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Sincerely,
Lauren Underwood
Climate Change as an Issue
To Lauren Underwood:
Thank you for your response to my concern with respect
to climate change with the explanation of actions you have taken in the
House of Representatives to address this problem.
This year I will be teaching Earth Science, Life Science
and Physical Science to middle school students and climate change will be
circulated throughout these formative curriculum to inspire and motivate
young minds. The physics and the
chemistry fueling global warming and its effect upon climate change does
not abdicate to political winds and political agendas. As I work to enlighten the minds of these
students I will not dismiss their understanding of the true onslaught of
changes, driven by climate change, to upend and degrade the ecosystem and
the biodiversity of the world that we live in.
As a society, we need to move progressively and champion
bold and serious measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to a point
where we live in a carbon-neutral world.
This is a world where any carbon dioxide emissions would be linked
to equivalent carbon dioxide sequestration efforts. Carbon-neutral
environments will put the world on a trajectory toward a viable solution to
stop the rise of global temperatures to not more than 1.5 degree Celsius
this century.
Levels of carbon dioxide gas concentrated in the Earth’s
atmosphere must be reduced to 350 parts per million. This concentration would be down from the
current level of over 410 parts per million. The historic level of carbon dioxide concentrations
in the atmosphere over the past 10,000 years were about 285 parts per
million up and until the beginning of the industrial revolution in the
early 1800’s. Since that time there has been a steady and relentless climb
in the quantity of carbon dioxide gas in the Earth’s atmosphere as a result
of humankind burning coal, oil and natural gas to fuel the energy needs of
modern society.
If our nation moves robustly, as a world leader, to cap
carbon dioxide emissions then other nations will follow suite and a truly united
global effort will evolve to save the planet as we know today. The current “business
as usual” situation allows for over 30 billion tons of additional carbon
dioxide gas to be emitted each year resulting in high levels of
carbon dioxide gas concentrations in our atmosphere for centuries to come. Over 3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide
has already been spewed into the atmosphere since the dawn of the
industrial revolution and the acceleration of this polluting effort
continues to today.
Over time, the hockey stick curve of exponential
growth of carbon dioxide gas concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere will
rain havoc upon the ecosystems of the world and to the extreme determent of
human life on this planet. This
is what I will convey to my students this year in science. Unless the immediacy of the problem is
clearly recognized now, then we can expect a degradation of human life on
this planet into the future.
There is no more time to get ready for this change. It
is upon us. So, what can we do? Well, I think the reverse question is why
have we done so little? As an
educator I can help learned minds to embrace the reality of this situation,
but I can only hope that this realization permeates into society from family
to family and from community to community. It is a moral imperative begging
for action as we witness the destruction of the world we live in and desperately
look for alternatives to the way we can change how we conduct our lives and
the degree that we appreciate the nurturing biodiversity of our planet.
My final comment is that as an educator I have two
choices. First, I can continue to
teach children about the efforts and the science behind reducing carbon
dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and possible new designs of
alternative energy producing sources like solar panels, wind turbines and new
electricity storage technologies. The
second option, considering the reality descending upon us, is that I could teach
resiliency and the art of preparing ourselves to survive the coming waves
of catastrophic changes to our environment that will put immense pressure
on the sustainability of human existence on this planet into the 22nd
century. The close proximity of an environmental
tipping point (less than a decade away), that we as a society are careening
toward, with just a smattering degree of urgency, is actually now making this
decision for me.
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