July 10, 2022
What Is Climate Change?
Changes in temperature and weather systems are referred to as climate change. Although these changes could be caused by natural processes, human activities—primarily the burning of fossil fuels—have been the main cause of climate change. In fact, burning fossil fuels produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane which are the main reasons of climate change.
According to the below graph from USEPA (2020), carbon dioxide with about 79 percentages was the main contributor in GHG emissions in 2020. After that methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gasses with 11%, 7% and 3%, respectively, were the other kinds of GHG emissions. This graph illustrates that CO2 has significant role in GHG emissions and consequently climate change. As human beings, in order to protect our global home which is the Earth, immediately, we need to decrease CO2 emissions in our daily life.
According to data provided by USEPA (2020), transportation is the main source of carbon dioxide emissions, although there are other sources like electricity, industry, residential and commercial. Over the last years, different strategies have been provided by policy makers in order to deal with this issue like increasing walkability of streets, electrifying transportation, and increasing public transportation quality to encourage people to use public transportations rather than personal one.