Graduation Speech: What Will Happen At Cornell University

As a resident of the city of Ithaca, New York for the past 19 years, I have had many great experiences in this “collegetown”. Ithaca is unique in that we are surrounded by greenery everywhere and are in the backyard of Cayuga Lake, the longest of the five Finger Lakes. We are becoming more farm-friendly for produce and we are always conscientious about sustainable development. This fall, Cornell University released a report outlining its plan to become carbon neutral by 2035, a huge step in making the planet great again. By making sure our campus isn’t emitting lots of carbon in the atmosphere, we are removing one of the major contributions to increased climate change. It may not as important compared to improving the economy and diminishing poverty, but global warming is responsible for many adverse effects, including ocean acidification and coral bleaching. Even if not everyone shares the popular and morally responsible view that humans are mostly accountable for this threatening phenomenon, we should be able to …show more content…
Neil deGrasse Tyson where he said a brilliant quote that struck out to me: “...We 're dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate the Earth hasn 't seen since the great climate catastrophes of the past, the ones that led to mass extinctions. We just can 't seem to break our addiction to the kinds of fuel that will bring back a climate last seen by the dinosaurs, a climate that will drown our coastal cities and wreak havoc on the environment and our ability to feed ourselves. The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What 's our excuse?” We only have a limited amount of time to fix this planet since Congress refuses to give more money to NASA to continue the exploration for a new habitable planet and we seem to be unable to terraform Earth back into Earth. Until we as humans realize that climate change is a problem, a solution won’t arise and we will be stuck fending off against nature