On Jan. 24, Elizabethtown College hosted comedian Seaton Smith. One of his several hilarious jokes was on the hot topic, no pun intended, of global warming. He asked the rhetorical question, how are we supposed to stop global warming? His punch line, was just putting a plastic bottle in a recycling bin. While he was making a joke, his point was valid. Does a random act of recycling really begin to reverse the effects of global warming?
Ever since Al Gore made the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the world has been doing its best to spread the message to stop the ice from melting underneath the polar bears’ paws. Just in the past few months at Etown, I have experienced wind and rainstorms that have broken my brand new, official Etown umbrella and I’ve slid on ice walking up from Leffler Chapel. All of this before Jan. 30 when temperatures hit the low 60s. Mother Nature really needs to get her act together. But whose fault really is it? Mother Nature’s or Global Warming?
Recently, temperatures have been record-breaking lows, on certain days getting down to twelve degrees. The argument for global warming is climate change. It has always been climate change. In the past the climate has been getting hotter, but the past few months’ temperatures have been freezing.
Kate Glass, a first-year biochemistry major, said that a lot of Global warming has to do with the green house effect and that gasses from driving cars and other pollution-causing activities take up so much energy. Scientists predict that if the icecaps continue to melt, the sea level will rise so dramatically that part of Florida will be submerged under water.
In an article on the New York Times’ websites posted on Jan. 8, 2013, a scientist wrote that, “Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue facing world leaders. Warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.”
The New York Times is claiming that burning fossil fuels and forests are terrible for the environment. Yet in talking to first-year forestry major Thomas Hunt, who is also a volunteer firefighter in southern Maryland, he said, “Forest fires are good and bad for the environment. It is good for the environment because the fire helps replenish the soil. It is also bad for the environment because the smoke from the fire is bad for the atmosphere.” When something is good and bad for the environment what more can we do? Should we put the forest fire out to stop the smoke from going into the atmosphere? Or should we let the fire burn and replenish the soil? These two questions need to be answered because our atmosphere is at risk.
A major city in the United States that has contributed to the trouble in the atmosphere is Los Angles, California. On the Environmental Protection Agency website www.epa.gov it states that, “The densely populated communities closest to the I-710 freeway in Los Angeles County are severely impacted by pollution from goods movement and industrial activity.” Driving is a big part of the problem in Los Angeles. The website goes on to say that, “The region has persistently exceeded national air quality standards for carbon monoxide, 1-hour and 8-hour ozone, and particulate matter 2.5 and 10.” Southern California really needs to get under control. By doing so they can help the out the rest of the atmosphere.
What are some solutions to global warming? For those readers who do not remember what our high school science teachers taught us, solar panels and windmills are good for the environment. Well, we’re in college, tuition is expensive, books are pricey and money does not grow on trees. A normal college student cannot afford to put a solar panel on top of their dorm or place a windmill outside the BSC. So what can we do? Like Seaton Smith joked, we can recycle; turn off the lights when we leave our dorm rooms and make sure we conserve energy. I might sound like a broken record, but maybe if we try to keep our campus “green,” then Mother Nature will make up her mind.