With climate change becoming more extreme, more disruptive, and more dangerous, faster than previously estimated, stabilization efforts will take a great deal of courage.
Thousands Of Americans Across The Country Participate In Global Climate Strike
WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 20: Activists gather in John Marshall Park for the Global Climate Strike protests on September 20, 2019, in Washington, United States. In what could be the largest climate protest in history and inspired by the teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, people around the world are taking to the streets to demand action to combat climate change. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
By Jade Lopez, CRDN
Friday, August 27, 2024
From melting ice caps in the Arctic to hurricanes in the Atlantic, our world has experienced changes in climate for hundreds of years, but nothing like what we are experiencing in today’s age. With extreme droughts along the West Coast, major wildfires in atypical regions, record-breaking heat waves, and floods, increased tornadoes in the Midwest, and hurricanes rising through the East Coast, climate patterns throughout the United States are presenting serious problems that call for immediate action. With those conditions only worsening, at an epic pace, with no end in sight, immediate action will take courage and discipline. If the global pandemic taught us anything it is that implementing standards, of any kind, can inherently create a circus of politics that threatens basic common-sense measures, and can serve as an obstacle against commons-sense measures.
Climate severity is not limited to our backyard. The entire planet faces severity in different continents and regions that go well beyond the United States. A significant increase has been noted this year in forest fires in Canada, droughts throughout East Africa, monsoon floods in Asian countries such as India and Pakistan, oceanic current altercations due to rising temperatures directly affecting rainfall, and severe food insecurity around the world. Unusual weather patterns have more than doubled in the past decade, prompting notable climate activists such as Gretta Thunberg and Dominique Palmer to emphasize the urgent need for action to address climate impacts and implement preventative measures.
Communities are facing food and water shortages, displacement due to natural disasters, and health crises stemming from heat exposure and pollution. Glaciers dating back to the Ice Age are beginning to melt, and scientists have found hundreds of thousands of pathogens inside them, which could wreak havoc on our water supply. The seriousness of this alone could cause another mass pandemic, wiping out millions in months.
Warming climates in the Arctic are thawing out permafrost that has survived in the region for thousands of years. Permafrost, which covers one-fifth of the Northern Hemisphere, is a frozen layer of soil underneath the ground, which can stir up viruses that were essentially inactive. Our Arctic region is currently heating up four times the rate of the rest of the planet, causing the permafrost to weaken on its top layer.
Many of the viruses that have survived in the frozen icebergs are over 50,000 years old, but could potentially make their way back to Earth within the next century. Similar to the 2014 finding of a large Pithovirus sibericum virus that was discovered in a 30,000-year-old permafrost in Siberia, hundreds of millions of viruses and bacteria are being pulled from melting caps. These harmful unknowns are not only dangerous for humans but could cause animal species to become extinct. Mass pandemics such as COVID-19, Ebola, and HIV are known derivatives from animal hosts, leading to scientists questioning if one of the released viruses could be another species-jumping mutation.
Efforts to stabilize climate change require a more detailed approach that includes various adaptation, mitigation, educational, and innovative strategies. Tactics such as using renewable energy sources in our homes, improving energy efficiency, providing eco-friendly farming tactics, banning deforestation, and reducing our landfills through recycling are good starting points. Additionally, we can direct our focus on enhancing our infrastructure to withstand harsh climates, conserve water, and restore our ecosystems by protecting and restoring natural habitats. The focus on policy and education involves utilizing our voices and social platforms to spread public awareness of how climate change is impacting our world and enacting stronger environmental protection regulations.
Our battle against climate change requires collective action amongst political leaders, lawmakers, state governments, businesses, neighborhoods, and ourselves. An act as simple as emptying a plastic bottle and placing it in the recycling bin contributes to a vision bigger than us that can stabilize our world and protect it for generations to come. Other measures require an aggressive approach to curtail American’s use of gas vehicles which have increased exponentially since 2008, simultaneously with extreme and dangerous changes in whether conditions. Policy and lawmakers must act more urgently.