A student from Parkway Public School sent me a few questions for a project she was working on.\u00a0Here are her questions and my answers…<\/p>\n
Yes! Human beings will be around during and after global warming.\u00a0 Maybe not as many as now, but certainly we’ll be around.\u00a0 The problem is that our world after global warming will have more disease, more flooding, more crop failures, fewer plants, fewer animals, on and on.\u00a0 We’ll survive.\u00a0 We just won’t have as nice a planet as we do now.<\/p>\n
Some will adapt.\u00a0 Some are very adaptable.\u00a0 If you are a crow, and you eat anything and you live everywhere, no problem.\u00a0 If you are a panda, and you only eat bamboo, and climate change makes it hard for bamboo to grow, then you are in trouble.\u00a0 The more specialized your niche is, the harder it is to adapt.<\/p>\n
Well, if I had the power, I would make things that harm the environment more expensive by adding taxes.\u00a0 I would make environmentally friendly things cheaper by taking the tax off them.\u00a0 People will change behaviour if they save money doing it.\u00a0 If gasoline is really expensive, people use less gasoline.\u00a0 That’s the most important thing, taxing stuff that is bad.\u00a0 I would tax things that put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.\u00a0 Google “carbon tax” to see what I am talking about…<\/p>\n
I think if you make gasoline expensive, then other engineers come up with creative solutions to moving people around.\u00a0 Gas in Tokyo is $1.70 per litre, and everyone takes trains all over the place. Necessity is the mother of invention.<\/p>\n
We don’t see the Earth as a sacred thing that gives us everything we need.\u00a0 If we had a little more respect for the life-giving work it does, then we would be less likely to cut down trees and dump garbage in the oceans.<\/p>\n
We are also extremely disconnected from our actions and the damage we do.\u00a0 If you buy an iPhone, you never see the zinc mine in Africa or the chemical plant in China that is responsible for you getting your phone.\u00a0 If you buy a burger, you never see the trees that got cut down to grow corn to feed the cow that pooped a ton of manure in it’s life.\u00a0 If someone showed us the damage that we do to our planet just by going about our business, it would make it harder for us to go about our business as usual.<\/p>\n
If you had to pick one thing, eat less meat.\u00a0 That is something you can control and it’s not that hard.\u00a0 Meat production is so hard on the planet, and it’s not really necessary.<\/p>\n
I don’t know, but check out our outdoor ed. blog post of pictures taken of the north.\u00a0 The ice is disappearing.\u00a0 Very strong visual evidence of a warmer Earth.<\/p>\n