Global warming has been talked about endlessly lately, with some people legitimately concerned, and others in disbelief. Unfortunately global warming is not just a myth, but a very real and serious problem that we will regret ignoring in the future as it worsens. We're finally seeing the consequences to our machine-filled lives. The things we use everyday are killing not only the planet but us as well. Car emissions kill an estimated 30,000 people in the U.S. alone each year. The thing that makes this difficult to stop is that over 70% of the people in the states own cars and can't imagine life without them. With 310,925,000 people living in the United States, that's a lot of cars. Not to mention the fact that many families own more than one vehicle. And this does not include taxis, police cars, commercially used vehicles like vans and pickup trucks for delivery services, SUVs and cars that are used by fire departments, medical services, rental car fleets at airports around the world, even the world militaries use light passenger vehicles.
Not to mention that, especially in our society, very few people find alternate ways of getting to their destination, like walking or biking (which is 117% more effective than walking).
SUV's put out 43% more air pollutants than cars, and air planes impact the environment and ozone layer 2.7 times more than vehicles.
So what are lifestyles like these doing?
More than half of the citizens in America live in places that continually fail to meet federal air quality standards.
Impacts from global warming include sea level rise, more extreme weather events including heat waves, frosts, droughts, storms, extinction of species, loss of entire forests, marine life destruction and glacial retreat. 10 of the hottest recorded years, temperature wise, have been in the last 15 years. Also, transmitters of disease called vectors (for example, mosquitoes) like other animals and plants, are accustomed to certain climate conditions. If the climate becomes warmer, the mosquito will try to fly to new places where it can survive and expose more people to the disease. Changes in sea surface temperature and sea level can lead to higher incidence of water-borne infections and toxin-related illnesses such as malaria, infecting a larger number of people with serious diseases.
If people think that all that will happen is the climate will be a bit weird for a while, they're terribly mistaken. If ozone depletion and global warming are allowed to continue, our food chain will be seriously disrupted. For example, phytoplankton are tiny floating algae in the ocean which are the base of the marine food chain. In Antarctica, there has been 50 percent ozone depletion. This means that an unusually high amount of UV-B radiation has reached the Earth's surface. UV-B harms the productivity of phytoplankton, thereby reducing the available food for animals that feed on them. Krill eat phytoplankton and penguins eat krill. From a climate change perspective, phytoplankton normally absorb a lot of carbon from the air. As phytoplankton die from UV-B radiation, this carbon is no longer absorbed. This means that more carbon will be left in the atmosphere, contributing to more global warming. More global warming can increase ozone depletion, which kills more phytoplankton, and the process repeats itself. This will work its way up the food chain and around the world as the ozone depletion increases. Although it will take longer, this results will reach the human race. We will be the only ones left, and left with no food. (if the polluted air does not kill us first)
We're digging our own graves, and the graves of every other species on earth.
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