What Causes Climate Change?
Climate change, as we learnt earlier, is the ‘process of our planet heating up’. Especially considering that in Sri Lanka we enjoy a tropical climate - which means it’s a lot of sunshine throughout the year - we are experiencing the result of climate change thanks to the unbearably warm weather. The changing climate will continue to make our weather more extreme and unpredictable.
BURNING FOSSIL FUELS
Over the course of the past 150 years, developed countries have been burning large amounts of fossil fuels such as oil and gas. Car engines, for example, which were invented in the mid-19th century, work by burning gasoline (petrol) with oxygen from the air to make heat in a chemical reaction called combustion. As a byproduct, combustion gives off (or “emits”) invisible carbon dioxide gas (the gas our bodies breathe out). In a similar way, power plants use combustion to make our electricity - by burning fuels like coal, gas, and oil - so they give off carbon dioxide too. What these gases do is they act like an ‘invisible blanket’ when they are released into the atmosphere. As a result, the heat from the sun is trapped, and this warms the Earth. This is known as the “Greenhouse Effect.”
FARMING
You will be surprised to know that cows also contribute towards greenhouse gases. In fact, it is their eating habits that contribute towards greenhouse gases, because when cows eat, ‘methane gas builds up in their digestive system and is released in the form of a fart’. This may not sound like a big deal, but there are around 1.5 billion cows, and the result of all those cows releasing gas into the atmosphere adds up to a large amount of greenhouse gas!
DEFORESTATION
Forests absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas – from the air, and release oxygen back into it. The Amazon rainforest is so large and efficient at doing this that it is often called ‘the lungs of the Earth’. Sadly, many rainforests are being cut down for wood, to make palm oil and to clear the way for farmlands, roads, oil mines, and dams.