Go ahead…Post your pictures from your spring break trip, and that family trip you took, and the mission trip you went on. And yet you continue to sit and sip from single-use plastic straws that will end up in our oceans in a sea turtle’s nose.
But more important than straws is the big picture. Yes, I encourage you to reduce, reuse, and recycle, but most of us are missing the whole point. While social media will bash you for the straws and the plastics, why is nobody talking about our government (at least in terms of global warming)?
NOAA and NASA discussed 2018’s global temperature and climate in a joint news conference Wednesday, both agencies maintaining independent data that goes back to 1880 to monitor temperatures around the globe. If it seems like you’ve heard this before, you have: 28 of the hottest 19 years have occurred since 2001.
Disagreeing with global warming is simply being in a state of denial. Not agreeing with the science doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And while it’s okay to be skeptical, data like this doesn’t lie. The Earth is on the fast-track for destruction.
So what are we going to do about it?
Well, simply put, it’s time for the United States Government to step up…but what’s new?
The carbon dioxide emissions of the United States have seen the biggest increase in 8 YEARS! In 2018, the United States left the Paris climate agreement, and things have clearly been heating up since then. The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and, for the first time, brings all nations into a common cause to “undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so.”
But it gets worse. The Huffington Post released that senators not backing a new environmental plan currently in Congress, on average, received 7 times as much cash from fossil fuel donors. The 88 senators who have declined to support the measure have collected close to $59 million from these companies according to nonprofit Oil Change USA, which analyzed 30 years of data. That comes out to about $670,000 per non-backer, or more than 7 times what the average sponsor took in.
It’s time to ask more of our representatives and our President. Climate change is not a hoax, and there is no “Planet b.” Is a little money worth a dead planet?