This Statistic Changed My Entire Perspective of Climate Change

I consider myself fairly environmentally informed. First and foremost, I am aware that climate change exists, which is unfortunately more than many can say; I also recycle, have energy efficient lighting in my home, and my dream car is a Tesla (although what Californian college student wouldn’t want a Tesla). Recently, however, one statistic made me rethink how I view climate change and the solutions we have to find sooner than later if we expect to call Earth our home for much longer.

At this point, 97% of climate scientists are in agreement that climate change is real, and that it’s our fault — that is, human activity is causing the shift in global temperature and weather, rather than Earth’s natural climatic ebb and flow. With such a definitive, well-researched conclusion, it comes as no surprise that the facts have started to trickle down to the American public. According to a 2018 Gallup Poll on the topic, 64% of Americans — a fairly wide majority — believe that climate change is due to human activity. While this number is a far cry from what it should be, and in fact down from 68% last year, most Americans are at least aware of the fact that there is a problem. Public knowledge about climate change is a huge hurdle that still needs to be cleared to create significant change, but I’ll get to that later.