Have you ever watched the movie Frosty the Snowman? If you have, then you might remember the scene where Frosty goes into that glass house, and he starts to melt even though it is freezing cold outside and there is no heat in the building. Why is this? Well, that is called the greenhouse effect. When heat from the sun goes into the room, because of the glass, the heat has no escape, which makes temperatures in the room rise. This is happening on Earth and it is dangerous. Our ozone is our glass, and as heat from the sun comes in it gets trapped. This is natural, however, as humans burn fossil fuels and let out greenhouse gases, it becomes unnatural and the heat has been turned up on this issue. Our actions have caused rising temperatures and the melting of ice glacier.

Since 1980 the global temperature has gone up 1.9 degrees F, and this might not seem like much but eighteen of nineteen hottest years have happened since 2001. Ice glaciers melting is also a serious problem that is facing the population today. In 2012 the Arctic Sea Ice rate of change has gone down 12.58% per year and even worse ice sheets are losing mass by the second. Every year there is 413 gigatonnes less of ice sheets, and what is happening to all this melting ice? Well it is going into its original state of water, causing the water level to rise. Worldwide the sea level has risen seven inches in 100 years and 3.3 millimeters a year. Which might not seem like much, but it is getting dangerously bigger. This is not good news for wildlife. With the rising waters, it is destroying wildlife’s habitats. The most commonly used example is polar bears, they live in glacier and arctic areas and though they can swim, they can not do it for long because their coat gets wet making it harder to swim and makes them tired. This is honestly extremely saddening, because they can either stay on their small patches of glaciers and starve or swim and drown. Polar bears are currently listed as vulnerable to extinction, which means their habitat loss is likely to make them extinct by 2050 according to National Geographic.

As we blossom into adults and mature, we must make climate change a priority. A study done by Yale Environment Committee said that 1 in 5 Americans refuse to acknowledge climate change, and only 58% of people believe the danger is due to humans corrupting the world. As teenagers, we can do small things to lessen the burden of climate change. Leave less of a carbon footprint, recycle, and turn off lights when you leave a room are just some of the small things you can do! As teenagers, many of us feel that it is not our problem and though it shouldn’t be out problem, it’s just the world we live in today and we have to worry about our climate in the future. After all, this is the only Earth we have and it has to last us, because there is no second choice.