I Believe in Climate Change
By Tyler Southworth: age 14, student at the Landon School in Bethesda, MD and WLS Belize 2016 participant
The following blog is a transcript of the “This I Believe” speech that Tyler ’21 (pictured above) delivered to his Middle School teachers and peers. Every eighth grader gives a “This I Believe” speech about a belief or experience that impacts the way he leads his daily life. In his speech, Tyler shares why he believes that we need to work together to prevent climate change.
Last summer, I went on a school field trip to Belize. One of my favorite memories was when I was snorkeling. We saw some amazing creatures like a school of barracuda, a stingray that looks like it’s made of mud, and even a Nurse shark! Our snorkeling instructors, Lisa, Matilde, and Michael, took our group on a tour of the surrounding islands and talked about the history of those islands and the ecology of the area. We had an amazing opportunity to tour Carrie Bow Cay, the island where the Smithsonian has a field station focused on coral reef ecosystems.
During our tour, the guides said something that got to me. They said that in order to construct buildings on Tobacco Caye, Carrie Bow Cay, and South Water Cay, mangrove trees had to be cut down. Mangroves are important because they keep the island from falling apart. As a result, one of the nearby islands had 30% of its land mass taken away by erosion. The island was already small to begin with; now more land is taken over because tourist use has gone way up. The only way to make room for the tourists was to cut down even more mangroves.
At Carrie Bow Cay, the erosion is even worse. They lost more than half of their island to erosion because the mangroves are gone. The island is only ¾ of an acre now. That logic applies to other things humans have done to the environment. Think about it: we humans made the land fit our needs, and now the land is either simply eroding away until nothing’s left, or it’s dying off. We use fossil fuels to warm our homes and give us light, and now those same fuels are heating the atmosphere and killing off a lot of the fish and animals on Earth.
For the island erosion problem, the answer is relatively simple: plant mangroves around the island or use other tactics to prevent erosion. For the larger issue of global warming and the use of fossil fuels, the problem is a lot more complicated. Even with alternate energy sources like hydropower, solar power, and even nuclear power, we still use a lot of fossil fuels. Something needs to change pretty quickly or the problem is going to get even worse.
It’s really remarkable to think that even a tiny island like Tobacco Caye, the island that we stayed on, or Carrie Bow Cay, is facing environmental destruction due to humans’ lack of understanding of their own impact on the environment. Tobacco Caye tries to conserve energy by using rainwater as its main water source and only using the generators from 6:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. This makes me realize my own dependence on the earth’s natural resources at home. I want to build awareness of these issues and plan to personally use more renewable energy sources in the future. Hopefully, if we all work together, we can help save the planet. This I believe.
