Climate Change Is Not An American Issue
In a Gallup poll taken this past March, 33 percent of Americans said they were very worried about climate change while 40 percent said they weren’t worried that much, or at all. Although the majority of people have realized that climate change is a real and pressing issue, comparatively few rank it highly on a list of national issues, or even environmental ones. Climate change is overrun by concerns about the economy and healthcare in spite of President Obama’s dedication to making it a top priority.
To combat the world’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas-producing energy sources, countries and private companies have made leaps in making renewable energy available to everyone. In the United States, installing solar panels on your house can give you a 30 percent tax break and reduce your electric bill to nil. In some cases, the power companies may even pay you for the excess power your solar panels end up generating. Installation costs have dropped by more than 70 percent in the last decade. More than 200,000 jobs have been created by the solar industry. Despite the incentives, solar power is only expected to contribute 10 percent of the nation’s power by 2025. This projection is conditional upon the ability of solar providers to streamline and simplify the process of owning and installing solar systems.
The lack of anxiety about an issue this instrumental to survival is a devastating blow to those that try to remain optimistic about the future.
The same is true for wind power. The capacity for wind power production in the United States is exceeded by that in the European Union and China. Some corporations ended construction of wind farms due to tax breaks expiring or decreasing. Europe, on the other hand, is making larger leaps in renewable energy. By 2020, wind energy is expected to produce up to 17 percent of electricity in the EU. Support for wind power in the EU averages 80 percent. Denmark’s wind farms supplied 140 percent of the energy needed last year and Germany first reached its goal of using 100 percent renewable energy in March. There is no reason the U.S. government should be lagging behind.
Regardless of this issue’s pertinence, its attention in this year’s election campaigns has been next to nothing. It’s been ignored in the debates, drowned out by personal attacks and defamation. Hurricane Sandy resulted in the deaths of more than 200 people across the Caribbean, United States and Canada. In addition it caused more than $75 billion in damages, over $71 billion in the United States alone. The superstorm was undeniably linked to climate change; its magnitude increased drastically by way of global warming. More recently, Category 5 Hurricane Matthew claimed the lives of more than 1600 people, mostly in Haiti but 49 in the United States, and more than $12 billion in damages. Even though it seems easy enough for politicians to ignore the deaths of thousands caused by climate change, they cannot argue with its monetary cost, a language they all understand.
The unfortunate thing is, while the effects of climate change will affect us noticeably in our lifetimes, they will not kill us right away. But if left unchecked, it will quite probably create a mass extinction event that erases humanity from the Earth. The lack of action comes from the lack of immediacy of the threat. In a society obsessed with instant gratification, thinking about the long-term effects of climate change is an extremely unattractive prospect. Nonetheless, our generation has the unique opportunity to determine our future. We may have the sole ability to determine which path our species takes and where it leads us. The lack of anxiety about an issue this instrumental to survival is a devastating blow to those that try to remain optimistic about the future. The bottom line is this: We need to do something about it. No one else will.