Dear future president,

I know you got a lot of these essays, and I know that you probably won't read all of them if any. My name is piper kittersong and i am a teen volunteer for the oregon zoo in portland. Being as i spend a lot of time there i have learned a lot about global warming and palm oil and the effect that they have on each other and the world.

Climate Change is a real thing, and it needs to be dealt with. People always tell themselves that someone else is going to do something about it, just as an excuse to get out of doing it. But in this case we all have to stand up and get our hands dirty or else things will just get worse. You always hear people talking about global warming, but no one is really educating people about it. Here are the basics, pollution and too much carbon dioxide are causing ice caps to melt therefore killing polar bears and other arctic creatures, raising the ocean levels at a rate of 0.14 inches (3.5 millimeters) per year since the early 1990s, and gradually heating the earth up (as you can tell from the ice caps melting). This is effecting islands and many coastal cities like venice or italy. When the ice caps melt all the way we will be looking at fully submerged islands, and our land getting smaller, people will have to move away from the coasts to stay safe. We are causing it.

Many people don't realize that one of the main polluters is palm oil. In the article Palm Oil and Global Warming by Union of Concerned Scientists the author makes the case for the destructive force that is the production of non-sustainable Palm oil.

“Palm oil is ubiquitous in the global marketplace. It is an ingredient in thousands of everyday products, from baked goods to shampoo. And it is used to fry fast food and to fuel cars and trucks in many places around the world. Unfortunately, because current palm oil production methods often cause the destruction of carbon-rich tropical forests and peatlands, it is a major contributor to global warming. In order to conserve our natural resources, protect biodiversity, and reduce our risk of climate change, we must transform the palm oil industry.”

I am not saying that palm oil is the immediate issue. As it states in the previous quote it is not the product, but rather the way that the product is farmed and transported. We call this “unsustainable farming” The process includes burning down natural rainforests, planting palm oil trees and once they are harvested burning them down again, then moving on to the next rainforest. Which as you can tell emits loads of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What i suggest is to make a law about unsustainable palm oil. Companies who use these methods for farming palm oil should be required to label their products as “unsustainable”

While this won't solve the whole issue it will give citizens the moral obligation to choose the sustainable option. It's a step in the right direction. Thank you.

-Piper Kittersong