Hot, summer heat, fires and hurricanes. Our world is in shambles due to climate change. The fires in the west are affecting the rest of the U.S. with smoke and red air quality. The hurricanes are hurting many families and businesses especially with covid backing it up. Climate change is real, and it is affecting everyone across the globe. 

Scientists have been warning us for  years that the beginning of the end is upon us. The Earth’s temperature has been rising substantially in the past 100 years. In half a century more than 25,000 species are in danger of disappearing, due to global warming. This causes ocean temperatures to heat up, and warmer ocean temperatures cause hurricanes. Climate change acts as fuel for a hurricanes. It feeds energy and power for tropical storms like Hurricane Ida. Rebecca Hersher from NPR states, “The ocean was the temperature of bathwater — about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a few degrees hotter than average, according to measurements by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” This is important to note considering hurricanes have gotten stronger in the past five years. Stronger winds, harder rains, and floods, cause horrific damage to the people and businesses in these states.

  Wildfires are a summer event for those in the west, due to an alarming drought. The summers have been heating up rather quickly which causes a dry climate, that fuels intense fires through the Western   United States. Human caused incidents are definitely a playing factor in many of the fires today, such as fireworks or hot coals leftover from campsites. According to Jennifer Balch “humans are responsible for 97 percent of the ignitions that caused fires that then threatened homes in the wildland-urban interface, between 1992 and 2015.” Balch also states “The planet has heated up continuously since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. when humans started burning massive quantities of fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide that traps excess heat in the atmosphere.” This goes to show that people haven’t made much progress in how we control our factory fossil fuels or how sustainable they are. The Dixie fire is an example of this, due to how it keeps growing and causing detrimental circumstances for the people and wildlife.

 Scientists and people have been trying to find ways to be more sustainable and eco-friendly. So solar panels help to conserve energy, and more recycled products have gained a positive response. However, how do we stop droughts and rising ocean temperatures? That is what needs to be focused on so we can avoid future Dixie like fires and super strong hurricanes like Ida. The more research that is done, is one step closer to keeping our Earth green and people safe. Younger generations need a future where they can travel and actually see the city and not just smog, or hike in mountains and feel the grass and see green trees, or swim in an ocean where it isn’t boiling hot.