How Does Climate Change Relate to the Ecological Footprint?

Fossil fuels (oil) are the most important resource that we extract from the Earth; we burn it to produce energy to power our daily activities. As U.S. President Bush stated in his 2006 State of the Union Address, North Americans are "addicted" to this non-renewable resource.

In burning fossil fuels, large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are released into the atmosphere, which causes the globe to warm through the greenhouse effect. Answers to frequently asked questions can be found here.

Climate change impacts are widely observed today. Though certain weather events cannot always be directly linked to climate change, no world leader denies that the globe is warming, and that warming is in part due to humans.

While some regions of the world are experiencing severe impacts of climate change, such as sea-ice melting and sea-level rise, effects are predicted to worsen over the next 20-30 years and beyond. That is why today's youth should be concerned about the issue. The International Youth Declaration states, "We, the youth of today and leaders of tomorrow, face an unprecedented challenge as a result of global climate change and share in the responsibility of addressing it." To find out more, read Our Climate, Our Challenge, Our Future, produced at the UN Conference on Climate Change, Montreal, 2005.

This blog is intended to help people in the community of Lethbridge address environmental issues such as climate change. Learn more about one way to do this, by clicking here.