Of all the problems faced by the United States and the world, climate change is perhaps the most ignored, and new studies show increasingly fewer Americans even believe it is real.  We need to accept that global warming exists and treat it on the same level as the other problems facing our world.

            The percentage of Americans who believe global warming is real is down, 58 percent from 77 percent, according to a May study from the Pew Research Center.  This is at odds with the fact that of scientists, 97 percent believe global warming is real and caused by humans, specifically by our release of greenhouse gases.

            “The consensus statement is that climate changes are being observed, are certainly real, they seem to be increasing, and that humans are mostly likely the cause of all or most of these changes,” Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences, told NPR in June.          The increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due to activities that could be restrained (like burning fossil fuels and deforestation), is keeping more heat trapped close to the earth, raising global temperatures.  This in turn causes the melting of the polar ice caps, which causes rising sea levels, which causes changes in precipitation patterns, which causes the creation of subtropical deserts and the destruction of resources people rely on.

            The extra carbon dioxide is also seeping into the oceans, slowly making them acidic – too acidic for many species.  The mass species die-offs happening now are akin to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, according to the March issue of National Geographic.

            Even the three percent of scientists who remain skeptical of these facts may have ulterior motives for doing so.

            “Scientists don’t gain respect, and attention, and fame, if you will, by going along with the mainstream, and I don’t know of many scientists who try to go along with the mainstream –  they’re trying to go the opposite direction,” Cicerone told NPR.

            It has become silly for people to continue to deny global warming, yet this is precisely what is happening, and those who accept that global warming is real are doing little about it.  The whole issue has slipped from the public conscious.

            With little support from constituents, politicians have largely forgotten about global warming.  President Obama has abandoned attempts to pass a cap and trade bill limiting greenhouse emissions.  On the Republican side, several presidential candidates used to support cap and trade and other efforts to curb climate change, but have now backed away, saying these efforts will be harmful to the economy.

            “Our economy’s in a different place,” Jon Huntsman, Republican candidate and previous supporter of controlling greenhouse gases, told Time magazine in May. “The bottom fell out of the economy, and until it comes back, this isn’t the moment [for cap and trade].”

            Unfortunately, the economy will matter less if greenhouse gases continue to harm the world’s climate.  If global warming continues unabated, Illinois will have the climate of East Texas by 2100, according to the University of Illinois.  Where does that leave the rest of the world?

            We need to give up on the increasingly ridiculous assumption that global warming is not real, or that it is not caused by human activity, and pressure our politicians to do something about it.  They will not do anything without your support.