Human use of natural resources coal, oil, and gas could melt all the ice on the planet in as little as 5,000 years, according to National Geographic’s interactive “Rising Sea Levels” map.
When that happens, San Diego, the Central Valley, and the entire Eastern seaboard of the U.S. will be underwater, and the average global temperature will go from 58 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Luckily for us, it is doubtful that most species will survive that long, anyway. It’s estimated that “as many as three-quarters of animal species could be extinct within several human lifetimes,” according to a National Geographic article by Nadia Drake.
We are facing constant threats of climate change all over the world. Human carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to ocean acidification, global warming, extreme weather, sea-level rise, species extinction and disease. That sentence alone should be enough to spur action toward change. Instead, climate change has fallen victim to political polarization and doubt.
Sixty-three percent of Americans know that climate change is happening, but only 8 percent “have knowledge equivalent to an A or B, 40 percent would receive a C or D, and 52 percent would get an F,” according to a recent study by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Everyone, but college students especially, should have an understanding of the problems we are going to inherit from older generations and pass on to younger ones.
The basics of climate change are as follows: The sun radiates heat to Earth, and Earth radiates heat back into outer space. Greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere trap some of that heat and it warms up the planet. This is known as the greenhouse effect and is largely natural and precisely balanced.
In fact, without the greenhouse effect, Earth would be too cold to sustain life. Fluctuations in this balance are also natural and have happened throughout the planet’s 4.6-billion-year history (think ice ages and periods of extreme heat). Humans are disrupting the balance with excessive carbon dioxide emissions.
CO2 accounts for 0.035 percent of Earth’s atmosphere naturally. Between the constant burning of fossil fuels, agriculture and deforestation, humans emit seven gigatons of CO2 per year (about the weight of 1 billion elephants), and have brought this number up to 0.04 percent, according to a Teachers TV video.
It is estimated that the average temperature of the planet will be 2-6 degrees warmer by the end of the century. In all of the planet’s recorded history, the temperature has never changed by more than 2 degrees in 100 years, so there is no doubt that humans are accelerating the global warming process.
Anthropogenic climate change has environmental, social and economic implications. It is a vast and multifaceted issue that will affect all life on the planet. This is the world that today’s college students are graduating into.
Aug. 13 was Overshoot Day — the day on which humans have used the amount of natural resources Earth can produce in 12 months — according to the World Wildlife Fund. That means we are using more than the planet can support and replenish.
There is a famous anonymous quote, “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”
People have an obligation to limit the damage done to the Earth because it provides every essential resource that humans and all other living things need to survive.
This is merely an overview of the huge, all-encompassing fields of environmental science and sustainability. Amongst many complex problems, one thing is clear: Something needs to change. Since less than half of the population of the U.S. is knowledgeable about climate change, education is step one.
