Dear Mr./Mrs, President,

When robbers bust into your home and scare your loved ones and steal your things, that you worked hard for, you defend it. When your home is flooded, you drain it out. And when your home needs to be fixed, you fix it. The Earth is our home and it is under attack. We need to protect it. There is a hole in our ozone, a trash pile in our oceans, and our water is being contaminated. The president has a lot of power in this country and in the world. It is YOUR job to fix this. Do the right thing and protect our home. You need to close the hole in our ozone, get rid of the trash pile in our oceans, and clean our drinking water. We only have one Earth, if we ruin it, there’s no going back.

First things first, the hole in our ozone. The ozone layer is used to protect our earth and us from harmful UV rays, without it, all life on earth would become extinct. Now, there is a missing chunk of the one thing that protects u from the sun and it’s getting even larger. It’s melting the ice, destroying animals homes, and raising the water level. We have to do something about this. “Climate change is happening now. With few exceptions, glaciers are in retreat. Sea ice is thinning. Two new studies converge on a single, scary, all-too-possible consequence of humanity's profligate use of fossil fuels: the breakup of Antarctic ice within this century.” Fossil fuels are what’s causing this, a law needs to be passed that will drastically cut down on the use of fossil fuels or there will be no ice left in Antarctica. If there’s no ice, not only will animals die, but low lying places and cities will be underwater. And we are responsible. NOZE(National Ozone Expedition) atmospheric chemists concluded that “Chemical processes -- not atmospheric winds -- are fundamentally responsible for the thinning of stratospheric ozone that has occurred and worsened each Antarctic spring for the past few years.” Earth is not doing this to itself, we are doing this to earth. Which means it is our job to fix it. There are still people on Earth that believe climate change is not real. One person could be our future president, Mr. Donald Trump. In a tweet he claimed “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Even though 97% of scientists say global warming is real. When it comes to the ozone and global warming, people can only help so much. It is the big companies and factories that are destroying our earth, and they will stop at nothing to keep making more money, no matter the cost. That’s why they need to be regulated.

Second off, the trash pile in the Pacific Ocean. Known as “The Great Pacific Garbage Dump,’ The dump is “Twice the size of Texas.” Trash and garbage is enough of a problem on land, but now it’s a problem in our oceans. We are to blame for this, it’s our trash and now it’s our problem. It’s starting to destroy our wildlife now too. "Fish and birds mistake the plastic bits for food, resulting in death by poisoning or digestive blockage. Plastic also absorbs pollutants like banned PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, once widely used in electrical equipment. When we eat contaminated fish, we ingest these harmful chemicals.” We’re killing fish and birds and pretty soon we’re going to be killing each other. If laws are not passed to prevent trash from destroying our planet, we will no longer be able to live. People are trying themselves to clean up this garbage patch, but they can’t do it alone, the trash just keeps coming back, “When plastic bottles, cups and bags are dropped in the street, rain washes them into storm sewers, rivers and eventually the ocean.” Trash has a path, it doesn’t just disappear, and the end of that path is our oceans. All the trash that doesn’t make it into a landfill, eventually reaches the ocean. If this problem is not taken care of, and the trash is not cleaned up, bad things will happen. Strong action needs to be taken.

Finally, our drinking water. There is a crisis in Flint and a drought in California. And not much is being done to fix this. In Flint, “The water coming out of raps in Flint, Mich., has been a frightening orange-brown for more than a year now, but the official declaration of a state of emergency was made only last month.” A year people have been drinking water contaminated with lead, and we didn’t even consider it a problem until it had been going on for 11 months. Nobody seems to care about these poor people. That’s why you need to make this an issue, people should not be forced to drink contaminated water. Lack of money is what caused this problem, that is such an easy thing to fix. Funding is what is needed. With proper funding, the people of Flint can be saved and be able to give their kids clean and safe drinking water. Water is a necessity of all life and without it, life is not possible.

Earth is our home and it’s the only one that we have. If we kill our earth, we kill us. Only YOU, the President of the United States has the power and the influence to protect our home from all the horrible things being done to it. I bring attention to the hole in our ozone, trash in our oceans, and contaminants in our drinking water because these problems are directly related to human activity. This can be a good thing though because, if we are causing the problem then it will be easier for us to fix that problem. But we need a leader to follow behind and set an example. I want YOU to save our Earth.

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T003&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=3&docId=GALE%7CA457829071&docType=Column&sort=RELEVANCE&contentSegment=&prodId=STOM&contentSet=GALE%7CA457829071&searchId=R1&userGroupName=lom_accessmich&inPS=true

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T003&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=2&docId=GALE%7CA4573194&docType=Article&sort=RELEVANCE&contentSegment=&prodId=STOM&contentSet=GALE%7CA4573194&searchId=R1&userGroupName=lom_accessmich&inPS=true

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T003&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=3&docId=GALE%7CA445876548&docType=Editorial&sort=RELEVANCE&contentSegment=&prodId=STOM&contentSet=GALE%7CA445876548&searchId=R2&userGroupName=lom_accessmich&inPS=true

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T003&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CA256365208&docType=Article&sort=RELEVANCE&contentSegment=&prodId=STOM&contentSet=GALE%7CA256365208&searchId=R3&userGroupName=lom_accessmich&inPS=true