Climate Change and Energy
We are living in a world where climate change is an increasing problem, and continuing to burn fossil fuels will only make the problem worse.
Dear Mr. or Mrs. President,
You have the most important job in the country, and you can change the US for the better or for the worse. I am writing this letter to request that you look into the issue of climate change, or global warming. This issue is very important to me. But what matters the most within this issue is the combustion, or burning, of fossil fuels, as it is a big contributor to climate change, especially since we are using more and more of them.
I’m going to go more into detail about this, but first I must write about climate change itself.
Climate change is the warming of the Earth, due to human activities. For instance, when we burn fossil fuels, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are released. This is scientifically proven to trap heat inside Earth’s atmosphere, causing rising temperatures.
But why is this important? So what if it gets a couple degrees hotter? All the better, right? Winter won’t be so cold and less people will get sick! But that’s not true. There are no advantages of global warming. It is a real thing, already affecting our country, and it will continue to do so if we do not address it. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, some consequences of global warming include more severe and extreme weather. Global warming will also lead to more droughts, more wildfires, and deadly heat waves. There will be an increase in natural disasters. A 2014 Washington Post report shows that if we choose to ignore climate change, there will be negative effects throughout all of North America. In the Northeast, the sea-level will rise, there will be more flooding, more sudden storms, more rain, and more heat waves. In the Southeast and the Caribbean, there will be no water regularly and there will be more hurricanes.
This means that so many more dangerous and deadly natural disasters will occur. More people will die and be seriously injured. We, as humans, will suffer. Our country, our world will change greatly, and in a negative way. And all of this will happen just because of climate change. Do we really want that?
As an American citizen, I do not. As a human being in general, I do not want that, because it’s not only about us. What about all the animals living on what we call, “our planet”? They have feelings too! Those feelings deserve to be considered. And what about future generations? If we choose to ignore the looming threat of climate change, then we will not be the only ones affected, dying and suffering, without any more comfort of the lives we knew before, because of the unbearable heat. What about our children? Our grandchildren? Don’t we want to give them a chance at the lives we had? Don’t they deserve that? One step in giving them that opportunity will be to fight climate change.
I once read a book with the title of Fuel Under Fire. This book described all of the negative impacts of fossil fuels on the environment. It said that if we continued to burn fossil fuels, climate change would get to a point where we could not stop or slow it. The rapidly rising temperatures would be unbearable. This part of the book opened my eyes to the real world: a world where we do not care about the environment, where we do not realize that continuing to ignore it would lead us to disaster. This scared me, because I knew that people would probably continue to burn fossil fuels, leading us to a life spent living in terrible conditions. As a result, I care more and more about climate change. So please, help us solve this problem.
But the solution to climate change is a huge stairwell that we need to climb, soon and fast. How do we do it? The answer is simple: One step at a time.
Mr. or Mrs. President, I wrote to you because the government has a big part in addressing this problem. I wrote to you because I have a request.
By continuing to burn fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), we are walking down the road that leads to climate change and then death. Do we really want that?
My request is that we stop burning fossil fuels. How do we do that? That’s where you, and the government, step in.
The only way to stop the combustion of fossil fuels is to stop using them as energy. We have to stop companies from getting fossil fuels. We have to ban oil drilling, coal mining, and ban or put restrictions on fracking. Please don’t take money from the companies and let them bribe you into allowing them to continue retrieving fossil fuels.
The government must also invest in clean, renewable energy. Some renewable energy sources such as biomass still contribute to climate change, so I also ask for the government to please carefully select which renewable energy sources the US can invest in. These sources include wind power, geothermal power, and hydroelectric power.
I know that I am asking for a lot, but I hope that you will at least have read this letter and will take my opinion and my requests into consideration.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Charlotte K.
Sources:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/global_warming_101#.WA-gv9ArLnA
Fuel Under Fire- Petroleum and its Perils by Margaret J. Goldstein