letter to the future perspectives

To the Randolph School class of 2216,

I’m writing to you in hopes that you will find some knowledge and guidance in what we know in the year 2016 in regards to climate change and the global perspectives on the topic.  I have spent a week conducting brief research on the topic, and my letter to you is composed of my findings.

As of today, it is a fact that climate change is happening. According to NASA (1), Global temperatures have risen by approximately 1 degree in the past century, sea levels are rising and various natural disasters are occurring and damaging many parts of the earth. However, many people don’t believe that it is happening and there is no need for concern, and I find it to be extremely troublesome.

I studied the beliefs of my classmates, and found a quiz (2) that compares my views about climate change to those of other countries around the world. People of 40 nations around the world on their perspectives of climate change, and when ranked against other countries, I scored 6^th, meaning that my concern is greater than that of 85% of the countries polled. Scrolling through the results, I found that the United States is ranked 37^th of the 40 countries and my own results. 37/41 is an absolutely horrifying statistic to me, especially because of the fact that as a nation, we produce on of the highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions. You would think that it’d make the United States care more, but apparently not. Most countries around the world believe that the richest countries should be the ones that put forth a greater effort, and a greater budget towards trying to find solutions to the problems of climate change. I completely agree, the countries that have more money, tend to emit green house gasses, and yet these are the countries that appear to have greater rates of climate doubt. Whereas countries that have less of a budget seem to have a greater concern for the issue, South American countries in particular have the lead in concern for climate change. The greatest concern for all people around the world is the possibility of drought or water shortage as one of many side effects of global climate change.

After reading these shocking statistics, I decided that I should compile my own data. I created a survey and asked my classmates to respond. The website I used allowed me to view all of the respondents answers on a graph for each individual question.

Figure 1

For the first question in my survey, I asked my peers the question that I had found most shocking when compiling research on other countries. I asked which countries they’d expect to have the highest level of concern for change in the climate. Shockingly, over half of them guessed the US, Russia, and China. When in fact, as you have already read, South American countries are the ones with the highest level of concern.

Figure 2

The second question I asked was how soon they thought climate change would make a drastic impact on life, well the fact was that it is happening today, in 2016. I was surprised that more people didn’t believe that it was happening now, But I was actually glad to see that there are people who believe that climate change is an issue is going on in 2016.

Figure 3

Next, I asked for the level of concern my classmates had for the matter, and the results were well dispersed and pretty evenly spaced, The two most common levels of concern were 3 and 6 on a scale of 1-10. Which are relatively moderate levels of concern. I would place myself in the 8-9 range on a scale of 1-10.

Figure 4

The final question I posed to my classmates was if they thought that countries with more money and power should spend more money to fix the problems of climate change. Approximately 75% of my peers shared an opinion similar to that of many countries around the world.


1) NASA  NASA stands for national aeronautics space administration and it is in charge of science and engineering having to do with space.

2) PEW research center is a research "think tank" based in Washington DC; founded by Andrew Kohut.