The Earth's Climate: Can It Be Saved, Or Is It Doomed to Go Downhill?

With the added emphasis on “green” as far more than a color, but as a byword for a growing concern and activism for saving the environment of the Earth, there’s been a lot of talk as of late about the impact that global warming both has and will continue to have upon the planet we all live on. Can humanity as a whole pull together and make the changes needed to combat climate change, or are we leaving a dark legacy for our children?

Global warming and climate change both refer to the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects, and this rise, supported as fact by a number of scientific studies, seems by all accounts to be caused by man’s pollution of the Earth’s atmosphere. In time, it could lead to seriously environmental consequences for the planet; consequences that are already starting to rear their ugly head as global warming slowly takes hold and leaves its environmental footprint.

World leaders throughout 2014 made attempts to organize and get the message out regarding planning to create an environmental defense in regards to global warming. Bickering on all sides when it comes to difference in political ideology aside, 2014 was a red-letter year for the advancement of the green movement. However, these governments still have a great deal of ground to cover in terms of saving the environment, as high-profile green blog Yellow Pages Goes Green, recently wrote about the troubling results of several major studies conducted over the past year that truly illustrate the potential dire straits that global warming presents for the planet of left unchecked.

“Scientists studying 16 incidents of what they termed “wild weather” last year have determined that over half of them are connected to global warming caused by man’s unabated use of fossil fuels,” they said. “Heat waves that occurred in Australia, China, Europe, Japan and Korea bore the fingerprints of made-made climate change, as did extreme amounts of rain in parts of India and the United States, and severe drought conditions in New Zealand and in California.”

YellowPages Goes Green also reported in their article that scientific studies have ranked the counties of the world deemed the worst offenders in terms of the pollution that is being blamed as the cause for global warming, and unfortunately, despite strong efforts in recent years to clean up their act, so to speak, the United States still ranks up there with the worst of them.

“In 2013, the world spewed more carbon pollution into the atmosphere than at any time ever before. The leading polluters were China, India and the United States, increasing their emissions by 4.2 percent, 5.1 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively,” they said. “While China is known to be the world’s worst carbon polluter, the United States had actually reduced its carbon emissions in four of the five years immediately preceding the study, but increased its use of coal in 2013 due to the recovering economy.”

However, hope springs eternal; as mentioned, both citizens and world leaders are sitting up and taking notice of the malady befalling the environment and, in particular, how global warming is planning a major part in it. The 2014 Climate Summit took place at the United Nations, and before that, the People’s Climate March took place in New York City, which drew over 300,000 participants (similar events were also held in nearly 2700 other locations in 150 countries throughout the world).

Among world leaders, no less than the leader of the Roman-Catholic Church, Pope Francis himself, declared a call-to-arms for all of his flock in regards to the threat that global warming presents to all of mankind; according to The National Post, it’s just another in a long series of actions undertaken by the new Pope that underscore his seemingly genuine want to create real, positive change in the Church.

“Pope Francis is expected to present an encyclical on climate change, urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds,” they said. “This is a very big deal, for many reasons. One is that encyclicals are published on issues of high priority to the Pope, and what’s high priority to him is high priority to the church. There are more than a billion Catholics on the planet, so this could have a profound effect.”

Hopefully this action on the part of the Pope will hasten the work needed to half climate change dead in its tracks; the sooner the better for The Arctic Circle, the region most afflicted by this issue according to Mashable.

“The Arctic is warming at the fastest rate of any region on the planet, about twice as quickly as the globe’s average rate of warming, scientists recently reported,” they said. “Not only that, but the effects of this warming are increasingly visible well beyond the region’s iconic sea ice and polar bears, according to the 2014 Arctic Report Card, which was released earlier this month by an international team of scientists.”

There are a number of different ways to combat global warming, but one of the most dramatic and direct ways would be to reduce our reliance on the use of fossil fuels. While this may currently seem like a pipe dream due to humanity’s overwhelming dependence upon them, there are baby steps that we as a whole can take to get the ball rolling, such as carpooling, bike riding, and other methods of curtailing fossil fuel usage. Even a little bit here and there adds up to a whole lot if everyone pitches in.

Then there are major steps, such as the one suggested by Deseret News, which addresses both the environmental and financial impacts of lowering the use of fossil fuels:

“One such thing is to create a federal policy of carbon fee and dividend. George Schultz, former secretary of the Treasury under President Nixon, as well as many conservative economists, has called on Congress to do just that,” they said. “A gradually and predictably rising fee would be placed on fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) at the source, and the proceeds would be returned to households. The fee would account for the damage that fossil fuels cause, but which are currently paid by society. This policy would stimulate the economy and create jobs while reducing deaths from air pollution and curtailing our greenhouse gas emissions. With the market forces of such a policy and the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of Americans, the United States could become a leader in clean, inexhaustible energy.”

Global warming- what are you doing to combat it, and could you be doing more? It’s everyone’s problem, after all.