This past winter has been one of the most bipolar winters I have ever experienced. We would go from having 3-degree weather one week to 60-degree weather the following week. Every year, climate change has become more of a problem. Many of you have probably been told that climate change is not real. I can assure you that it is real and it is a growing problem not only in the United States but the world as a whole.
According to NASA, Earth’s global surface ranked the second warmest in 2017 for the first time since 1880. The temperature of the Earth’s surface has been increasing by 1.62 degrees every year and will continue to increase if we do not do something to stop it before it is too late.
We have witnessed climate change for ourselves if we look back at this past winter so we can all say that climate change is not a myth. The issue now is what are we going to do to control this growing concern. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Bernie Sanders of Vermont had proposed bills that would end fossil fuel leasing on federal land and target 100 percent renewable electricity by 2050. While this bill seemed like an effective plan at the time, the democratic party has not rallied behind any of the bills that they originally proposed.
On the other hand, the Republican party has grown increasingly doubtful about the existence of climate change over the last twenty years. Fewer than two third of registered Republicans believe that climate change is not caused by human activities. Instead they believe that it is a natural cause that we cannot control. We cannot fix a problem if we believe that we are not the cause of this problem.
Rather than argue over whether or not climate change is a man made problem, we need to figure out what our next step as a species will be. This no longer is a political stance, but a global crisis. It is time to join the cause and contribute to saving our planet!