Climate Change

What’s the Problem?

The science is in.  Over the past 140 years, earth’s atmosphere has warmed and scientists are concerned we are entering a period of unprecedented change in weather patterns.  These fluctuations in weather patterns are known as climate change.  The cause of climate change is the rapid build-up of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from human activities. We create GHGs when:

  • we drive our cars
  • we heat and cool our homes and businesses
  • we transport our goods
  • our garbage decomposes in our landfills
  • we grow our food
  • we cut down trees

While a certain amount of GHGs are present naturally in our environment and are necessary to keep the earth’s surface warm, human activities have created a hazardously high concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere.

What Does this Mean?

What this means is the temperature of the earth is increasing.  If we continue to produce GHGs at the current rate, the earth is projected to increase in temperature between 3.2 to 7.2 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Such a big increase in temperature is expected to change the earth’s climate in all kinds of ways.  Scientists don’t know exactly when or how severe each change will occur, but there will be:

  • increased flooding
  • increased drought
  • change in weather patterns
  • change in the length of growing seasons
  • greater dispersion of warmer climate diseases such as malaria
  • longer smog episodes

Some of these changes are already occurring in certain parts of the globe.

Why Do We Care?

All changes to the earth’s climate and availability of fossil fuels will have significant impacts on our current way of life. These changes may mean we may live in very different kinds of places and transport ourselves and goods from place to place in very different ways in the future.

To get ready for the future, we need to find ways to reduce GHG emissions and become less dependent on fossil fuels. This will not only make our community more resilient but will also slow the rate and, perhaps, magnitude of climate change over the longer term.  This will buy time for species and ecosystems to adjust to its impacts and for human communities to prepare or adapt.