The Impact of Climate change

In order to truly understand why we must change, what we need to do we must first take a look at what the problem really is. The biggest problem surrounding climate change is the large amounts of pollution that cause it and impact our environment. In this blog post we’ll be taking a look at an article called, “Natural Disasters and Climate Change”

Climate change is a change in climate patterns due largely due to increased carbon dioxide emissions caused by the production and use of fossil fuels. In the article it states that these changes in climate can have detrimental effects on the people, wildlife, and environments that are changed as a result. This also leads to harsher conditions and natural disasters.

The list of massive environmental effects this can cause includes, higher temperatures, more droughts and heat waves, stronger more intense hurricanes, rising sea levels, an eventually ice free Arctic, and many more varying regional effects.

Due to lack of preparation for these effects many areas are in danger. There have been increasing natural disasters caused by climate change including the recent snow storm in Texas and the wildfires in California and Australia. These are all the effects of increasing climate change altering the weather conditions and climates in those regions. Due to lack of preparation many regions have ineffective responses to the disaster. This along side the dangers of the disasters themselves lead to many deaths and people lost as well as ecosystems destroy impacting wildlife and plant life.

This will having lasting long term impacts on us as well. The rising temperatures are melting the polar ice caps at this very moment. This means that animals such as polar bears, penguins, seals, and other arctic Wildlife are losing their homes and will soon be extinct if there isn’t change.

But it doesn’t stop there, the melting ice caps will cause a 1–8 foot rise in the sea level around the world which will cause flooding in most coastal areas and cities that are highly populated leaving some cities flooded and unlivable and force millions out of their homes.

Another lasting effect will be an increase in droughts and heat waves. This means that farms and the agriculture industry will be reduced and harder to maintain than before which will lead to a low supply of crops and food each year. That will directly impact all of us by creating food shortages as well as water shortages in certain areas.

This will drive up food prices and make food more scarce for us as well as for hungry people around the world who already don’t have food. It will cause an increase in world hunger and leading to many deaths in third world countries. These droughts will also cause shortages in water such as the one California experienced not too long ago. These overlapping effects will make life for everyone harder and lead to more suffering and tragedy around the world.

The effects of climate change have accumulated overtime and come to cause massive disaster and devastation around the world without us even realizing that climate change is the cause. But what causes climate change?

It comes from mass pollution and carbon emissions stemming from the production and use of fossil fuels. That’s because fossil fuels are our main source of energy at the moment. We use coal, gas, oil, and other fossil fuels to power everything around us and the amount we’ve used has caused massive climate change over time. And not only that but at the same time we’re running out of fossil fuels all together meaning soon we won’t have any to power all of our things.

This is why it is absolutely for us to focus our efforts and resources to try and put a stop to climate change. It’s the only way to save our environments, as well as ourselves. If we continue down the road we’re going we won’t have much of a future here on Earth. In order to stop the effects of climate change before its irreversible we must make the switch now to cleaner more sustainable energy and stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible. It’s our duty as humans to make an effort to make a change if we want a future for future generations.

Citations:

Helmer, M., & Hilhorst, D. (2006). Natural disasters and climate change. Disasters, 30(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2006.00302.x