Bridget+C’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

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= Title of Speech = Do It For the Polar Bears

= Text of Speech = From the beginning of our formal schooling, perhaps in kindergarten or first grade, we have been told that we are the future. That we can do anything if we set our mind to it. And I am a firm believer in this. When our generation graduates and goes into higher education or the professional world, we will be the ones shaping our society: passing legislations in congress, making all the new scientific discoveries and medical advancements, educating the next generation in schools and universities. And I can’t wait for that! Right now I can’t even begin to imagine what the next ten presidents will do for this nation, or what the next ten iphones will be like. I love to think about the future. But what I wonder is this: how can we shape our future world if we have already begun to destroy the world we are living in right now? Yes, that’s right: I am talking about the environment.

“oh, please,” I can picture some of you thinking, “the environment should be the LEAST of our worries right now. What about more important problems, like world hunger across the planet, or the state of our global economy, or the rising number of illegal immigrants taking away jobs in America, or the fact that Amanda Bynes has begun her inevitable downward spiral into insanity?” yes, absolutely these are all issues that need to be dealt with as quickly as we can to ensure that we humans thrive in the greatest society possible. HOWEVER, these problems, such as world hunger and global debt, while severe, only affect humans and not the planet itself. I know this may come as a shock to some of you, so please try and keep an open mind, but human beings are NOT the only living things on earth. We are actually the only species in 4.6 billion years of life to have a negative effect on the environment around us. And the rate at which we are destroying the planet is a fairly rapid one as well.

Let’s put human activity in perspective. If the earth is 4.6 billion years old, we can scale that to 46 years. Homo sapiens have been on this earth for 150,000 years - that is equivalent to 13 hours. The industrial revolution began 1 minute ago. In that time, we have destroyed 50% of the world’s forests through deforestation. Because of this, the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million. In 1850 it was at about 285 ppm. Scientists estimate that the current rate is an increase of 2 ppm per year, and if this rate continues we will reach 450 ppm in ten to twenty years. So what’s the big deal with reaching 450 ppm of carbon dioxide?

This is where the term “global warming” comes into play. Sound familiar? It’s also known as climate change. It’s caused by gases (such as carbon dioxide) that, when increased in concentration, work together to trap the sun’s heat in the earth’s atmosphere rather than let it reflect off the earth’s surface. This is also known as the greenhouse effect. Scientists have calculated that reaching 450 ppm of carbon dioxide would lead to a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius. Although this doesn’t seem like a lot at all, this increase in temperature would actually lead to drastic consequences: besides the predictable severe increase in temperature in certain areas (leading to more deaths due to heatstroke), plants will respond to the increase in carbon dioxide by actually EMITTING the gas rather than absorbing it as they do now. This will cause climate change to increase exponentially even more, and if not halted will lead to a three degree global increase of temperature, possibly as early as 2050. This will cause mass starvation around the world (yes, even in first-world countries such as ours) and natural disasters such as rising sea levels and severe storms. Think __The Day After Tomorrow__. Scientists also estimate that when the planet’s temperature increases by 2 degrees, ONE THIRD of all species will face extinction or severe endangerment. And due to deforestation, particularly in South America, we are ALREADY losing about 137 plant and animal species PER DAY.

There are many people who don’t believe in global warming, or if they do they believe that it is a natural process that the earth undergoes every couple thousand of years. And they are correct! It is natural for the planet to have periods of increased temperature and carbon emissions. But human beings, with their unnatural destruction of forests and drastic increase in human population, have severely catalyzed this cycle in the last several hundred years and have taken climate change practically to the point of no return. Only if we decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 60% in the next ten years will we have a chance of avoiding a two degree increase.

I have faith in the human race. I believe that if we invest enough time, energy, and resources, that we can reverse what has already been done to this planet which we call home. Unfortunately, it seems as if our priorities lie in other areas where they probably should not be. It pains me to think that in twenty or so years, the world we live in will be changed permanently, and not for the better. I love people and believe that we have so much potential, but it also seems as if we as a species are the worst things to happen to this planet. And space colonization isn’t really a realistic solution because we don’t even have an established base on the moon yet, and it would take years to relocate the entire human species to a habitable colony on the moon or Mars. We do not have the money or especially the time to rely on that as a solution.

In the world I hope to grow old in, I want my children and grandchildren to live in a healthy environment. I don’t want them to have to breathe air full of carbon dioxide. I don’t want them to have to walk everywhere just because we never invested in discovering an efficient renewable energy source. I don’t want them to have to swim in oceans and lakes filled with human waste products because we never took the time to recycle. But I don’t just want my children to grow up in a world that is merely sufficient for sustaining human life, I want them to grow up in a world that is beautiful.

In the world I hope to grow old in, I don’t want to tell my children and grandchildren about extinct animals that once roamed the earth like the polar bear or the killer whale. I don’t want to just TELL them about the National Parks I visited when I was their age, I want to SHOW them. I want to show them the geysers of Yellowstone, the waterfalls of Yosemite, the kelp forests and island foxes of the Channel Islands. I want to take them snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, hiking in the Grand Canyon, and skiing in the Canadian Rockies. I want to raise my kids like my parents raised my sister and me: with love, respect, and passion for the outdoors, for life beyond the highway. But that will only happen if mankind makes a change, and makes a change fast.

= Cite Your Sources =

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[|http://americablog.com/2013/05/global-warming-heat-trapping-co2-concentration-passes-400-ppm-milestone.htm]

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