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About OneGirlOnePlanet and climate change

Hello! My web name is SolarBear, I’m twelve years old, and I started OneGirlOnePlanet to raise awareness among kids like me, as well as their parents and teachers, about the importance of keeping our earth healthy so we can have a great future on it!

But first…we have to change the condition of the planet.

What condition?

Well, for starters, all the fossil fuels we’re burning is making sea levels rise, because the poles are heating up and basically melting into the ocean. This is really harmful because not only is it literally shrinking the Arctic and Antarctic habitats––which means lots of polar bears and penguins are having a pretty rough time––but it’s also flooding islands that people live on, and it might leave those people without homes and cultures. At the same time, it’s also causing droughts and fires and tsunamis and hurricanes and typhoons and famines and plagues and loss of habitats and loss of life…Which you must admit is pretty awful. This is something called climate change.

If the earth is so hot, then why are the poles melting?

Like I said, we’re causing this. It may seem like I’m not answering your question, but I am. You see, when humans started living on earth we were very eco-friendly, as eco-friendly as the animals. That’s because, at that time, we did almost nothing to put this stuff called greenhouse gasses in the air.

Greenhouse gasses are made up of water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2),  methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and ozone (O3). These gasses, which result from lots of driving and from industries making things to sell and use, build up in the earth’s atmosphere and can’t really escape. Then, the warm sunlight that we’d usually welcome gets trapped under that thick layer of gasses and sticks around to heat up the earth and make it hot, like a greenhouse.

(Kind of like when it’s really cold and you put on a jacket or sweater — the heat gets trapped inside the thick layer of cloth and keeps you warm. Which is great, unless it’s a summer day and the zipper of your jacket is stuck.)

While most of these gasses occur naturally and usually aren’t much of a problem, since we humans have started living the way we do, we’ve been putting more and more greenhouse gasses into the air than is natural, by burning fossil fuels at a crazy rate which lead to higher carbon dioxide concentrations.  Farming and forestry, cement manufacture, and aerosols like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs — I’m not sure what they are either; more on this later), for example, all add to the problem, creating a whole lot of CO² and even more greenhouse gasses. The earth, our beautiful home, is getting smothered.

We made this issue — but can we stop it?

That’s a good question, and to be honest, it’s not easy to answer. Yes, I believe we can stop climate change, but it’s going to be a challenge to do that because it requires so many people working together. But it is possible, we just need people to try.

And who better to try, than the people who will inherit the planet––yes, the kids! 

So, let’s get going, my eco-friends!  Together, we can save the world.