An Opinion Statement About Global Warming

After reading about global warming, I am surprised that you would need a position paper on this subject. It is clearly a problem with very serious consequences, and deserves the world’s attention to solve this problem. However, in one of my eco-credit projects, I found out that most teens are not very concerned with this problem, and that some adults don’t believe the evidence that global warming is really happening. So, I decided that it would be helpful to write an opinion statement about how to convince adults and teens that this is really a serious problem for the Earth.

I would suggest convincing teens and adults in different ways. For teens, I have several suggestions. First, I would produce some commercials to educate teens on global warming. It would include a series of ads that tell teens what global warming is, and how it will affect the Earth if we don’t do something. I would suggest signing on some celebrities to make these commercials. Also, I would include actors, athletes, musicians, and other people that teens look up to. This would help to educate teens while giving the message a “cool” image, and would help to convince teens to care about global warming, because they want to be like these role models. I would suggest working with a successful Hollywood director or advertising executive to develop these ads, and I would want to show the ads where teens will see it, including popular TV shows, teen-targeted movies, and the internet. I think that we should ask the government to fund these ads.

The most important part of these teen ads will be to talk about global warming in a way that is interesting to teens, and that makes them care. When I spoke with high school students about global warming, they were not that interested, so these ads would need to help them to understand why teens should be concerned, and how teens could make a difference.

In addition to these ads, I would suggest working with actors and musicians to create popular music, movies and TV shows that include environmentally positive messages. The second Fantastic Four movie had a lot of teen appeal and a “green” message, but I think that the more music, movies and TV shows that include this message, the more persuasive they will all be for teens.

Schools can help to educate and motivate teens to do something about global warming. Many middle schools and high schools have science fairs every year. I would suggest working with the PTAs across the country, or with the Department of Education, to change the theme from science, to the environment, and suggest that students select a global warming or climate change topic for their project. This may seem much more narrow than having any science topic to choose from, but there are really many projects that relate to global warming. You can collect temperature readings over time, or examine the change in weather patterns and severe weather over time, or explore the types of chemicals that are the worst POPs creating problems in the Arctic. You could also look into one of the many forms of clean energy, like solar or wind. I think that the possibilities are endless.

One simple way of expressing this idea is to create a national contest every year, where several of the best local global warming projects go to the regional level to compete, and then the best of those go to the state level, and the best of those compete at a national level. The national competition could be in Washington DC, and I would ask the Department of Energy and colleges with top environmental programs to sponsor this final competition each year. Some of these colleges would include Arizona State University, Middlebury College, Yale, Cornell University, Duke University, Northland College, College of the Atlantic, Green Mountain College, and SUNY Syracuse. The President and the Secretary of Energy could meet all of the teens that made it to the national level. I would offer full college scholarships to a program that relates to global warming or sustainability for the winners of this national competition, and partial scholarships should be awarded to all students that get to “nationals”. I would also invite business investors to the national competition, to see if there are ideas that they would invest in, so the work could get started immediately. Finally, you could consider making this an international competition, and cooperating with UNEP and TUNZA to coordinate the best projects across the world.

Finally, for all of those teens that may not want to compete in a science competition, but are still downloading all of the new “green” songs onto their iPods, I would recommend developing a list of everyday things that they can do to make a difference. Perhaps TUNZA has a list like this for kids and teens already. For example, this would include using less fossil fuels or more clean energy sources, so you could suggest that they get of and on the school bus at the end of their block, rather than having the bus come up to their door. (Making this list could even be the topic of an environment project.) The schools would help by listing a few simple things teens can do to fight global warming, and finding some way to track how teens are actually doing these things every day.

Now it’s time to think about how to convince adults that global warming is really a serious problem. My research in an earlier eco-credit project found that some adults don’t believe the evidence. After doing some research of my own, I can say that skeptics include some very well-respected scientists, who are saying that the data supporting global warming has been fudged. It is possible that even though global warming is a serious problem, not each and every scientist researching this topic is completely truthful. Because they want to beat their colleagues to the next big discovery, and the next big published paper, some may not be completely truthful in their research. However, you don’t want people to see the issue of global warming as less serious just because a small number of researchers are not truthful.

I would propose that the UNEP appoint an independent committee to address the concerns of these skeptics, and conduct independent research to prove that global warming is a serious problem. This committee should include some leaders in the global warming field, as well as major skeptics. If global warming is as serious as we believe it is, an independent committee should have no problems quickly collecting data that comes to this conclusion. If the people on this committee can come to an agreement about global warming, I think they can convince the rest of the world to feel the same way. And, once they convince the world about the importance of global warming, their committee can turn from confirming the problem to identifying solutions.