Mother Nature doesn’t care about your politics

Ossman Darwiche/ Staff Writer

Climate change is a pretty hot topic in today’s society. While many people know about the phenomenon, most people are tragically unaware of the catastrophic consequences our planet could be facing in a not so distant future if nothing is done in our generation.

We know for a fact that Earth is getting hotter. To deny this observable scientific truth is like sticking your head in the ground and pretending the danger will just go away all by itself.

Listen, I get it! I grew up in a very conservative family of staunch Republicans. I know there are plenty of left leaning politicians who take advantage of the data to advance their own political agendas; but keep in mind that the right does the exact same thing! The left screams, “the planet is dying! Big government save us!” The right screams “humans don’t cause climate change, don’t tread on my rights!” Well I’m the guy in the middle yelling “Both of you shut up and sit down!”

When I was growing , climate change and global warming were not issues of debate, it was something everyone I knew agreed with, both Republicans and Democrats. It was not something political, it was observed by objective scientific minds. Nature does not care about your political opinion! She is not a Democrat nor Republican, she is not American, European, or anything else but Earth, and she is a living breathing organism.

When an astronaut goes into space and bears witness to the spectacular view of our planet, they do not see any national borders, but they do see continents, forests, clouds, and the vast blue oceans that make up over 70% of our planet’s surface. When you’re up in space like that, they say, you come to the realization that all of us inhabit this one little blue dot in the vast cosmic expanse of space, and if you observe the earth from above long enough, you can certainly see how the earth breathes and moves over time.

Our planet’s climate has changed at least seven times in the last 650,000 years. The last time being an ice age which ended roughly 7,000 years ago before the rise of modern human civilization. Since then we have been basking in the rays of one of the longest lasting climate breaks in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. During all this time, global temperatures and the amount of carbon dioxide never exceeded a certain level.

It was only well into the middle of the 20th Century that that amount skyrocketed by ten times the normal amount. Since carbon dioxide naturally traps heat, it not only increases the temperature of our oceans, increasing the potency and frequency of hurricanes and other natural disasters. I’m sure you’ve also heard about our polar ice caps rapidly melting due to rising temperatures, causing our ocean levels to rise well above our comfort zones. It places all of us in considerable mortal peril.

Take cities like Venice, Italy, for example, where rising sea levels have already caused irreparable damage to houses and city infrastructure, or even our own Miami for crying out loud! If nothing is done to fix the problem today, our children and grandchildren may not have a Miami or Venice to live in or visit, because they’ll be under water!

Now imagine that kind of damage on a global scale… scary right? Yes it is! And it should be scary to all of us, because Earth is our home, the only one we know of so far in our corner of space. We have not yet found a nearby habitable planet we could escape to, so we literally have nowhere else to go. Earth is where make our stand, we either take care of it, or we lose it, and in the process lose ourselves, becoming the victims of our own carelessness. The time to act is now, for us and for future generations.

DISCLAIMER:

The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of Panther Press Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.

Photo by Matthew Schwartz on Unsplash

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