By Akshat Chowsky ’17
As global temperatures continue to set unprecedented highs, populations around the world are voicing their concern over the human races’ perplexing negligence towards their withering home planet. While Ted Cruz (The Zodiac Killer?) and several other politicians ramble on and on about the impossibility and general absurdity of global climate change, dismissing it as the result of conspiracy theorists and “bad science,” any resident of Cleveland, Ohio can tell you the truth. With weather as inconsistent as the Browns’ starting quarterback, the poor residents of Cleveland are consistently tormented with everything from a snowless Christmas to a frost-laced Easter. In fact, Cleveland could very well serve as the poster child for global warming as a city where residents are growing accustomed to having more snow in April than December – something that would have seemed absurd just a decade earlier.
Despite global warming clearly being identified as one of the world’s most pressing issues in several international forums – the Kyoto Protocols of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015 for example – our nation’s reluctance to take charge and explicitly lead the battle against climate change is a big reason for its continued relevance in the modern day. As the world’s greatest historic greenhouse gas emitter by a large margin, the United States not only has a moral obligation to fight against climate change, but also has to recognize that if something is to be done about climate change, their leadership is required.
The logic is fairly simple. Other countries recognize that the United States has long been the most significant emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and believe that unless the United States does something, they have no reason to either. While this may or may not be the correct way to approach an extremely global problem, it’s an unfortunate reality that the United States will have to face. However, the blame behind our country’s failure to take action lies not only on our government, but on us as well.
According to Larry Elliot of the Guardian, as one of the fossil fuel dependent nations in the world – with eighty-four percent of energy coming from fossil fuels -shifting away from fossil fuels would most likely result in an economic meltdown as the United States struggles to adapt to new methods of energy generation. Therefore, in order to protect our planet, the people of the United States have to take conscious actions to establish changes and reap the benefits as well. It’s as simple as turning off the lights after leaving a room, or just using more forms of public transportation. As long as the American people show their willingness to adapt and use different forms of energy while simultaneously limiting our fossil fuel consumption, we allow our government to implement the direly needed changes to prevent global warming at its root and encourage other countries to do the same.
Whether these changes manifest themselves as a carbon tax or as a cap-and-trade system to limit fossil fuel emissions, these alternations are only as effective as the American population makes them. No matter how committed our country seems to be at stopping this dilemma at international conferences, their reluctance to actually take action is constantly fueled by the American people’s tendency to use more and more fossil fuel energy as the years go by. Be the change that America needs. Stop relying on fossil fuels and allow America to become to global leader in the fight against this international phenomenon.