Take one round-trip flight between New York and California, and you've generated about 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that your car emits over an entire year.
Interpretation
Air travel significantly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to car emissions over a year.
Tatiana Schlossberg highlights the environmental impact of air travel by comparing the greenhouse gases generated from a round-trip flight between New York and California to the annual emissions from driving a car. This serves to underline the urgency of reconsidering our travel choices in light of climate change.
In practice
During a presentation on climate change, this quote can illustrate the impact of our travel habits.
As climate change moves from a model of the future to the reality of the present, health care systems across the country are facing a difficult set of questions. What are doctors supposed to do when wildfires, rising floodwater or other natural disasters threaten their ability to provide care for patients?
When policymakers, financiers and scientists describe the world decades from now, in the throes of climatic changes that we now only model, they emphasize what might be lost.
The features that have made plastic so important in the global market are the same ones that make it such a pervasive pollutant: durability and resistance to degradation.
A less icy Arctic is coming, and generally speaking, that's not a good thing. Climate change is warming this region twice as fast as the global average, threatening wildlife and indigenous communities.
The fact that communities that are relatively powerless often are exposed to more dangerous pollution and the worst effects of climate change: a society like that is one that is less free and less equal for everybody.
I think history shows that countries have to have some kind of a threshold level of economic success before they begin to have the means and the will to focus on the environment.
Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?
I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.
Meat is a mighty contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. The amount of meat we're eating is one of the leading causes of climate change. It's as important as the kind of car you drive - whether you eat meat a lot or how much meat you eat.
When we speak of maintaining clean water supplies and a sustainable use of the environment, we should also stress the elimination of harmful chemicals in consumer products.
For the record, I am sticking with my claim that the simultaneous degradation of air quality, water quality, water supply, food safety, soil quality, and other environment-related variables is the main challenge to China's continued development.
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