We all know people who refuse to acknowledge the obvious. Some believe that the threat of climate change does not exist. While I’d also like to think that the beauty of our environment isn’t slowly deteriorating day by day the science has shown that global temperatures, in addition to sea levels, are rising, and have been for some time now.
The main reason for the declination of our environmental situation is due to the lack of respect that we as a species hold towards it. Throughout most of human history, we’ve been more concerned with economic profitability than ensuring the preservation of our environment, a phonomena which has come at the expense of our wildlife, to the point where we don’t even know how bad everything’s gotten. The greenhouse effect is what makes living on our planet possible; the most important greenhouse gases–like carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane–trap the sun’s energy to warm the earth’s surface and create conditions that can sustain life. However, the excessive burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal, which have generated an overabundance of CO2, are turning these helpful greenhouse gases into environmental hazards. As these fossil fuels burn, the greenhouse gases build up to a point where they exceed their ideal levels within the atmosphere, resulting in the entrapment of more heat than needed.
What is not helping is the fact the our president refuses to believe the scientific evidence that our global temperatures are rising. Because of his firm dogmatic beliefs, many people who see him as an authority figure have come to agree with his ideas regarding the “myth” that is climate change and support his branding of environmental activists as “liars.” As someone who is very conscious about the environment, I believe that cleaner, more renewable forms of energy need to be utilized by industries worldwide in order to decrease the prevalence of pollution and carbon dioxide production. But the first step to solving the problem is to recognize its existence.