Climate Change

Timed Suicide or Evil Hoax?
Introduction
Climate change is a controversial topic in today’s day and age. Some are skeptical as to whether it is actually happening and some know for a fact that climate change is real and is really a threat. Even if one doesn’t believe that the globe is warming up, one should at least be concerned about the carbon footprint that we are leaving behind us and how all our waste and pollution is hurting the environment (Wallace-Wells, 2017). But the issue has been so politicized that if someone on the Left says he believes in climate change and wants to help prevent it, someone on the Right will fight against him because of the political divide and the unwillingness of people to get along. That is unfortunate for this simple reason: Climate change is a very serious issue in our world today. It is a rapidly worsening issue and there aren’t enough people trying to prevent this issue from getting worse and becoming irreversible. In this paper, I want to point out some key facts about the issue and how we can help our environment improve rather than let it rot away. 
The Goal
Our planet is currently dying at a rate that is much faster than we can fix anything. The lifespan of the earth is becoming smaller and smaller due to human pollution. There are still ways to fix things. There are ways we can invest and make it possible to clean not only our lands but also the oceans. We can improve air quality and make it more affordable to “go green”.  By focusing on recycling (Albeck-Ripka, 2018; Wile, 2016), shifting to clean energy aka green energy (Akherst, 2016), using hemp plastic to reduce our reliance on petroleum (O’Connell, 2017), giving up luxuries like fast food and consuming organic all-natural foods produced by local farmers (McMahon, 2017), and just reducing our carbon footprint and becoming a sustainable community (Schenker, 2018; Shaftel, 2018), the problem of climate change can be addressed. In the following section, supporting evidence will be given to show how climate change can be stopped.
How to Achieve It
There are many people already building machines that clean the ocean or lands that are inexpensive to make and use. Tesla is one such example: it is an electric vehicle (EV) auto manufacturing company that has as its aim the goal of sustainability. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk wants to help save the environment by producing cars that don’t pollute the earth. Tesla represents a company that is interested in getting people to shift away from fossil-fuel burning machines and embrace clean energy machines like one of his Tesla EVs. Akherst (2016) points out that we have to move to clean energy and go green—because our planet is green and if we want to keep it that way we have to go green with it.
There are great new products like hemp plastic which can be used to replace the plastics we use in our everyday lives but that accumulate in landfills because they are not biodegradable. A product like hemp plastic, which is all-organic and made from industrial hemp—a plant—so that when it is disposed of it will go back into the earth without a problem, is a type of product that more people need to be using to help combat the landfill problem (O’Connell, 2017). The landfill problem, after all, is part of the climate change problem, as Shaftel (2018) points out. Everything that we do on earth has an effect—either a negative or a positive effect. When we pollute the earth with plastics that do not go back into the earth, we cause a problem in terms of having too much waste. Likewise, the toil that goes into creating plastics—like getting petroleum out of the ground—just adds more pollution to the atmosphere. So getting rid of plastic and replacing it with hemp plastic would kill two birds with one stone: it would solve the landfill problem and it would cut down on harmful air pollution that comes from refining petroleum.
Likewise, there is a man in California making fuel from algae that is eco friendly. It’s safe to use on vehicles and aircrafts. As Akherst (2016) notes, fossil fuels and their effect on the climate are the real enemy, and that is why eco friendly products like fuel-from—algae are so helpful: they combat the enemy. The fuel made from algae can be made to work for cars, aircrafts boats and small engines as well. It is bio fuel which means it is not harmful to the environment. Not only does the company (Global Algae Innovations) produce fuel but also oil and even feed. This company can take a large portion of climate change and put it to a stop. 
There are also cities that have no Co2 in their air because they run on clean energy and don’t use vehicles unless they are electric or eco friendly. It is possible to make a better world for our future generations, we are just too lazy to follow through.  Really, it all starts right at home—and if we can’t bother to take care of our communities, buy locally and make sure our local farmers are supported so that we don’t have to ship in foods from halfway around the world just to feed ourselves when there are opportunities to feed ourselves locally. Going local helps to reduce the carbon footprint, too, as McMahon (2017) shows. In fact, McMahon (2017) shows that there are quite a few ways that we can fight climate change just in our everyday lives: one of the big problems is that our leaders don’t care enough about it to actually support changes that would make it even easier.
McMahon (2017) shows how the government continuously turns away from the climate change issue and acts like it doesn’t want to address it. He ruefully notes that if it were the government’s intention to fix it, it would be fixed. But nothing gets fixed because the fact of the matter is that the government is incentivized by industries like Big Oil and Big Agra to keep the status quo. That said, McMahon (2017) doesn’t lay all the blame on the government: he goes on to talk about the things we can do every day to help the environment. He mentions things like going all natural, buying from farmers markets or locally owned stores. He mentions the small luxuries we can give up daily to try and do our part in fixing the world we have destroyed. He talks about basic things like riding a bike instead of driving a car—just simple things we can turn to when we are able to help our environment.  What a difference riding a bike to work could be if only everyone started doing that!
There is a great deal of room for improvement just when it comes to recycling. Wile (2016) shows that only 10% recycled material is currently going into making Pepsi product containers. That is a major problem—it means that other 90% of the material is not recycled. Why not? A little focus could really help to make the recycling industry as big and as powerful as any other industry in America. To get it going, though, requires a little assistance from the community. We have to show that we care. Albeck-Ripka (2018) makes the case that Americans are not leaders in the world when it comes to caring for the environment. She talks about the waste ban China has placed on us, causing American landfills to expand rapidly and causing issues with being able to recycle properly, resulting in recyclables to be thrown into landfills. The fact that China, which is on the other side of the world, has been taking our waste in the first place is mind-boggling. But the other fact that China is now shutting its doors on our waste—most likely because that country’s leaders realize the harmful effects that come from e-waste toxins, plastic pollution and other issues. China doesn’t want to deal with our mess anymore. Yet we continue to act like someone else will clean up our mess. That’s not happening. Making it worse is the fact that we don’t care enough to separate out our recyclables. Instead, we just lump everything together into the same receptacle as though the landfill itself would know what to do with it all. It shows carelessness and neglect on our part.
It’s very simple: recycling is not hard. You just get a separate recycling container. Find out what the local recycling plant accepts, and start sorting out those items. Keep the bin next to your waste bin and you won’t forget. This is something we all need to do. The problem has gotten so bad that residents of some areas in Oregon and Idaho are being asked to be extra careful of the items they place into recycle bins because they now do not accept some of the items they used to and will refuse to take the recyclables. 
If We Don’t Act
If we don’t act now, Wallace-Wells (2017) describes what will happen to us. He describes the horrors of “doomsday” and talks about the possibilities of what will happen with the climate once it’s too late to try to fix anything. Wallace-Wells discusses the fact that there is technology available right now that could take emissions out of the air, but it will cost at least several trillion dollars to implement. Is it worth it? Maybe we should actually let taxpayers decide instead of our inept leaders who do whatever they are asked to by the powerful industrial lobbies whose only concern is to profit by exploiting the earth. Wallace-Wells discusses the poisoning effect on the population that these lobbies and their mainstream media affiliates have on the populace: for example, the younger generations are calling the climate change we experience “weather” as if it were normal. These changes are not normal. The increasing number of destructive hurricanes each season is not normal. The melting ice caps are not normal. The hotter and hotter summers are not normal. The pollution we pump into the atmosphere and into the oceans and into our rivers and streams is not normal. The amount of toxins will fill our skies with is not normal. Acid rain is not normal. Not being able to breathe the air because it is so polluted in major cities is not normal. Maybe we will adapt to it, sure—or maybe it will all happen too fast and before we know it a new Ice Age will be upon us, and we’ll have only ourselves to blame.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is our job to fix things—not someone else’s. We are the ones in control. We are the consumers. If we just stop consumer the harmful products that hurt the earth, the producers will stop making them. If we start demanding products that are healthy for us and the planet, that’s what we’ll find when we go to the market. If we just started recycling and being more mindful about what we do with items that could be used again in the manufacturing process—or if we just got rid of non-biodegradable products in the first place and returned to natural products like hemp, we could make a huge difference. Two hundred years ago, hemp was one of the most cultivated products in the U.S. because we understood its value. Then along came the plastics industry and the oil industry and all of sudden we started putting profits before the planet. It’s time to start putting the planet first again.




References
Akherst, A. (2016). How Algae Could Change The Fossil Fuel Industry. Retrieved
from https://www.realclearenergy.org/2016/10/01/how_algae_could_change_the_fossil_fuel_industry_279024.html
Albeck-Ripka, L. (2018). Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not.
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-plastic-papers.html
McMahon, J. (2017). 9 Things You Can Do About Climate Change. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/01/23/nine-things-you-can-do-about-climate-change/#44066154680c
O’Connell, K. (2017). Hemp Makes Great Plastic, So Why Isn’t Hemp Plastic
Everywhere? Retrieved from https://ministryofhemp.com/blog/why-isnt-hemp-plastic-everywhere/
Schenker, A. (2018). Why Is Recycling So Important? Retrieved from
https://www.earthsfriends.com/why-recycling-important/
Shaftel, H. (2018). Climate change. Retrieved from https://climate.nasa.gov/
Wallace-Wells, D. (2017). The Uninhabitable Earth. Retrieved from
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html?gtm=top>m=top
Wile, R. (2016). Happy Earth Day! America officially sucks at recycling. Retrieved
from https://projectearth.us/happy-earth-day-america-officially-sucks-at-recycling-1796423880