Global climate change is real.

If you are someone who rejects the idea of global climate change, it's time to wake up and face the facts. The climate has been changing at a rate that has the potential to seriously impact the lives of future generations. It has been proven beyond any reasonable protest that humans have expedited the rate of global warming.

To reject the fact of global warming is to reject science. In essence, science is the only reason we know anything. The only reason we have medicine, meteorology, technology, or any coherent understanding of the world around us is because of science. If you don't believe in science, you are choosing delusion over reality. Sadly, even our president has chosen delusion.

America stands alone as the only country to abstain from The Paris Agreement. The Paris agreement is an agreement within The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change intending to limit the greenhouse emissions of developed countries and to provide developing nations with support in battling the impacts of climate change. The reasons provided by the Trump administration for pulling from the agreement are largely unsound and unfactual. Surprise, surprise.

Trump’s main argument for pulling from the agreement is the cost. He claims that: “We’re going to be paying billions and billions and billions of dollars and we’re already way ahead of everyone else”. Donald Trump suggested that other countries would be contributing nowhere near the contributions of The US government.

Although it is true that America had pledged to make the largest contribution of any nation, based on data from the European Commission, Joint Research Center/Netherlands Environmental Agency and Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, The United States is the the second leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions following only China and is consequently responsible for nearly one third of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

That being said, wouldn't it make sense that one of the largest contributors to the problem should also be one of the largest contributors to its solution? Instead, Trump is choosing to ignore the problem. Sadly, it's our children and grandchildren that will have to deal with the impending consequences of this rejection of responsibility.

It’s important that we all educate ourselves on the reality of climate change.Climate change should be recognized sooner rather than later as one of the largest crises of our generation. Moving forward, it is essential we reject agendas that favor the profits of coal and oil over the lives of generations to come.