We Should All Care!
While looking at the different posts from researchers and scientists about the current issues going on I found interesting articles all dealing with the big issue of climate change. I found an article about an ancient tool that could be linked to climate change; along with one about how the “war” on plastic could actually be doing more harm than we think. These articles have helped spark my interests about our changing climate even more so than before. Over the course of the year, good things will happen and so will the bad.
When Stephen Hawking had passed, it took the people who love science for a spin. An article from EcoWatch tells a lot about what he believes the future for humanity will be if things are continued as they are now. His theories have helped scientists with learning more about space, time, and the universe. Within his last year, he used his platform to tell about how human activity and its effects on climate change. He warned that the way we are doing things need to be changed and it is something we can prevent from getting worse. Hawking even talked to the climate change deniers; saying that he would even pay for their trip to Venus, to show the impact of greenhouse gases on an otherwise habitable planet. During a lecture of his in 2016, he predicted that humanity only has about 1,000 years left on Earth and we have to find another place to live. Overall, Hawking believes that if we learn to work together we can make changes toward helping climate change.
All of Stephen Hawking’s claims that humanity is contributing greatly towards climate change can be seen throughout many articles online through reliable sources. On BBC News I found an article about how the Environment, Health, Transport and Environmental Audit committees want a new Clean Air Act, along with a clean air fund that is financed by the motor industry. These committees are also pushing for a faster phase-out period for gas and diesel cars. Air pollution is a very important problem in today’s world and anything that is done to help it would be a good step forward. Something that was not done correct within this article, is that it uses the abbreviation MP a lot, but does not say what it stands for. Other than that important abbreviation, the article showed that it wants to make big steps toward decreasing air pollution.
Climate change is a very big problem, like we have seen from the previous articles. Another article from The Guardian, showed how people from California are especially dealing with the aftermath of climate change. There had been a 6-year drought before a nice rain came. There were landslides that covered buildings and people. People that come to visit the area, do not tend to understand the challenges that they have to face each day. The fire that burned 270,000 acres took homes and entire lives from people in the area. These people left their homes not knowing where they were going or what was going to happen next. The fire was spreading and the lack of rain made the fire so hot, it was basically gas. Then a tropical storm began to come in from the south and dropped a half of inch of rain in about 5 minutes. California really needed this!
Unfortunately, the force of the water ash and soil did not secure any plants and picked up boulders on the way down the mountain. This landslide took out homes, people, cars, basically anything in the way. All of those events happened last year and today they are living with the aftermath. People are still missing, homes are still not rebuilt and their lives are still not as they were before. The people in California are living with the effects of climate change, their lives were not like this before but now it is something they are having to deal with each and every day.
There are some steps we can take to help the whole climate change from happening at such an increased rate. We could decrease the amount we drive, use reusable shopping bags, create less waste, and push our government to use all renewable energy. Although many people do these small steps to make the world a better place, on article on BBC News says that the war on plastics could actually be harming the world around us. It states that the group The Green Alliance says that plastics play a valuable role in the world and could never be abolished. Also, that people could turn this war on plastics to be a war on plastic litter.
The article also states how rejecting all plastic food packaging could be counter-productive because it could lead to more food waste- and since agriculture is a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the amount of food waste is very important. The article also mentions how there is finite land on Earth and that if we substitute plastic with plant-based material it would cause us to not have any land yet. Our forests are already being used in different ways and adding another thing that we would need the land for would not be a good practice.
The article then goes onto talk about how whatever solution is made for reducing the plastic waste should decrease emissions and don’t continue to damage our ecosystems. Also, one lady within this article said that “”Turning plants into plastic in this way means that, at the end of life, it won’t be biodegradable and will have all the potential drawbacks of traditional plastic.” This statement does not make any sense to me, isn’t the point of turning plants into plastic so that it would be biodegradable and not like the traditional plastics we have today. Lastly, the article ends by listing a few different ways that plastic use could be decreased.
The last article from Science News is one last push, from me, to show how we have to save this Earth! The ocean temperatures are getting higher and its heat waves are getting more frequent and lasting longer. An ocean heat wave is defined as at least 5 days in a row of unusually high temperatures for a particular ocean region or season. The amount of heat wave days within the ocean has increased 54% from 1925 to 2016. These very high temperatures can be deadly for corals, oysters, and even for aquaculture or fishery facilities. This trend of the heat waves becoming 34% more common on average, is mostly influenced by climate change, this causes the surface ocean water temperatures to warm. Researchers are also predicted more frequent marine heat waves. Things need to change. Also, just banning plastics will not work. Finding a substitute for plastics is an awesome step in the right direction, but more needs to be done. Climate change is getting worse and human-beings are a big part of its increasing rates.
