How can people make changes in their daily life to conserve more resources?

How concerned are you about the effects of climate change?

By Meagan Barrett ‘15 and Ankur Kayastha ’15

In each issue of The Warrior, the newspaper staff collaborates and contributes to this “In Our Opinion” unsigned editorial. Inspired by Earth Day, The Warrior dedicated part of the Opinions section to environmental issues. However, in this issue, the staff was presented with its own obliviousness. Less than half of the staff considers global warming to be a pressing issue, and even less are familiar with the real causes of global warming. Upon further investigation, it’s been discovered that this trend extends into the population of the United States.

For the last 4.54 billion years – as in the entire history of the earth – the world has gone through natural heating and cooling cycles. Many people discredit the current rise in global temperatures as a normal fluctuation in the earth’s natural pattern.  However, over the past couple of decades, an undeniable pattern has revealed that temperatures have now gone higher than they ever have before. The same trends show that human activity, such as the burning of coal and the burning of fossil fuels, are enormous contributors to this rising trend.

Going through a typical day, you wake up, turn on the lights – which you may or may not turn off –  unplug your phone from its charger – which you then leave in the outlet – and then get into your car – which runs on fossil fuels.  Many Americans don’t realize how damaging this lifestyle is. The electricity in your house most likely functions due to the burning of coal in power plants. Burning coal emits greenhouse gases, or gases which trap sunlight in the earth’s atmosphere. The side effects of the gas in your car are the same. Leaving the electricity running or driving when it simply isn’t necessary for any amount of time generates just that much more unnecessary greenhouse gases.

Your phone charger being plugged in all day may not seem very significant either. However, phone chargers, and any small appliances left plugged in, will continue to conduct an electric current even if your phone isn’t plugged in. But it’s just one phone charger, generating a little electricity, right? But imagine that on a scale of around 300 million phone chargers every day in the United States. It’s true these don’t seem like major causes, but even the small things count.

At this point, the human race is already headed toward dire consequences. No matter what happens now, it isn’t possible to reverse the destruction we have done. All that’s possible now is to do damage control and stop it before it gets any worse. The rising temperatures not only cause melting icecaps and a dramatic rise in sea level, but also possible failure of crops, as well as the depletion of the ozone, the world’s only protection from cancer-causing UV rays.

Many of the changes people need to make are simple lifestyle changes, ones that will have an enormous effect on the consequences of global warming. While the current generation may not need to deal with these consequences, the effects will fall on the shoulders of future generations.  It could be your kids starving, or suffering from skin cancer. But even if it isn’t, it is still the duty of every member of the human race to care about the health of the planet that they inhabit.