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More Than Just Our Weather - by Faith Brogdan

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    179031

    • Faith Brogdan at Pima Community College
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    When it comes to the climate crisis most people do not think much of it and many think it is something that affects our weather and nothing more. But the climate crisis is bigger than we think it is and affects a lot more than just the weather. This issue goes beyond weather as I have stated and can lead to long-lasting devastating effects on our Earth. The climate crisis is used as a term to describe climate change and global warming and the long-lasting impact they will have on the earth.

    I used to be one of the people who did not take something like the climate crisis seriously and was not educated on the matter either. I decided to look more into this issue when I started taking more of an interest in things such as politics and things of that nature. My interest was sparked when I saw a young girl getting attention from people all over the world talking about climate change and how she wanted world leaders to act on this issue. Her name is Greta Thunberg and at the time when everyone started talking about her, she was only 15 it was interesting to see someone this young take a stand for what they believe in and stand up to her government. I decided to look more into her and what she was taking a stand for, and it helped open my eyes to climate change and global warming and I got a better understanding of what exactly it was. This was the first time I grasped what exactly climate change was and made me want to act on the matter to see what I could do to help our earth.

    Upon realizing what the climate crisis was and just how many things it could affect I decided to ask about how it affected the people around me. I started with my mom and her point of view to see in what ways the climate crisis has affected her life. What opened her eyes to the climate crisis was the issue of global warming. With global warming, she started to realize that the winters were starting to become colder, and the summers were becoming hotter. She then had to start adjusting her thermostat to keep her house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. This caused her to start paying more attention because her electric bill started to go up. After all, the cost of energy was going up.

    Another person who tells their story of how climate change has affected them is Alexandria Abuzanuq Ivanoff a young woman who is a communications intern at WWF and is from Unalakleet, Alaska, a small hunting and fishing community on the northwest coast. She grew up in Alaska hunting and fishing living off the land with her family and others in the community, so she has had the chance to see how the climate crisis has affected her home firsthand. Alexandria says that there has been a significant decrease in certain salmon species such as dog salmon, king salmon, and silver salmon. It is due to “the rapid temperature increase in oceans and headwaters where they spawn” (Ivanoff). She goes on to talk about how the work that took her grandmother only a few days, such as fishing, now takes twice as long just to bring in the same number of fish.    

    While we know that the climate crisis affects weather patterns. These have a big impact on wildlife and human life. In a way, the climate crisis is a ripple effect because it could first affect the weather patterns such as causing a drought where people live this drought could then lead to little or no food production which puts the people at risk of starving. The article “Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply” talks about how climate change can affect crops. It says between 2010 and 2012 cornfields across the U.S. Corn Belt experienced high nighttime temperatures which lead to premature budding. This caused $220 million in losses for Michigan cherries in 2012.  

    Now knowing all that climate change affects it is important to ask yourself what you could do to help the climate crisis and reduce your carbon footprint. A small change you could make is recycling if you do not already. With reducing your carbon footprint, you could try alternative methods as opposed to driving such as walking, biking, or public transportation. Another way to help is by spreading your knowledge about climate change with others around you so you can make a bigger impact.

    After doing all this research on the climate crisis it is rather shocking how it ties into everything and should be looked at as one of the most important issues facing us today. The climate crisis is more important than people think, and it is better we start paying attention now rather than later before the damage that is done to our earth is irreversible.

    Works Cited

    Ivanoff, Alexandria Abuzanuq. “Protecting My Arctic Home.” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, 16 Sept. 2021, https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/protecting-my-arctic-home.

    “Taking Climate Action.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 26 Aug. 2021, https://www.nps.gov/rlc/urbanecology/takingclimateaction.htm.

    “US EPA.” Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply | Climate Change Impacts | US EPA, https://climatechange.chicago.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply#ref14.

    This page titled More Than Just Our Weather - by Faith Brogdan is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Faith Brogdan at Pima Community College.