Climate Change is Only Getting Worse — and Ignoring it is the Problem
Lommes, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia
Why misinformation and lack of awareness are making an already catastrophic issue more dangerous than it already is.
Climate change is already influencing the world negatively, but many people continue to treat it like a negligible issue. Even though scientists have repeatedly proven that human activity is the main cause, people continue to misconstrue or overlook the problem. From rising temperatures to stronger natural disasters, the effects of climate change only get more noticeable every year. This lack of attention towards the issue will end up being harmful eventually, as climate change will only progressively get worse as time goes on.
“Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20th century to the human expansion of the ‘greenhouse effect’ — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space,” according to nasa.gov.
According to the agency, climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and increased greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere. These causes have led to rising global temperatures, melting ice, and stronger natural disasters.
Despite this evidence, many people still think climate change does not affect them directly. Junior Saniya Donald thinks climate change is already impacting daily life.
“Some of my friends and even a teacher have told me climate change is just an opinion or isn’t even a real issue,” Donald said.
But evidence shows that more people are starting to acknowledge the issue.
“Globally, 56 percent [of people] said they were thinking about it daily or weekly,” The United Nations Development Programme stated in their newsletter.
NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Nonetheless, this is still a significantly low percentage for an issue affecting everyone worldwide. It is an issue that gets exponentially worse as time goes on, yet 44 percent of people ignore and refuse to acknowledge the potential consequences.
“To be honest, I don’t think about climate change all that much,” added Allan Ortiguerra, an alumnus of Virgen Delos Remedios College.
Recognition of global climate change has also been drawn into the mire of political partisanship.
“And so people now are much more likely to be partisan as a form of sort of personal cultural identity,” author David Spence, who wrote a book about negative partisanship, said in his conversation with Bill Loveless, as transcribed on Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy website. “And that’s sort of a negative identity. That is, it’s more about stopping the other party from getting power and doing what it wants than it is about any particular attachment to my own party and the things it does.”
The lack of action on climate change could also be attributed to the role of political parties in society. People’s political identity influences their desire to act upon climate change, as climate change has grown to be a political controversy as well.
Climate change is not getting worse because we lack information, but because people refuse to listen to the evidence. Scientists, surveys, and everyday people all agree that climate change is real and is only worsening. Until more people begin to understand the problem and actively raise awareness regarding the issue, climate change will continue to be ignored. Soon, climate change could even harm the world to the point of no return, eliminating chances of fixing the problem.