When people think about climate change, they think of the Amazon Rainforest Fire that people everywhere are talking about. Sadly, climate change means more than a fire destroying one of the largest sources of natural resources for the Earth. This is something that people often do not realize, and there is one girl living here in Colorado Springs who has created an organization that wants to change that. 

  Taylor Husser, 12, created the organization Zero Hour Colorado Springs; this organization runs primarily through Instagram and seeks to help empower younger generations and motivate them to help make changes that will prevent climate change from worsening. The first step she has taken is simply making sure that climate change is understood as much as possible. “Climate change is important to know about because it is the biggest threat to every living being on the planet, and our generation’s future is most at risk,” Husser stated.

In our interview with Husser, she gave us a scientific interpretation of exactly how detrimental climate change is to our planet. The severity of it shocks her, and she hopes that it will shock others like her who want to make a difference. “The planet has warmed one degree Celsius since the late 19th century.  This is due to the rise in greenhouse gases; essentially sunlight reaches the earth, some energy is reflected back into space, some is reabsorbed and reradiated as heat, while most are absorbed by greenhouse gases,” Taylor explained. 

   This may seem to be a minor ordeal, but looks can be deceiving. The concentration of greenhouse gases is extremely high and is causing countless problems. Taylor’s view on this subject is that “with the rise of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide, in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution we have way too many greenhouse gases floating through our atmosphere. To achieve a stable climate, we need to have 350 parts per million of greenhouse gases, we are currently at 415 ppm and rising.”

Climate change impacts everything that nature does and displays every day. That one-degree rise in atmospheric temperature means that Earth is changing constantly in an attempt to adapt to the rise in heat. The indications of climate change are everywhere, even though most people do not know they are there until they become extremely detrimental.“Climate Change side effects are everywhere, one of the biggest is the acidification of the oceans, this happens when extra CO2 is in the atmosphere and the ocean absorbs it. This effect is detrimental to our coral reefs and the life they sustain. Recently Greenland lost a record 12.5 billion tons of ice in one day, this melt wasn’t predicted to happen for another 51 years this causes sea levels to rise and places like Miami, Manhattan, and L.A. could all go underwater, this would cause millions of people to move inland to survive. While in places like Colorado we see the effects through wildfires,” Husser explained. 

Climate change can be a very complicated and intricate jumble of chaos, and Zero Hour Colorado Springs seeks to help untangle some of the strands in that jumble to prevent the chaos from spreading. Climate change is on its way to causing irreversible damage, and the younger generations are the ones who will be facing it the most. Zero Hour Colorado Springs seeks to teach younger generations how to prevent furthering that damage and how to take a stand when it comes to a major occurrence like this. “There are many things [people] can do to combat climate change, the biggest one being reducing meat, and animal products. This is because the animal agriculture industry and their by-products account for 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions, this accounts for food for the animals, water, land, fossil fuels used, and transportation of the product. Other ways to reduce [a] carbon footprint is to carpool when possible, replace light bulbs to energy-efficient ones, buy energy-efficient products, reduce, reuse, recycle, and to plant a tree,” explained Husser. 

In the future, Zero Hour Colorado Springs hopes to hold more events and gain more youth to make it a stronger organization. They are hoping to do everything from starting climate debates and summits to growing community gardens and starting plastic bag bans. To do this, however, they need more members.

If any students are interested in helping this organization flourish, they should consider attending some of their events. There are weekly strikes at City Hall every Friday from 12-1p.m. and there will be a global strike from 11 a.m- 2 p.m. on September 20th at any location students feel deserves to hear what the youth of today should hear about climate change. 

Students can contact Taylor Husser at school, via email, or through DMing the Zero Hour Colorado Springs Instagram Account. All of these will be linked below. If students are interested in learning more about this topic or finding out more about the actions they can take to prevent the worsening of climate change, there are some links below that they can look through. Climate change may be a major issue, but Coronado students are spectacular activists that have the power to make positive changes for our Earth. Have a spectacular day and keep the positivity going, Cougars!

Contact Information:

Taylor’s email- [email protected]

Zero Hour Instagram- @zerohourcoloradosprings

More Information:

A free quiz students can take to find out how they specifically can help the environment-

https://www.ubs.com/global/en/ubs-society/togetherband/find-your-goal.html

Informational resources- 

https://www.worldwildlife.org/

https://www.epa.gov/