Dear Future President,

I have been taking an environmental science class this school year and have already learned many important things about the environment and how the world’s human population affects it. Recently, my class has been studying the effects of many forms of pollution that cause a big problem in our atmosphere: Global warming. The release of pollutants has been a direct result of loosely-observed pollution permits.

Pollution permits that are not carefully monitored allow a certain amount of carbon dioxide to be polluted into the air, influencing the climate temperature through the greenhouse gases that CO2 contribute greatly to. Levels of carbon dioxide are the highest they have been in hundreds of thousands of years. This last September of 2016, atmospheric CO2 reached 401.01 ppm. This past August is the warmest August that there has been since 1880 because of the staggering amounts of carbon dioxide gas that have been heating our earth. Over the last 250 years, Atmospheric CO2 levels have gone up by 36 percent. Half of the increase occurred just within the last three decades. Global warming is already a problem because of the high amounts of CO2 gas that are being produced and emitted into the atmosphere, therefore any hidden activities that may continue to contribute to this problem need to be sought out and stopped before the world reaches an irreversible tipping point.

It is currently very difficult for the government to determine just how many permits should be given out and how generous or restrictive dispersal should be. Better attention needs to be pursued towards measuring pollution levels carefully in order to avoid exceeding the maximum capacity of pollution the earth can sustain. There are varying opportunities where companies that use permits can hide their true pollution levels, and this is concerning when the permits are not monitored close enough to catch any dishonest actions.

Economically, implementing the plan for the pollution process demands much from administration’s wallet, therefore strict supervision of these processes needs to be enforced. It takes a lot of time, money, and energy to organize safe pollutant releases, and it also takes that of which to clean up any mistakes made by the accidental releasing of pollutants (beyond the quota) emitted from industrial factories and burned forests. Countries around the world that are polluting past their quotas are also buying permits from other resources. The richer, more developed countries like us have been obtaining permits from lesser developed countries to continue producing and polluting once they have reached their limits. This habit needs to be eliminated so that pollution levels may be determined more easily.

Pollution is not being reduced if these permits are floating around in the wrong hands while not serving their purpose of adhering to pollution allowance regulations. Now that you have authority to make a difference, you can help us to make a change for the betterment of our environment.

Sincerely,

Jessica