How Climate Change is Shaping Our Lives
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperature, weather patterns, and climate systems driven primarily by pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas as well as destroying tropical forests. These pollutants include greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Just like when you put the lid on a pot of water, these emissions trap heat, but for us the result is a warming planet that is hurting wildlife, people, and our environment.
The impacts are already being felt across the United States and around the world — affecting ecosystems, wildlife, human health, and local economies.
Impacts to Wildlife
Climate change is disrupting habitats and threatening species that rely on healthy environments to survive. Weather and climate influence almost every aspect of animal life and behavior. Temperature and rainfall are key drivers of wildlife physiology, behavior, reproduction, life cycles, species interactions, and distribution across the landscape. Extreme events like heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms can have even greater short-term effects, causing wildlife populations to decline. Prolonged stresses caused by climate extremes or persistent changes in temperature and rainfall can ultimately lead to extinctions. Under the worst case scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions in the 21st century, up to 30% of wildlife species could go extinct.
Impacts to People
Climate change threatens our health by increasing air pollution, intensifying heat waves, spreading infectious diseases, and fueling more frequent and severe extreme weather events like floods, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires. These impacts can worsen respiratory and heart diseases, increase heat-related illnesses and deaths, contaminate water supplies, and place significant physical and mental stress on communities, especially those that already face disproportionate economic and environmental burdens.
Climate Resources
Take a look at recent reports and campaigns led by NWF’s Climate and Energy team.
Saving Summer
This report explores how climate change is affecting some of our most cherished summer activities and what those changes tell us about the urgent need to protect the places, traditions, and ecosystems that make our summer – no matter how we like to spend it – possible.
A series of deregulatory actions from the Trump administration is weakening environmental protections. These have tangible, long-term consequences. The systematic rollback of rules will increase pollution and associated health risks, degrade wildlife habitat, and pass the financial burden to Americans.
We Have the Solutions
The good news: climate solutions already exist. We have the ability to create healthier, more resilient communities. By reducing greenhouse gas emissions and expanding use of clean energy like solar, wind, and geothermal, people around the country can have access to cheaper, healthier, and more reliable forms of energy. Adoption of clean energy solutions greatly reduces the emissions that cause climate change and avoids its worst effects.
On average, the Earth has already warmed by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit due to human actions. The latest research suggests that the Earth could warm as much as 6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century if we don’t reverse trends in emissions. That amount of warming would cause significant sea level rise, extreme weather events, droughts in some locations and floods in others, and changes in ecosystems and habitats all over the planet. But fortunately, these events are avoidable and the decisions we make now can save millions of lives and countless species from extinction.
And not all means of fighting climate change involve technology. Natural climate solutions such as avoiding further deforestation, re-planting forests, restoring other natural ecosystems, and conserving soils harness nature’s inherent ability to capture and store excess carbon. And they are a powerful tool that can protect people and wildlife from the effects of our rapidly changing environment. These solutions can enhance the health of our soils and ecosystems, conserving forests, watersheds, grasslands, farmlands, and more.