Have you ever been walking in a forest, the sunlight streaming through the leaves, the smell of fresh air consuming you? Well, that might not be a reality for much longer. With the constant pressure of climate change and pollution looming over us, we may not have clean air or a safe environment for much longer.

“We might not necessarily see immediately the effects, but everything’s connected and when one part of a particular system goes out of balance it starts affecting other systems and we might not know the full extent of those disruptions yet,” Ms. Klimowicz, a science teacher at the NYC iSchool, says.

Global warming is a result of carbon dioxide being released into the air through burning fossil fuels and factory farming. This is not good, as carbon dioxide is what is known as a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases are very harmful because they form a layer of gas right below the atmosphere. The sun’s rays then come through the atmosphere, and then travel back away from the Earth. Here is where the layer of gas comes in. That layer will prevent some of the excess heat from the UV rays to leave the atmosphere. All of that heat will stay around the Earth, causing the entire Earth to heat up. This heating up is climate change.

This heating up will raise the Earth’s temperature a whole 2 degrees Fahrenheit if carbon is emitted.  It may not seem like a lot,but this heating has serious consequences. One of the most serious effects is the rising of sea levels caused by the melting of the polar ice caps. The scariest part about this is that if the sea level rises even one or two feet, entire parts of coastal cities could be underwater. And recently, scientists have started to believe that the melting of polar ice caps has accelerated so much that there may be no stopping it.

The human race is obviously facing a lot of issues, but some people have a hard time accepting that they will be affected by climate change, and even worse, some people refuse to believe that climate change and global warming are even real phenomenons.

Maveric Muchowski, a freshman at the iSchool, shares her opinion: “The thing about these climate skeptics is that there are not very many of them, [but] the people who are climate skeptics just have a lot of power in our societies.” This is a big problem, as many of these people refuse to do anything to decrease emissions. “Some climate skeptics believe that yes, global warming is a thing, but it’s natural, but it’s not,” Muchowski says.  

The fight against climate change has been described as a “race against time” by The New York Times, and this statement is very true. There is no way to reverse the effects of the damage humans have done, but there are ways to help it from getting worse.

So how do we prevent this? While we definitely cannot reverse the effects of global warming, there are ways that can prevent it from getting worse than it already is.

One way to help climate change from getting worse is converting to renewable energy sources. Even though converting to a renewable energy source such as solar power can be expensive, it can save so much carbon from being emitted. There are also many easy ways to help reduce emissions, such as choosing to ride your bike instead of driving, or trying to buy locally grown food as much as possible.

Sophomore Lilianna Krug thinks “that climate change is a very big problem that too many people don’t pay attention to. I think that we can help fix the problem by reducing emissions from cars, specifically in the city because there are so many alternative ways to get around besides driving.”

It is also really important to raise awareness and connect with people and organizations who are trying to make the environment more stable. Some organizations are Defend our Future, at http://defendourfuture.org and Citizens’ Climate Lobby at https://citizensclimatelobby.org.  If you just talk about these issues with your friends, you could help. Muchowski believes that students should “create awareness, educate themselves about climate change, and take action.”

The most daunting part is knowing that climate change can and will affect you if nothing is done soon.