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By: Shreeya Indap It’s that exciting time of year again. In less than a month, our country will electing a new person to lead our citizens and represent us to the rest of the world. For the next four years, that person is going to be making important decisions that affect every single one of us, and we need to make sure that they have our best interests in mind. We here at Dandilyonn feel strongly about climate change, so let’s see what each candidate thinks about that: First, let’s go over the facts. The average global temperature of our planet has been increasing more and more each year. In fact, it is already 3.17°F greater than all the 20th century’s average! There have been an increasing number of droughts, as the one here in California, and natural disasters. The oceans have also been rising; over the past century, sea level has risen from 4-8 inches! What are Hillary’s views? In her own words, climate change is “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.” As she explains on her website, Hillary has created a 4 step plan to combat climate change:
 Now let’s look at what Donald Trump has said about climate change. (Click here to see his tweets about it.) First and foremost, he has stated that the massive amounts of evidence there is for climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese. And he has said, “Obama is talking about all of this with the global warming and ... a lot of it is a hoax. It’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money making industry, okay? It’s a hoax.” We’d like to remind you Mr. Trump, that it’s not just Obama who believes in climate change but mainly every scientist in the world! So before you go to the polls to vote this year, take a minute to think about what issues are important to you and find out what each candidate thinks about them. At Dandilyonn, we want to make sure that our candidate is going to do something about climate change. There’s no plan(et) B and we either save the one we have now, or suffer the dire consequences. And, there’s only one candidate who believes in the same things we do. So this election season, use your best judgement and choose the candidate that best reflects your views. Happy voting!
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By: Srija Bhattacharya
Global warming is a major part of climate change. As you know, global warming is caused by humans releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Instead of going into space where it is supposed to go, it sits in Earth’s atmosphere and slowly heats it up. Now, this heat is becoming so extreme, it is starting to dry up our soil. Most people think that dry soil isn’t such a bad thing, they probably see it everywhere! But in reality, it is a lot worse than it seems. Soil performs a key function for our plants and ecosystem. These functions include temperature regulation, distribution of water and oxygen, supply of nutrients, and much more. When soil dries up, it loses all of these things (water, nutrients, oxygen, etc). This means our plants are not getting these things that are necessary to function and as a result, they die.  Unsplash, Jordi Vich Navarro Slowly, all of our soil is drying up, and plants are dying. These include fruits, grass, flowers, vegetables, trees, pretty much all things that grow from soil. What does that to our food chain? It completely collapses it. Whether you eat meat or not, somehow your food is being destroyed. For example, most cows graze on grass and maize. If those things die, our cows won’t be able to eat it and they will start to suffer as well. Then if we lose our cows, we’d lose so much milk and potential meat! There are however other ways to get milk, for example like almonds; but where do almonds grow? On trees! And if our trees are slowly starting to die, we won’t have access to almonds or make any milk! Another example are chickens. A chicken’s diet mainly consists of flowers, grass, fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, etc. When chickens don’t have access to these things they will start to disappear as well because they aren’t being fed what they need to maintain stable internal functions, and we’ll lose a valuable source of eggs and meat. Clearly, climate change is going to affect our diets very much in the years to come. We eat plants, meat, eggs, and drink milk. All of our favorite foods such as ice cream, cakes, french fries, and chips won’t be made anymore. We need to understand how our actions will impact the earth on a long term basis such as how it would cut down our food supply. Eventually our food will run out, and so will our fresh water. What we need to do is make changes. We have to change our lifestyle to support our planet rather than tear it down. We have to change how people think about climate change, and show them that it is the real enemy out there. That way not only you, but everyone can make a change to support our planet and help everybody out in the long run.
By: Ojaswee Chaudhary  “In the time it takes to read this article, an area of Brazil's rain forest larger than 200 football fields will have been destroyed.” -National Geographic. This refers to the plague of deforestation occurring throughout forests and endangering, or killing, the lives of thousands of animals. Deforestation, as the name suggests, is the cutting down of trees, usually destroying forests. Deforestation has many significant effects on the environment. The two most prominent ones are climate change and the loss of wildlife. Climate change is a huge result of deforestation because trees act as absorbers of greenhouse gases. As trees are cut down, more greenhouse gases are permitted to stay in the atmosphere, heating up the Earth and causing many problems like disease, melting ice caps, or droughts. All types of plants are also being affected. Canopies made of trees provide shade and cool environments for grounds underneath. The removal of canopies causes massive temperature varieties causing disturbances for the wildlife of the forests. These trees also send water vapor back into the air keeping it cool as well but when they are destroyed, land dries up and frequently ends up becoming a desert.
One well known rainforest, the Amazon in Brazil, is a major victim of deforestation. The soybean production remains a specialty of the region as well does the logging and cattle ranching. These three occupations grab for land and thousands of square miles of trees are being destroyed a day. The Amazon is unquestionably dying. About 20% of it has been destroyed in the past 40 years. This is about 0.001% a day which is quite a bit of the enormous rainforest. The rainforest is losing moisture in the air because trees cannot deposit the needed amount of water vapor; this causes a lack of rainfall, in a rainforest. There have even been two major highways built through the Amazon: the east-west Trans-Amazonian Highway and the BR-163, the “soy highway”. But there are also many, many others unauthorized freeways that serve as transports for loggers. The cause for all this deforestation in Brazil, is land-thieving, rather grilagem as the Brazilians call it. These people steal land, clear it to confirm they own it, and start their businesses of cutting down more and more trees. With Brazil’s history of wars, chainsaws, and bulldozers ruining large masses of land, the government needs to take control now.  Quick and direct solutions to this problem are mostly far-fetched and have been proven quite impossible with financial realities. For example to simply stop cutting down trees will cause problems for economies around the world, but there are many ways to gradually end this fight. Corporations need to issue claims such as “zero deforestation” which holds suppliers accountable for producing goods such as logs and timber in ways that doesn’t add to the cause of deforestation. In the United States, laws such as the Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Act help. What we can do is save paper and recycle. Make sure that many things you buy are made of 100% recycled or post-consumer content. Finally, we can simply use our voice to make a change by educating people around us and participating in local events such as walks, tree planting, or educational workshops.
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