Climate change is a subject that many people talk about and it is something high school students don’t think about as often as possible. Climate change is noticeable to the public eye and people are trying to get a better understanding of what climate change really is.
Although climate change is noticeable there are other changes that are catching more people’s attention. Senior Mackenzie Moff said, ¨I have noticed changes in weather. It feels as though the extremes of weather are getting more extreme, especially the heat and dryness of the summer, and the frequency of atmospheric rivers in the winter.” Moff wants more high school students to be a little more educated about climate change because some people don’t think it is real. Moff thinks the sooner we can address it, the sooner the issue will be resolved.
People who have not lived in Washington their whole life haven’t seen all the changes that have been happening in the state, but biology and AP Environmental Science teacher, Ms. Iversen, hasn’t lived in Washington her whole life. ¨When I moved to Washington people would say this to me. ‘We’ve never had this much snow’ ‘We’ve never had so little sun in the fall. We’ve never had an October like this. We’ve never had such a hot summer. January has never been this warm before.’ I always thought that was funny. Yes I have noticed that our summers are warmer some years. And some years our winters are warmer,” Iverson said.
Mrs. Iversen thinks that climate change in Washington is affecting us by wildfires and smoke in the summertime and during the winter it’s the amount of snow or the amount of dry land that is occurring.
Another biology teacher at Arlington High School, Mr. Weber thinks climate change isn’t able to be resolved because it’s been happening for almost 25 years now. “Climate change is almost too large, too daunting and too existential for most people to deal with. For most people, it doesn’t seem to impact their life on a day to day basis and most of the solutions require political cooperation and economic cost. It’s a crisis that has been and continues to be pushed to the back burner of public awareness. Such difficult and depressing conclusions, as published by climate scientists, are now barely reported on in major news outlets in the US and our politicians don’t garner votes when they make it a campaign topic,” Weber said.
Climate change is an ongoing issue in our world and so many think there are ways it can be solved or that it can not be solved.
