As a child I was an enthusiastic explorer, meaning that I visited a lot of national parks across the country. From the peaks of Yosemite to the swamps of the Everglades, I quickly discovered the natural beauty that our nation has to offer, and the vast, diverse landscapes that vary drastically amongst different states and regions. However as I grew older and continued to visit more national parks, I noticed some large differences. I noticed that the landscapes tended to be drier, with less vegetation than prior years. I noticed that there was less and less snow every single winter.

As climate change continues to be the most pressing global issue, high schools across the globe are taking steps towards a more sustainable future. One movement gaining lots of momentum in recent years is the push for energy divestment—to urge high schools to shift their investment from fossil fuels into renewable energy.

Lake Okeechobee has an important economic contribution to the economy of Florida. Unfortunately, the health of the lake has been drastically reducing over the past years and by extension, has serious economic impacts. This is a brief overview of the impact it has on Florida's economy.

In the era of impending threat from climate change, and the exigency of needing to switch to cleaner and renewable resources, it is clear that wind power will play a crucial role in the future. There are 2 primary types of wind turbines, Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) and Vertical Axis Wind Turbines ( VAWTs). They both have their places in the coming decades when switching to renewable energy.

Deforestation is the clearing of forests on a large scale and is one of the biggest environmental problems that is contributing to climate change. Trees are cut down for timber, agriculture, and urban development, but forests are a necessary component in the climate system. As a result, their clearing leads to the emission of carbon, which affects the ability of the planet to sequester greenhouse gases.

Microplastics are plastic particles that are less than 5 mm in size and are being deposited into the oceans at a rapid rate, which has negative impacts on marine life, the environment, and even human health. These particles come from various sources, including worn-down plastic waste, microbeads used in personal care products, and synthetic fibers from clothes. As a result of the increasing production of plastics, microplastics have become one of the most widespread and durable pollutants in the environment.

As a resident of Florida and having dove at 80 different dive sites in the Florida Keys, Floridian reefs hold a special place in my heart. With the increasing effects of anthropogenic impacts, coral reefs in the Keys have degraded from 25% coral coverage to barely 2%. As carbon dioxide levels increase leading to coral skeletons weakening and rising sea temperatures leading to wide-scale coral bleaching, the deterioration of coral gets worse every year.

Corn, or maize, is a staple food in several countries. Corn is a versatile food, inexpensive, and easy to store. Therefore, to combat hunger in several countries, increasing maize yields is key. Intuitively, increasing plant density, or the amount of maize that is planted, also results in higher yields. However, when planting more corn, optimizing plant architecture is key. The corn needs to be planted in such a way that the leaves of the crops that are taller do not block light to the lower plants.

The results of the 2024 election came out two weeks ago, and we saw that the Donald Trump administration is taking power for a second term. Another term with the Trump administration has serious implications on climate efforts and policies.

El Niño events are a series of complex weather patterns in the Pacific ocean between Oceania and South America that result in irregular meteorological phenomena. Although El Niño events recur, they do not follow a specific cycle. These events lead to increased humidity, a higher frequency of intense hurricanes, and disrupted precipitation patterns. Due to its proximity to South America, the effects of El Niño are strongly felt in many South American countries, including Colombia. In particular, El Niño has contributed to persistent droughts across Colombia.

Everyone has heard of brutal volcanic eruptions, such as Tambora or Krakatau. These volcanos, intuitively, release several kinds of harmful and dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere such as sulfur dioxide and acids. Recently, there was an underwater volcanic eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga, a country in Oceania. This eruption released an unprecedented amount of water vapor into the atmosphere with the force of a nuclear weapon. The eruption happened over two uninhabited islands and it resulted in harms and benefits to the atmosphere in terms of climate change.

Carbon capture, sequestration, and removal are all vital technologies we need to utilize to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. The difference between these technologies is that removal removes carbon that has already been emitted into the atmosphere, sequestration attempts to take carbon away at its source, such as from flue stacks, and carbon capture essentially encapsulates all of these different technologies.

We spend a lot of time talking about the present and the future whether that’s at school, at work, in the stock market, or even when talking about the climate crisis. We are going to take a quick trip to the past and focus on who is to be credited for discovering the greenhouse effect.

One of the challenges in fixing the climate is not only making the shift to green technology, but also sequestering all the carbon dioxide that’s already in the atmosphere.