Habitats for nature have declined and gotten severely worse.

Global warming has become a huge issue in recent years. 

The average temperatures are increasing and trees are getting taken down left and right to build new shopping centers or drive-thrus. Many people change their ways after looking further into the issue. Many people worldwide have become aware of the issue and are ready to reach out to the public about it.

At the end of last year, Donald Trump and his administration were going to allow companies in search of oil to use the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Using the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas searching would be taking away the homes of the polar bears. At the beginning of this year, Trump executed an order that would allow the companies to search there. Last week, after being inaugurated Joe Biden stopped the order for the time being. Biden has also rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement.

Besides the animals, there is a whole other side of climate change and global warming. There is a lot of human input that progresses global warming further. With factories putting out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, people throwing out their trash wherever they please, and riding/driving cars everywhere. All of these activities release greenhouse gases that harm the ozone layer and make it thinner. The ozone layer protects Earth from the sun’s harmful rays.

Sophomore Jada Williams is a big supporter of being eco-friendly. She decided to become an eco-friendly activist after someone had recommended a shark book to her in elementary school. She decided to look further into the ocean and marine life. After researching she learned all the negative effects of pollution in the ocean. 

“It really grew stronger once I realized how severe global warming, deforestation, endangerment and extinction of animals along with a plethora of other things were.” Williams said. Williams tries to reduce the carbon footprint whether it’s big or small because all are important and greatly impact the environment.

Biology Teacher Jonathan Huether is very eco-friendly. He believes that being eco-friendly is important because the world’s population is the largest that it’s ever been and to be able to live on it and use the resources at the same time we have to be eco-friendly. Huether’s turning point was when he saw areas that had been so polluted that they can’t be fixed.

“Working at Squire Boone Caverns I learned a lot about watersheds and how our groundwater gets polluted by the surface. That’s really important for us because we drink a lot of our water straight from the ground.” Huether said. His hopes for participating in eco-friendly activities are to have clean drinking water for everyone, he wants to prevent another situation similar to the lead in water in Flint, Michigan.

With that being said, we need to make a change and make the world better one step at a time. There are many easy ways to be eco-friendly that we just miss the opportunity to use. You can recycle, grow your own food, use reusable water bottles and bags, carpool or cut down on electricity in your home. Another way to be environmentally friendly is to sign petitions for global warming and animal life. There are many to sign and they are super easy to find, you just search the topic followed by petitions and hundreds come up. 

We need a change to stay on this Earth; we only have one.