Miss Nicole Marie Idiart is a graduating senior at Yucaipa High School in Yucaipa. Her Winning Essay Addressed the Question: Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? An excerpt of Miss Idiart’s winning essay is reprinted below.

It is no secret that our environment is experiencing some “technical difficulties” at the present time. Temperature anomalies are being experienced globally. The ocean levels are rising, and bringing with them more hurricanes and storms, while the polar ice caps are disappearing, leaving polar bears stranded on ice drifts. The seas are increasing their “dead zones” while land animals to adapt to our changing climate.

And yet, there are many who would choose to bury their heads in the sand. Many try to brush off our climate change as one of the earth’s many heating and cooling cycles. While it is true that the earth experiences these cycles, it is also true that these cycles are increasing in amplitude and becoming more intense through time.

There are many who say that humans are not responsible for this climate change, but we’ve only to look into history and see that the spike of temperatures seem to point back to the time of the Industrial Revolution. Since this time, carbon and methane emissions have risen sharply. During this same period, average temperatures, as well as sea levels have risen significantly, while ice caps decreased in size. Surely these are not mere coincidence. There is a direct correlation between human beings’ increased output over the last century and our growing climate problems.

Chiefly to blame, are greenhouse gases. Through industrial production and industrial waste, our atmosphere is fills with carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons, which destroy our ozone layer, leaving our planet more vulnerable to the sun’s UVA and UVB radiation. This radiation causes the increased temperatures and melting icecaps (which in turn causes rising sea levels). But it is more than just industry that impacts the environment. Cattle in agriculture are among the leading sources of methane emissions in the U.S.

Global warming is an actual phenomenon caused by greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution. But aside from our increased population and industry, human beings are really going the extra mile to increase global warming. The earth came with its very own built-in solution to greenhouse gas emissions: planets. Unfortunately for us, humans are also responsible for the large scale deforestation of our globe.

Through photosynthesis, plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen in its place. Humans work in the opposite direction, taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. In this way, plants and animals coexist and keep our planet in balance. When we destroy plant life and increase human output at the same time, that balance is thrown off and the climate is thrown out of sync by excess carbon dioxide.

The process of deforestation itself is a leading contributor to global warming. In the next twenty-four hours alone, loggers will produce carbon dioxide equivalent to flying eight million people from New York to London.

Whether we want to admit that the climate is changing, or that we are the cause, facts are facts. Climate change is real. But it doesn’t have to be. At its current accelerated rate, the changes to our planet’s temperature cannot be sustained for long. It can be reversed however, by increased conservation, decreased deforestation, and research into alternative fuel methods.