Isra-Mart srl: We must reduce carbon outputs

Isra-Mart srl news:
Whenever I hear politicians speak about climate change they always mention the need to balance environmental concerns with economic concerns. That makes sense from an economic viewpoint, but unfortunately, that is not how nature works. The earth’s oceans and forests have limits as to how much carbon can be absorbed, and we’re digging up and releasing ancient carbon stored in fossil fuels faster than the forests and oceans can soak it back up.

For as long as humans have been around, the earth’s atmosphere contained around 275 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide. This means that out of every million molecules in the atmosphere, 275 were CO2. Since we’ve started burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas), we’ve increased the CO2 to 392 ppm, a 42 percent increase in just a couple hundred years. While this number doesn’t sound like much, the world’s leading climate scientists say to stabilize our climate, we need to be below 350 ppm. While we should be reducing the amount of carbon released into the air, we are actually increasing it at about 2 ppm/year.

These increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing catastrophic climate change. Glaciers are melting all over the world, and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at an alarming rate. The melting of this land-based ice is causing sea levels to rise, much like adding ice cubes to a full glass of water would cause the glass to overflow. Temperatures are rising around the world, causing

droughts and wildfires. With the increased temperatures, there is increased evaporation causing extreme precipitation events like we’ve seen here last winter and recently in Tennessee and Arkansas.

With oil spills like the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, coal mine explosions, and climate change, it’s painfully obvious that Washington needs to stop the partisan politics and move us forward to a clean, renewable energy future.