How to Prevent Climate Change

The earth’s climate is changing. This change is not a good change or a beneficial change, it is a bad change. The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are rising at an alarming rate and we have to take action and stop it. Climate change has many negative effects on every inhabitant of the earth. It's not just the rising temperatures and changing ecosystems but it is also showing major health effects on the earth's population (Baum). Because of these negative effects, reversing climate change should be our number one priority. A big part of reversing climate change is changing our lifestyle to be more sustainable as we live in better harmony with the planet. It simply means that we must start consuming less. As our level of consumption drops, our carbon footprint does as well. The foundation of making the necessary change is based on personal choice and a greater sense of stewardship for our planet and its limited resources.

Voluntarily adjusting our standard of living and getting by with less such as two cars rather than three, living in smaller homes, consuming less energy, switching to renewable energy, and many other things will help naturally correct this imbalance. The most important thing to do is stop what we are doing to kill our planet. If your tub is overflowing you don't reach for the mop first, you turn off the faucet. Then we can focus on the damage that it has caused. After adjusting our lifestyle we must then take action and apply technology and innovation to pull the CO2 out of the air to try and bring the global temperature back down to normal. The human race, working together, can stop and reverse the global crisis of climate change.

Since the industrial revolution carbon emissions have shot up. This is having many major consequences on our planet and the many ecosystems that inhabit it. Many scientists have spoken on the need to change our lifestyle to be more sustainable. Our world is slowly turning to better more reliable energy sources but the change needs to happen fast. The growing popularity of electric cars such as Tesla is starting to raise awareness of using a renewable energy source to power our transportations. We can also use these energy sources to power our cities and our homes. Solar power has been around for over a hundred years. The sun is the ultimate power source on the earth so why do we not use it for everything? Solar energy can be used to power cars, homes, and cities. Through 2018, the U.S. now has more than 64,000 megawatts of cumulative installed solar electric capacity, enough to power more than 12.3 million average American homes, and offset 73 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions (Climate Change). We have this power at our fingertips and we are choosing to turn our backs and instead power our lives with dirty energy. An energy that is killing our planet slowly. A change needs to happen.

Another major thing that can be done when trying to end climate change is to stop producing excessive waste. Much research has been done to become a paper-free society. We have had many amazing inventions and new technologies have been produced we need to use these things to our advantage. The trees saved by becoming paperless will aid in pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This one small change can have major impacts. The company PlumRiver Technology is changing the way of sales by selling software to go paper free. Plum River Technologies is a business-to-business e-commerce software company. They provide cloud-based, enterprise software-as-a-service solutions that are the product sales and purchasing interface between manufacturers and retailers. Elastic Suite is the primary B2B sales and digital merchandising technology platform. They help make the wholesale purchasing and supplying of products between manufacturers and retailers more efficient through digital technology that eliminates the printing of sales catalogs and other marketing materials. Eliminating these printed materials is beneficial to the environment and improves the sustainability of our clients’ businesses. The CEO of the company explained that the Elastic platform wasn’t developed specifically to eliminate printing, but one of the results of improving the wholesale purchasing experience for retailers was eliminating the printed sales and marketing materials with digital catalogs, which in turn benefits the environment. “While helping the environment wasn’t our initial or entire focus, we take great pride that Elastic does bring significant environmental benefits to our clients through print elimination.” (Reddin).

One major idea that has been presented to reverse global climate change is planting more forests. So not only are we saving trees by not cutting them for paper, but we are also planting more trees. Through photosynthesis, trees pull carbon dioxide from the air to create oxygen (“Trees Help Fight”). This is exactly what we need to happen, the problem is there aren't enough trees compared to the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Planting more trees can only help so much. “Every acre of restored temperate forest can sequester 3 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. In the US, forests already offset about 13 percent of the country’s carbon emissions. Globally, forests absorb 30 percent of humanity’s emissions.”(Irfan). About 30% of the earth is covered by forests, if we raise this percentage by just a little we can be eliminating a higher percentage of carbon emissions in the air. This is one of the biggest solutions to global climate change. Deforestation has to be stopped and instead we need to be planting more forests. We must use other resources in conjunction with planting forests to cover the remaining carbon dioxide that is left in our atmosphere (Grantham Research Institute).

The company Origen Power specializes in technology that will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere producing negative emissions. Their technology produces four products: electricity, lime, pure CO2 that can be easily stored, and carbon dioxide removal(see fig. 1). This is a look into the future. By producing negative emissions the CO2 levels will drop and the overall temperature of the earth can return back to normal. Technology like this is the key to reversing climate change (“Carbon Dioxide Removal Technology”).

There is also much promise in storing carbon dioxide in the oceans. Oceans take up more than 70% of our planet and it can store dissolved carbon dioxide. A team of researchers from Harvard University and Pennsylvania State University are working on developing a new way to make carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere possible and to safely harbor it in the ocean for storage. This team has developed their technical solution from a process called natural silicate weathering. In this process, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves in fresh water and forms a weak carbonic acid. When this water flows through the soil and rocks, the carbonic acid changes into a solution of alkaline carbonate salts. It then eventually flows into the ocean and increases the overall alkalinity of the ocean. Studies show that an alkaline ocean has the ability to store dissolved carbon dioxide while an acidic one will release the element back into the air. The more weathering that occurs, the more carbon is transferred to the ocean where some of it eventually becomes part of the sea bottom sediments. This process is highly effective in removing carbon dioxide from the air. We must recognize these solutions and start using them to reverse global climate change (Roach).

There are so many resources at our disposal we must start using them. If we do not act fast then we will be too late. Out of the hundreds of options for us to reverse climate change, we must pick at least one and act on it (Hawkins). If everyone does their part, together we can save our planet. The solution is simple, stop what we are doing and clean up our mess. This issue is bigger than us individually so working together is necessary. One person cannot do it for the whole world. Saving our planet must be a priority. Everyone must take action.

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