As the years go by, people come and go, but the one thing that stays the same is the land we live on, the Earth. Humanity has caused a drastic setback in the Earth’s physical state, like its valuable animals, climates, and temperatures all over. The higher the population on Earth gets, the condition of Earth becomes more and more worse.
One way climate change has worsened is by people cutting down a lot of trees. According to the Nature Conservancy, these trees are used for the production of oxygen. When these trees are cut down, the carbon dioxide stored in these trees are released into the atmosphere, therefore increasing the local temperature by 4.5 degrees Celsius.
That is not the only way climate change has been caused though, when fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas are burned, they also release carbon dioxide similar to the trees. Client Earth states that these fossil fuels provide around 80% of the world’s energy, making it very hard to prevent the use of these. In 2018, these fossil fuels and industries were the cause of nearly 90% of global CO2 emissions.
Although there are many ways humans have impacted climate change, it’s also been caused by the earth itself. Changes in the Earth’s orbit and its axis of rotation has been proven to cause shorter summers in the Northern hemisphere. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) states these changes caused the coldest part of the last glacial period to increase in temperature by 11 degrees fahrenheit.
In Pennsylvania, have you noticed how strange the weather has been recently? It went from Snowing to 80-degree weather, to snowing again, and then thunderstorming. Excessive change in weather are causes of climate change, 80 degrees in the beginning of March isn’t a good sign, especially since it’s so early in the year
All these factors have worsened Climate change and deteriorated the Earth significantly just over the past 4 decades. Who goes to say what the Earth would look like a few decades down the line? Ways to prevent this from getting any worse have been discovered, but without people actually paying attention to the Earth’s state, it’s useless.
The next time you go to burn a candle, a pile of trash or even when buying something new, think of the impact this could have on the earth. Do you really need that random squishy or will you eventually throw it away, leaving it to be brought to a landfill that destroys the earth?
