Climate Change – Critical Issue

I believe that among the numerous critical issues facing most Americans in this world today, climate change stands as one of, if not the most urgent. However, understanding and assimilating the different causes of the ever-growing environmental problems critically facing our lives today are crucial for reducing our pollution footprint. Climate change effects include major changes in temperature, precipitation, wind patterns, as well as other frequent disastrous weather phenomenon. That said, climate change policy in the US has transformed timidly over the past twenty years.

It has been slowly developing at both the state and federal level. It is worth noting that US lawmakers today are using many controversial environmental policies on global warming and climate change. This has polarized certain political parties along with all the major industry organizations in Washington and around the world. Although it has long been determined by modern science that nature has and will always be ever- changing. It does not have necessarily the ability to make decisions nor exercise options. Humans have always played and still play today a significant and aggressive role in impacting and altering most of the landscape they have occupied since ancient times through the over exploitation of the land's natural resources. This has led to dangerous rising levels of all kind of pollutions, which in return has increased the global warming threat. All of this has produced negative effects on weather patterns thus, causing a deep perturbation and destabilization of the very sensitive echo-systems vital for sustaining human life on our planet earth.

According to the 2015 issue of Nature Climate Change published by Steve Smith and his colleagues at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the rate of global warming is rising due to greenhouse gases rapidly building up in the Earth's atmosphere.? In other words, climate change and global warming are now a proven scientific fact. Melting Ice caps are a fact! Greedy Companies and their powerful lobbyists are a fact! People not paying attention and not trying to do even the simplest things to reduce their pollution footprint is a fact! Destruction of our Forest is a fact! Minority fishing having less and less ocean food is a fact! And the long list of our planet destruction is facts upon facts! One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see what is happening all around us. For instance, we are experiencing today so many recurring global natural disasters, rising sea levels, and temperatures, that no one can claim otherwise.

I believe that nature has its own defense mechanisms but, mankind's selfishness appears to have a devastating, weakening effect on its fragile eco-systems. That said, I really believe that if we do not take immediate actions to stop the ever-growing emissions of all harmful gases from heavy polluters and attempt to reverse it to acceptable levels, we could see this precarious situation become very critical for humanity's survival. To put it another way, we will lose the ability to protect the earth from certain destruction and death. Yet people, when confronted with hard evidence of eminent threat of climate change, tend not to grasp the danger of the matter and feel that it is something distant, far off, intangible and almost otherworldly. An ordinary individual does not feel like he or she can make an impact. What's incredibly terrifying is that things are already happening way ahead of any scientific projection. For instance, ocean scientists are surprised that coral reefs are dying at an alarming rate, not to mention the irreversible impact this will have on the one billion people that depend on its fisheries for their diet and livelihoods. As coastal reef experts Terry Hughes and others point out in their article Global Warming and Recurrent Mass Bleaching of Corals?, rising carbon emissions, and the extra heat created by climate change are plunging the entire coastal systems into extreme turmoil. Reefs as we know them may disappear due to the extensive pressure constantly exerted on its fragile eco-system.

I believe that people need to use every means possible with their government officials in order to push for an environmental policy change. Humanity cannot afford to have political leaders out there like the actual US president who does not believe in modern science nor the scientific method and its empirical truths. According to Abler Ben's article saving the planet goes local, Donald Trump plans to decimate all the previous environmental safeguards so that blue states can step up their effort to arrest climate change.

I believe that upcoming generation's survival on this earth cannot afford to waste time. There are still people in power that choose to believe in the two percent of the scientific community that is bought off by the big polluters and their lobbyists. The article of Stop Climate Denial By Big Business, confirms the real need to understand that big business lobbying is a way to advance special interests at the expense of the greater good. So when it comes to lobbying on climate change, the prevailing naive public views is that big business fear that greater regulation threatens their industries so they have the obligation to lobby against any regulations with strict carbon emissions standards. Then again, it's not really hard to see why this might be. There is ample evidence in just the enormous amounts spent on lobbying around this issue. In Conclusion, it is safe to say that the world will continuously face more devastating environmental consequences if the US lawmakers and their world leader's counterparts keep siding with big business companies and their interest groups.

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