Global scientific consensus has confirmed that climate change is real and that it is caused primarily by human activities.
The difference between the media’s portrayal of human contribution to climate change in comparison to the factual research that has been published in scholarly journals has created a mixed understanding among humans about what the impacts of climate change actually are.
Despite the confusion, one thing remains the same. Climate change has impacted human health and it is becoming a growing issue among society.
A survey conducted in 2015 by Pew Research Center indicated that people across the globe are concerned about climate change and want their governments to take action.
“Students need to think about climate change on two levels,” Dr. Caroline Nielsen, assistant biology professor, said. One is the personal behavior level, which includes decisions about what car to drive and how that impacts someone’s carbon footprint.”
Each presidential candidate has certain views on climate change and health issues that students need to keep in mind as they relate their personal actions to the political proposals that candidates are making.
“It is important to try and reduce those issues at a personal level while taking into consideration the bigger policy level issues and how to not only reduce our carbon footprint at an institution like cabrini college but also focus on how we can reduce it at the state and national policy level, Nielsen said. That cannot be done just by voting, but by being an engaged citizens which includes writing letters to senators and congressmen and getting involved with the political process.”
In order to relate this issue to students at a personal level, it is important to look at how climate change has impacted their health condition in the past compared to the present.
“It is difficult to pinpoint which time of the year my asthma is at its worse because of the unpredictable weather we have had over the past couple of years,” Leo Day, marketing major at Temple University, said. Seasonal changes have always triggered my asthma, which usually starts with a cold.”
Climate change can impact air quality exposure, which can worsen the extremity of someone’s health condition for a certain period of time and limit someone’s ability to go about activities in their daily lifestyles.
“Philadelphia has a lot more pollution and I notice it when I am outside walking or when I am on a run, Day said. I definitely have noticed how air quality differs by location and how I am a victim of it when I am in an area with lower quality like the city.”
Even though scientists reached a global consensus that climate change exists and that it is caused by human activities, students knowledge of this issue is not where it should be since the discovery time of this research.
According to a board statement made by The American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006 regarding the growing threat of climate change, evidence that climate change was occurring at that time and was mostly due to human activities was confirmed.
Students are still confused about how climate change impacts them directly, but that is not entirely their fault.
“I teach both biology majors and non-majors in environmental science classes about climate change and I definitely think that there is growing awareness about climate change, definitely more than a few years ago,” Nielsen said. There is so much confusion still among students but I don’t think that confusion is an accident.”
“There are interests of people involved in the fossil fuel industry that have worked really hard to create confusion about climate change to convince people that the science is not true,” Nielsen said. I can understand why students get confused because there is this whole industry trying to confuse them about it. I think that this confusion is a bigger issue than lack of awareness about climate change is,” Nielsen said.
In order to solve this problem, students need to realize the distinction between the research that has been confirmed about climate change and think about how they individually can decide the best way for them to reduce their contribution to climate change.
“After completing a greenhouse gas emissions inventory we discovered that Cabrini’s biggest contributor was electricity,” Nielsen said. Right now, most of that electricity is coal since that is the most common form of electricity in Pennsylvania. The hope is that overtime Cabrini will be able to move away from coal, which is a huge contributor to climate change, and towards electric providers that use renewable energy in order to reduce our contribution to climate change.”
