Before the Flood
The documentary about global warming, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. A great starting point to begin to understand our responsibility with planet Earth and the generations to come.
“I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.” – President Barack Obama, June 25, 2013
Are you the only one who hasn’t watched “Before the Flood?” Get on the band wagon and check it out!! This documentary stars the famous and, let’s not forget, handsome Leonardo DiCaprio. This film touches the topic of Climate Change or what we all know as Global Warming. Here we break down the issue we are facing and we show you how you can help.
- What is Global Warming?
- An increase in earth’s temperature caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide and other pollutants able to create a greenhouse effect.
- High levels of CO2 enter our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels or from deforestation (destruction of forests).
- What can happen?
- CO2 is a gas that has high global warming potential. When the earth has too much CO2, our polar glaciers start to melt. Think of the artic as the air conditioning system of the Earth. When it overheats, we face devastating consequences!
- Global Warming Impacts!!
- Rising Seas
- Changes in rainfall patterns
- Increased likelihood of extreme events- such as flooding, hurricanes, etc.
- Melting of the ice caps . Polar bears are now thought to be greatly endangered.
- Melting glaciers – significant melting of old glaciers is already observed.
- Widespread vanishing of animal populations — following widespread habitat loss.
- Spread of disease — migration of diseases such as malaria to new, now warmer regions.
- Coral Reef Destruction –One third of coral reefs now appear to have been severely damaged by warming seas.
- Loss of Plankton
- We are to blame!!!
- Combustion of Fossil Fuel! We have increased the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by the combustion of fossil fuels for electricity generation, transportation, and heating.
- Eating Cow- meat hurts the environment! Cows emit methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas like CO2. But the ability to trap heat is 23 times higher with methane than with CO2. Yikes!!! That’s a lot!! Every pound of beef served is equivalent to releasing about 19 pounds of green -house gases!!
- Use of Palm oil. Palm oil is responsible for tremendous amounts of Forest Destruction. Palm oil is used in thousands of products from processed foods, cleaning supplies to beauty products and has 3X the climate impact of traditional fossil fuels. Palm oil is not only bad for the environment but affects species such as the orangutan, Borneo elephant and Sumatran tiger which are near extinction!
- What can we do?
- Again, we can all help out our earth and the place we call home by making small choices daily. We can:
- Be more conscious on the amount of energy we use
- Change our diet! Choose Chicken over Beef!
- Do not buy products with Palm Oil!!
- We can take a stance in our communities, and make our voices heard to help the advocates for clean energy in the government maintain and advance the clean energy initiatives started by president Obama’s administration. To find the list of local leaders, click here.
- Again, we can all help out our earth and the place we call home by making small choices daily. We can:
If we all make one small change, we will all create a butterfly effect and Mother Earth will be ever thankful. Let us not forget that we are all connected and the universe is a part of us. For more info please check out these links:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/climate-change
“Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safe, more stable world?” – President Barack Obama, June 25, 2013
Until next time,
Jules and Pau
