Yo
Crowd: Climate justice.
We cannot afford new oil and gas.
[splash, exclaims]
[slide whistle, splat]
♪ [melodic]
Climate change. People, including kids,
are pretty riled up about it.
It's a big deal, but do you know what it actually means?
[swoosh]
This is
In 5 minutes or less. First things first.
Climate change is real.
That's not just an opinion, it's based
on scientific consensus.
That means that scientists agree that our climate
is changing and the main cause is human activity.
But what is climate change?
It's the change in Earth's climate due to rising levels
of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere.
We're going to come back to that in a second.
The Earth's climate has changed
throughout its history.
So what people are really referring to when they talk
about today's climate change is the climate change crisis.
That's because the changes that are happening
are happening at a faster rate than anytime in the past
10,000 years.
[gasp]
OK, but wait, what's the difference between
climate change and global warming?
Many people use global warming and climate change
to mean the same thing,
but global warming is actually just one part
of climate change.
Specifically, global warming refers to the rising
global temperatures, due mainly to the increasing
concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.
In the past 120 years,
humanity has created lots of amazing technologies
to make modern life possible.
We found natural resources to heat our homes,
fuel our cars, fly us around the world, and even make
the device you're watching this video on possible.
But those technologies are mostly dependent
on fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases do exist naturally, but human
activities have increased the release by a lot.
Greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun
in Earth's atmosphere.
The more heat they trap, the hotter the planet gets.
The Earth's temperature has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius
compared to 150 years ago.
The last time the globe was this hot was 125,000 years ago,
before the last Ice Age.
That warming causes changes in many ways.
Earth is made-up of many delicate ecosystems,
and even changes that may seem minor could have
big impacts.
For example, as the Earth warms,
ice sheets and glaciers begin to melt,
adding water to the oceans, causing sea levels to rise.
Plus, sea levels are also rising because warmer
water expands. Crazy, right?
We're all affected by climate change,
but some places are seeing more change more quickly.
The Arctic is one of the places where climate change
is happening 1st and fastest.
so over the last 40 years
the Arctic has actually warmed up four times faster
than the rest of the world.
That brings us to tipping points.
Suzanne:
gentle, and maybe that's where we are now,
you hit
it goes right up and the changes start accelerating.
Once we cross a tipping point, changes will start
happening a lot faster.
Some examples of tipping points are losing
the Amazon rainforest or the North Pole
not freezing up over the winter.
It took a long time for the planet to get these
things in the 1st place, so we don't want to lose them.
To sum it up, climate change is the changes
happening to Earth's climate at a faster rate
than it would happen naturally without human
activities, in particular the burning of fossil fuels.
Global warming is a consequence of those activities.
If we don't reverse course and stop the Earth's
temperature from rising rapidly, we will continue
to experience disastrous effects like
extreme weather events, sea levels rising,
and extinction of species.
[swoosh]
But not all hope is lost.
Suzanne:
the parties protests, and these are all
the things that are going to make change.
It's not just our leaders and politicians in
a closed room who are making decisions for us.
They're going to make decisions based on
what they hear.
Well, that's it for
Did you learn something new?
I know I did.
For
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