Carbon dioxide is the most prominent greenhouse gas. It acts like a blanket in the earth’s atmosphere allowing heat to enter but little to escape. The main producers of carbon dioxide are cars, power plants and industries that use fossil fuels (EPA, Emissions). The earth’s temperatures change naturally, yet in the past 50 years a measurable amount of warming has occurred. In fact, 2002 was the second warmest year on record, according to NASA (right behind 1998, and just ahead of 2001).

Average temperatures in the U.S. could very well rise another 3 to 9 degrees by this century’s end. Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas. Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. Disease-carrying insects will expand their range. And species will be pushed to extinction. (EP

The effects global warming has on the world are wide-reaching; it threatens not only humans but wildlife and economies around the world as well. Action has to be taken immediately if we are to prevent global warming from being our end. The decisions we make today will affect the planet for years to come. It’s not just about shorts and sandals as has been shown. Global warming means more air pollution and water problems as the climate changes drastically, as well as potentially devastating effects on ecosystems around the world. Heat waves that kill hundreds each year could become much more intense and longer. Insects will migrate into new areas spreading disease and causing problems.

Just behind power plants fall automobiles as the second largest carbon dioxide polluter, nearly 1.4 billion tons per year (EPA, Emissions). Technology has already been designed to cut emissions from automobiles of all kinds. Hybrid vehicles, powered by gas and electricity, could cut pollution by nearly a third; Honda and Toyota have hybrid models on the market today, and many other automobile manufacturers have started their own programs to produce these cars. The technology is available to vehicle manufacturers to raise the miles per gallon by quite a bit, but a legal loophole allows them to make SUV’s far less efficient than they could be; in the last 10 years there has been a 20 percent increase in pollution from automobiles because of SUV’s. Sewing up loose ends in the laws and putting a minimum requirement on gallons per mile on these types of vehicles would save 120 million tons of pollution from escaping a year by 2010 (Energy Innovations).

With the rise of temperatures, the fragile balance in which glaciers and icecaps rest will be disrupted, causing them melt. “Montana will lose all the glaciers in Glacier National Park by 2070 if their retreat continues at the current rate” (Effects). A section, larger than the state of Rhode Island, around 40 percent of the 12,000 year old ice shelf in Antarctica – Larson B – collapsed in March of 2002 (Antarctic). “The area covered by sea ice [in the Arctic Ocean has] declined by about 6 percent from 1978 to 1995” (Global, Impact). In the past several decades a 40 percent decline in Arctic Sea-Ice has been measured (EPA, Impacts). “During 82 years on record, four out o

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