Destination 2: Planet Earth

In the past, I never realized how severe climate change and global warming has gotten. However, after hearing Professor Edelstein's lecture, backed up with all the facts from the Climate Reality Project, I was shocked. At one point during the lecture, Professor Edelstein mentioned how we often think of the world as a place with unlimited resources. I never stopped and thought about it until after the lecture and can honestly say I am guilty of that mindset. I always understood that there is only one Earth, but never stopped to think about what would happen if we continued to live the way we do.... continue to harm the environment the way we do.

The United Nations Panel on Climate Change conducted a meta study in which determined if data on climate control was creditable or if it diverges. In the end, they found that the data was creditable AND showed that as the reports went on and new data was published each set of data was more dire than the rest.

Another study conducted by the Climate Reality Project collected the summer temperatures over the past 30+ years. In these 30+ years, we see that as time goes on, the heat continues to increase and move farther away from the baseline temperature. As someone who loves the heat and summer, I do not think I could handle this weather if it continues to increase even more than it has already. These intense temperatures bring extreme consequences such as ozone poisoning to our lungs, aggressive storms and droughts.

Climate change, along with global warming, has been a hot topic in our society over the past decades.. yet people still don't believe that such a thing is happening to the place we call home. As humans, we seem to have trouble understanding that there is only one Earth and we are living on it. We have the mindset of being the center of the world which, in the end only disconnects us from the environment. As Professor Michael Edelstein said "we must unlearn this way of thinking in order to reconnect with the environment".

As a future educator, I hope to raise awareness to my students on the topic of climate change. In hopes to unlearn the way that my generation and generations before me have learned and reconnect and repair the world that we live in today. Small changes to the way we think and the way we teach our students will make a huge impact on the future of the place we call home.