Protect Our Natural Resources

This script was written by Marty Habalwesky as part of our "Who are the Democrats in St. Clair County?" project.

My name is Marty Habalewsky and I live in Port Huron. Climate change is one of the most urgent problems facing us today, and we all have a responsibility to preserve and protect our environment for future generations.

Our world’s climate is changing, and not in a good way. Sea levels are on the rise; wildfires are getting worse; hurricanes are becoming more destructive; the deep freeze of winter is getting deeper, and that’s just in our own country. Across the world droughts, floods, typhoons, and sea level rise are causing untold death and displacement of people. Non-human animals are also at great risk of becoming endangered and then extinct.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA / Public domain

The effects of climate change aren’t always so dramatic though, and can be much more personal. Increasingly long and cold winters means more Americans will be spending money to heat their homes. Rising waters will displace people living in coastal areas. More intense storms will knock out power for more people and produce devastating tornadoes that will destroy homes and claim lives. These are only a few examples of the immediate impact of a changing climate.

In Michigan, tourism is a major industry due to the natural beauty of our state. A degrading environment puts that beauty, and the industry it supports, at risk. If we want the next generation of Michiganders to be able to walk through healthy forests, swim in clean lakes, and hunt and fish across our state, we have to act now to reduce the negative impact we have on the environment.

Attila Nagy (anagy) / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

We all have a responsibility to preserve and protect our environment for future generations, and we all need to take that responsibility seriously.