’s carbon emissions.  195 countries that attended the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris, all agreed to cut their pollution in efforts to stop the average temperature of the world from increasing by 1.5 degrees Celsius.  If this is successful, then we might be able “to avoid catastrophic climate impacts” that scientists have said will occur if the average global temperature were to increase more than two degrees Celsius (MacMillan).  While there are many countries starting to put in the effort to decrease carbon emissions, there are also things that every person can do in their personal lives to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.  Things such as buying only appliances that are energy efficient and decreasing the amount of electricity used in one’s everyday life.  If everyone were to decrease their usage of electricity, then greenhouse gas emission would decrease significantly.  This is “because electricity production is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases of any industry”, at least in the United States (Dhar).  These little changes can make a huge difference if everyone does it.  But there are still people in the world that do not believe that human activity causes climate change.

Even though there are many people, like me, that know that climate change is a problem, there are still many other people that believe that “global warming and climate change is merely “real,” insofar as there is some evidence that something is going on with the global climate but also enough uncertainty about the causes of this phenomenon (or even whether it exists) that a state of crisis and alarm is not warranted” (Shao, Wanyum, et al.).  Even though this “disagreement about climate change in the mass public stands in contrast to the consensus in the international scientific community about both the warming of global temperatures and the view that global warming is due to the cumulative effect of human activity over the past two centuries; indeed, almost 90 percent of scientists attribute climate change to human activity” (Shao, Wanyum, et al.).  Reasons for why there are still people believing that global warming is not a problem that exists or needs to be dealt with “are the result of a confluence of factors, including political attitudes, trust in scientist and science, specific knowledge about climate change, exposure to information about climate change in the media and from other sources, and individuals’ own experiences with local weather and climate patterns” (Shao, Wanyum, et al.).  One botanist by the name of David Bellamy writes about why he believes that climate change is not a problem that needs the attention of the world, in a 2007 article (Bellamy).  He gives several examples to support his claim, but the problem with his examples are that they are out of date.  Since 2007, new research has been conducted that has proved time and time again that climate change is occurring and it is negatively affecting the world as we know it.
