When I first started this column, I decided to call it Do Little Bits of Good based on a quote from the late Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu. The full quote is “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
-Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu
While Tutu said the quote in relation to the need for kindness, it can certainly be applied to so many other things, including environmental protection. In 2021, the U.S. joined more than 90 countries in deciding to conserve 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030. This conservation measure has four goals: providing clean drinking water, saving wildlife, preserving ecosystem diversity, and trapping carbon. With the start of the new year, I decided to go back to some basics. If the only science classes you have ever taken were what was required to graduate from high school and/or you are over the age of 40, there is a good chance you never really learned what climate change is. This month’s column will explain it in the easiest terms possible.
What is the carbon cycle?
To simplify things, take humans out of the picture for a moment, so that we might focus on carbon. Carbon cycles through the environment. When animals inhale, they extract oxygen and when combined with consumed glucose in the chemical reaction of cellular respiration, they produce water, carbon dioxide, and energy. Animals do not need the carbon dioxide or some of the water, so those are expelled when they exhale.
Plants absorb carbon dioxide and sun energy through their leaves and water through their stems to go through the chemical reaction of photosynthesis. Oxygen and glucose are produced. The oxygen is a waste product, so it is released by the plants. As you may have noticed, what the animals do not need, the plants do, and vice versa. All life on Earth is carbon based, so carbon is stored in all organisms, living or dead. It is also stored in soil, fossils, and fossil fuels, and as carbon dioxide in the oceans and the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is very good at trapping heat in the atmosphere and the oceans, which is one of the reasons that life exists here on Earth
How our fuel usage releases carbon into the atmosphere
Now if we add one group of people back in, everyone that lived in the pre-industrial era, there was no significant change to the carbon cycle. Once the Industrial Revolution occurred though, the cycle changed. Carbon that was stored as fossil fuels in the ground was extracted to fuel factories, cars, planes, etc. with carbon dioxide released as exhaust. This carbon dioxide ends up being in the atmosphere rather deep in the earth, trapping more heat in the atmosphere. With the growth of the world’s population and the increase in fuel usage for daily life, more and more carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere which has trapped increasing amounts of heat. This trapped heat impacts air and ocean currents and the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, which has led to the climate changes we have already seen occurring.
You can trap carbon and help slow climate change
How can you help trap carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere? Use your car less, fly less, preserve forests and other vegetation, disrupt the soil as little as possible, and consider alternative energy sources for your home or business. Doing your little bits of good can produce a tidal wave of goodness.
