Wildfires And The Subcategory Of Climate Change

Climate change is one of the most prevalent problems in today’s society. This is a term that is used to state how greenhouse gases are affecting Earth as they continue to grow (“Wildfires and Climate Change”). In other words, climate change is the effects that humans have on the atmosphere due to gases, factories, power plants, and others. Because this issue has only been growing in awareness since the 1980s (DiMento, Doughman, 104), the effects have also began to become noticed as well, such as an increase rate of wildfires, which is contributing to an issue that is a subcategory of climate change, global warming.

As mentioned before, one of the more frightening effects of climate change is global warming, caused by the greenhouse effect.

This leads to another alarming problem due to wildfires, biodiversity. However, very few studies have ever been conducted that prove this. One of the studies conducted was posted by the American Museum of Natural History in 2011. To sites were studied, one that was not affected, referred to as the control, and one that was affected, located in the control and referred to as the Ruby fire. The study also featured a multitude of cameras recording the amount and frequency of species. The study spanned almost a full year, and the results show how wildfires can harm biodiversity (“An Analysis of the Effects of a Wildfire on the Biodiversity of Wildlife in Southern Arizona”). Overall, the results showed an immediate disruption in species in both sites recorded, but later leveled out towards the end of the experiment (“An Analysis of the Effects of a Wildfire on the Biodiversity of Wildlife in Southern Arizona”). This shows that although succession will take place in an ecosystem after a wildfire, the amount of time in which it takes to level out leaves species without a place to thrive, and will end up having negative effects on them. In other words, they have to find a new ecosystem while the old one is still recovering, or they will die out. The article also discusses the long term

Specifically, Congress could implement either a law similar to the Kyoto Protocol, or begin to support it again. That way, the United States would be able to communicate with other nations about goals for reducing carbon emissions. Many other countries have already been progressing quickly into a new age of low carbon standards, such as the United Kingdom. The nation has set a goal at reducing carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. To help achieve these goals, the government has implemented measures, as well as a climate-change levy (DiMento and Doughman, 112) Laws such like these could help the United States reduce carbon emissions. If the United States were to follow the United Kingdom’s laws, reducing emissions may be easier. Similar to the levy passed by the United Kingdom, the EPA as implemented a low carbon standard on new power plants in 2015 (“EPA Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New Power Plants”). Because some power plants rely so heavily on these greenhouse gases, a carbon standard that could gradually decrease over time could also be a reasonable solution, as power plants and other carbon emitters cannot simply just switch to a new method of power or absurdly cut their emissions in a short period of time. Although this is law could be very effective in