More System Change, Less Climate Change by Landen Scalf
Climate change is continuing to catastrophically affect the world. It has constantly affected global and regional climate patterns particularly in the mid to late 20th century onwards. In that time it has been attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels. Global temperature rise has gone up 2.12 degrees since the late 19th century driven by carbon dioxide emissions and other human activities.
In the past millions of years climate change has occurred very slowly. However research shows that the current climate is changing rapidly for the worse. According to The New York Times “Average global temperatures have increased by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.2 degrees Celsius, since 1880, with the greatest changes happening in the late 20th century.” More than half a million species on land now have an insufficient habitat for long term survival and are likely to go extinct if we don't make a change. This can become a huge problem because it can affect the food chain which can cause a chain reaction of extinction and lead to people fighting over resources.
You can be a part of the climate change solution. One really good way to help with the solution is powering your home with renewable energy. This helps because it minimizes carbon pollution and has a much lower impact on the environment. Another good way to help the climate is actually eat the food you buy and make less of it meat. This helps because approximately 10 percent of U.S. energy goes into growing, processing, packaging, and shipping food and about 40 percent just ends up in the landfill. So therefore if you're wasting less food you're cutting down on energy consumption. And since livestock cost the most energy consumption to produce, eating meat free meals can make a big difference too.
Some people may try to argue that climate change is natural and normal and we’ve seen fluctuations throughout history. That statement is true that the earth has naturally released carbon dioxide. However what we are experiencing today is much different than any warming or cooling humanity has seen in rate and scale. According to earthday.org “Our present climate change is occurring 20 to 50 times faster than the most rapid climate change events in earth's history. The good news is that it is entirely in control to phase out fossil fuels and avoid the devastating impacts of climate change. For this reason I suggest you seriously consider participating in abolishing climate change or at least trying to slow it down.