A Climate Change Guide for Kids
By Julia Rosen Illustrations by Yuliya Parshina-Kottas April 18, 2021 If youre a kid, almost every year youve been alive has broken a temperature record, or come close. Youve witnessed huge wildfires, intense droughts and severe storms. This is what climate change looks like, and its here to stay. The planet is going to change a lot more in your lifetime. Things could get really bad. Or, if we take action now, we could avoid the worst effects. You can help decide. So, lets take a look at how both scenarios could unfold. But first, how did we get here? Take a look around your home. Your lights, refrigerator and television are all powered by electricity. For most of human history, we lived without it. But since the late 1800s, electricity has become an essential part of modern life. Americans now use 13 times as much as they did in the 1950s. Your home probably gets electricity from power lines that run along your street. They lead to a power station, one small part of a vast energy network that keeps our houses, businesses and factories running. Historically, weve produced electricity by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. These substances also provide most of the energy used for heat and nearly everything else humans do. Today, fossil fuels are big business. People use almost seven billion tons of coal every year and roughly 100 million barrels of oil and other liquid fuels every single day. Fossil fuels form deep underground from the remains of ancient plants and animals. When we extract them and use them for energy, we release prehistoric carbon into the air as carbon dioxide and methane. These greenhouse gases work like a blanket: As the suns energy warms the planet, they prevent some of Earths heat from escaping. Human-caused emissions have already made the climate hotter than its been in at least a thousand years. And we keep producing more. When we burn fossil fuels, we also produce pollutants that can cause health problems. These pollutants hurt low-income people and communities of color the most. They often live near pollution sources like power plants or major highways because of housing prices and discrimination. In the United States, cars and trucks are a major source of both harmful pollutants and greenhouse gases. Over all, transportation produces more than a third of the countrys carbon dioxide emissions. Greenhouse gases also come from less obvious sources. Think about the concrete buildings and sidewalks in your town. The cement that holds them together is made by crushing and heating limestone, which requires energy and releases carbon dioxide. Cement, steel and other industries account for about 20 percent of global emissions. What we eat matters, too. Cows and other livestock produce greenhouse gases when they burp, fart and poop. Gases also seep from crop fields. In some places, like the Amazon Rainforest, people cut down trees to clear lands for farming. And this releases large amounts of carbon stored in wood and soils. Globally, agriculture and other ways of using the land account for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. In The Bad Future, most places on Earth will be hotter, although there will still be some cold days. School and sports will be canceled during intense heat waves. High temperatures could even be fatal for vulnerable populations like older people and those who work outside. Changes in the weather will make it harder for us to grow food. In certain places, water supplies will dry up. Many people will leave their homes in search of better places to live, and the poor will suffer more than the rich. This is already happening today. Extreme heat and drought will make wildfires even more dangerous. More of us will be exposed to unhealthy smoke. Many plants and animals will face extinction from habitat loss and other human threats. As glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt, rising seas will flood many coastal communities, displacing hundreds of millions of people worldwide by the end of the century. The ocean will get more acidic as seawater absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. The water will keep getting hotter, too, which will help some marine animals but hurt others including many that humans depend on for food. Coral reefs will likely disappear. World leaders and business people have to get serious about addressing climate change, and the rest of us have to help, if we want The Better Future to be the real future. Will we do it? The choice is ours. And heres the good news: We already know how to make many of these changes. In fact, theyre already happening in many places just not fast enough. Thats because the biggest challenges we face are not about science, they are about people. Sunlight, wind and other renewable energy sources would provide electricity without producing more greenhouse gases. We could store extra energy to use later so that the lights stay on even when its cloudy or when theres no breeze. Cities could encourage people to travel on public transit and bikes. Planes would still emit some carbon dioxide, but we could fly less. In The Better Future, we would get around in cars that run on electricity and cleaner-burning fuels, instead of gasoline and diesel. This would also improve air quality in many communities. The transformation would touch every part of society, including industry. We could invent ways of making concrete that emit much less carbon dioxide. We would live and work in energy-efficient buildings made of sustainable materials like wood and local stone. We could also eat differently in The Better Future. Many people could eat less meat than they do today. And our farms could grow crops that are well suited to the new climate and use sustainable farming practices. This future would still bring large wildfires and poor harvests, but less often. We could protect forests and plant more trees, which suck some carbon back out of the air as they grow. Indigenous peoples with deep ecological knowledge could lead the way. Wealthier countries, which have done the most to cause climate change, would help poorer countries cope with the effects. In The Better Future, the effects of climate change would be slower and less extreme, so nature and society could adapt more easily. For instance, governments could help to move coastal communities farther inland where theyd be safer from flooding. That all sounds really bad. But it doesnt have to be this way! There is still time to choose a different path. Although the science may be settled, the future is not. The greenhouse gases weve already released will bring warmer temperatures, higher sea levels and ecological changes. But if governments, companies and all of us humans work together, we can cut emissions over the next few decades and avoid the worst effects of climate change. Lets take a look at life in Produced by Claire ONeill and Aliza Aufrichtig