by Alyssa Johns and Chela Scheckel-Mohler
Orcas Island High School
This story is to inform the public about the current global issue affecting not just large scale cities, but is also affecting our San Juan Islands. The global issue we are here to inform you about is climate change and what we can all do about it.
Climate change, as I am sure many of you know, is a long-term change in the atmospheric temperature, and Earth’s climate. The impact the human race has caused is now permanent, and the catastrophic damages will continue to worsen the Earth, cause mass extinction, and continue to increase earth’s temperature rapidly, changes in precipitation, more droughts and heatwaves, stronger and more intense hurricanes, sea levels will rise between 1-4 feet in 2100, and the Arctic ice will melt. The issues that have just been listed aren’t just possibilities of a future some of these events are happening at this very moment (http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/).
We have the power to change the direction we are headed in, our voices and actions can lead to powerful differences in the health of the Earth. All the little changes we as a community can do like walking, or carpooling, and changing your lightbulbs to be more eco-friendly can and will have a positive impact on the future. Another way we can help is by voting for politicians that are for carbon taxing or finding a solution to climate change. A very large portion of politicians that are involved in congress are being paid by fossil fuel companies to keep those companies going. Fossil fuel companies are a huge part of why there has been such a rapid climate change. Fossil fuels like gas produce carbon which is then released into the atmosphere usually the ecosystem can control it by having the ocean or the ground absorb all the extra carbon but now there is too much to contain. When most people think of oil companies they think of people drilling oil just on land, but this is not the case. Drilling is also done in the oceans and ocean drilling causes more the just carbon issues. Oil drilling in the ocean is dangerous because some companies do not care about the oil getting into the ocean and wiping out a large amounts of marine life, and polluting our waters. Half of the air we breathe comes from phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are microorganisms that live in the ocean.
The Earth is dying and if we are not able to change the path we’re on, than massive damages to the ecosystem will devastate the food chain and affect all organisms, including the human race. The health of the Earth itself needs to be our priority, the changes we have the ability to make should start happening now or it will be too late. The small changes you do everyday can lead to a massive difference in your family’s future, so your children will grow up in a healthy world. For all of us to be proud of the future we changed, because right now our future is grim. We should all want a world where future generations won’t look at pictures of Polar Bears, or Penguins wishing that they could have had the chance to see one. We can no longer just ignore these problems and not take responsibility. We urge you to act now because it’s not too late to make a difference, to better our future.
