Translations:Course-v1:edz+11+2023 SP/en/block-v1:edz+11+2023 SP+type@html+block@1fdfd8f6f0e0477e9266733b428e1588/content/en

Climate Change, at its root cause, is pretty simple: human’s learned they could burn lots of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel" target="[object Object]">fossil fuels</a> (fossilized biomass from millions of years ago), to create a lot of energy which makes it easy to produce a lot of transportation, goods and other services. Unfortunately, a side effect of burning fossil fuels is that they release carbon dioxide, which, when in the atmospheres, traps heat from the sun near the earth.

The carbon in fossil fuels was captured in the ground during periods in the geological history of earth where it was a lot hotter, wetter and when mammals didn’t exist. By releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere, we are changing the atmosphere to look like millions of years ago, making it a less good habitat for not only humans, but every other species that evolved in the relatively cool period we have been in for the last 3-5 million years. If we keep releasing CO2, we will quickly create a planet where human society will not be able to function in any way similar to today.

Society makes the climate crises more complicated. The world’s economies, as they currently work, cannot just stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow or the entire current way of life would collapse.  We wouldn’t be able to communicate with you on the internet, for example, without the fossil fuel economy, or we wouldn’t have computers or smartphones (the plastic on your device is made from fossil fuels). Moreover, every essential part of life in our modern economy: food, clothes, housing, water, entertainment, etc. is dependent on fossil fuels.