Climate change, also known as a tremendous crisis in our world, is not a distant warning anymore, it’s here, and it’s escalating. What we once knew as “once in a decade” disasters have started happening more frequently. Almost everywhere in the world, people have experienced natural disasters ranging from tsunamis to severe droughts. One major cause for climate change is the general burning of fossil fuels, which causes the ongoing greenhouse effect. A region in our world that is most affected by this is the Arctic.
The Arctic is home to a wide variety of species, like polar bears, seals, foxes, and many more. Due to the rapid ice melt, these animals don’t have much land to hunt, breed, and travel on. One major factor contributing to the rapid decline of ice is the act that passed in 2017, called the “Tax cut jobs act”, which opened a 1.5 million acre section of the ANWR’s coastal plain to oil and gas leasing. It has not only impacted the Arctic wildlife but our economy as well.
Due to the extraction of oil and gas, our climate has severely increased. As a consequence, the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is a land ice in the Arctic, is slowly melting. If it completely melts, it could raise our sea levels over 20 feet. Even a smaller rise in sea levels could flood coastal cities like New York, Miami, Shanghai, and Dhaka. This would force millions of people to relocate and put people’s lives at risk.