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The Climate Emergency is a rise in greenhouse gases since the 1800’s that has been causing changes to our world. Climate refers to how weather and temperatures have changed and been recorded over time. The earth has an atmosphere that protects it and keeps it warm but when we add more greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, it makes the planet too hot (Center for Sustainable Systems). This warmth is called the greenhouse effect and it’s the reason so many plants and animals call earth home. Usually our planet can put the energy back into space, but because of a rise in greenhouse gases it’s getting harder to do that. To put it simply when “heat-trapping emissions are released into the air, they act like a blanket, holding heat in our atmosphere” (Global Warming FAQ). Deforestation, cutting down trees and forests on a large scale, has added greatly to the rise in CO2. Without these forests there are less trees to absorb the gas and so it stays in our air longer. The more we cut down and burn, the worse our problem becomes.

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Human activities like meat farming, making clothing and mining, as well as other things, put out extra greenhouse gases. Unfortunately these are things that happen every day because they help our society work as it does right now. That means that even if we stopped putting gases into our air right now, it would still take a very long time to restore the earth to a healthier state (IPCC summary for policymakers). Right now we are in a positive feedback loop, which is a system where our climate problems are making themselves worse. An example of this is the melting of our ice caps. As the earth gets warmer, they melt and this makes us absorb more heat, melting even more of the ice. Climate change can show up in big ways, like wildfires or floods, but it can also be smaller. If you live in New England maybe your winters start getting really cold and long, or maybe the sea levels rising makes you lose an inch from your beach every summer. Those don’t seem like huge problems, but little things can add up to big problems that affect all of us.

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Climate change is something we all have to be concerned with because whether it feels like it or not, it’s affecting all our lives on a daily basis. The world relies on a small number of crops, like potatoes and corn, to feed everyone but as the climate worsens it will become harder to grow these at such a large scale. Natural ecosystems like the coral reefs that help keep our ocean healthy are rapidly declining. The CO2 in the air eventually gets into the water, making it too acidic for the current ecosystem to survive. This in itself is a tragedy, but it also affects what we eat and make from the things we collect in the ocean. The earth can survive without us, but we can’t survive without it.

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A positive feedback loop is a system that makes the reaction larger at the end, like a circle. Here's an example of one and how they affect climate change.

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“Global Warming FAQ.” Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org/resources/global-warming-faq.

“IPCC Special Report for Policy Makers 2018.” Edited by Valerie Masson-Delmotte et al., IPCC_1.5degree_specialreport_Oct2018.Pdf, IPCC, 2018.

Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan. 2018. “Climate Change: Science and Impacts Factsheet.” Pub. No. CSS05-19

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Here's an infographic to show you how our planet is warming and why greenhouse gases affect our earth.