Climate change—the concept that our world is getting so hot through global warming that it’s having an enormous impact on everything from rising sea levels to sweltering summer months—has zipped to the list of real pressing concerns.

The Norwood News doesn’t want to necessarily lecture you on the devastating effects rising emissions such as carbon dioxide—one of the leading culprits behind climate change (along with methane and nitrous oxide), which is found in the gas you pour into your car—but it will.

And rather than turn this into an ideological fight over whether left-leaning progressives are inflating the problem or right-leaning conservatives are simply looking the other way, we turned to NASA to give us a sense of the problem. Here goes:

NASA has been monitoring the effects of climate change for some time, compiling their findings in an easy-to-understand website called “Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet,” breaking down evidence that the world is heating up largely from the fact that more carbon dioxide is being released to the sky. The heavy use of elements like carbon dioxide-producing coal, typically used to power electric plants that supply power to homes, has now caused some of the coldest places in the world to melt. The same can be said of cars that produce carbon dioxide caused by the fuel that’s put into them. That melted water, of course, has to go somewhere. It’s trickling into the ocean.

And oceans have absorbed much of that hotter air, which has shown to produce some of the fiercest hurricanes we’ve seen. Wind speed is driven by how warm the ocean is, so the hotter the earth, the faster a hurricane could be. Hurricanes also carry a lot more rain water. So between the wind speed, more rainwater, and a greater storm surge caused by rising sea levels, hurricanes will likely kill more people in its path.

With carbon dioxide derived from energy-producing elements like fossil fuels and coal, the logical problem is to scale back. If someone is sick, and they realize it’s because they’re smoking cigarettes or eating junk food at an alarming rate, then the next logical step, for their sake, would be to cut back, right? The same premise holds for reversing climate change.

New York City has attempted to turn things around, introducing a food scrap program to reduce the amount of methane-producing foods in the city’s landfills. Its most ambitious initiative dubbed the New York City Green New Deal mandates buildings with 25,000 or more square feet of space retrofit energy-efficient windows and insulation so that the requisite heat/cold air can be trapped more.

Climate change, unfortunately, can’t be solved just by one person making small lifestyle changes (i.e. driving less, using electricity). There’s wishful thinking in believing humans will change their daily conveniences for the greater good. It takes a major overhaul, and screaming into a microphone demanding it is just one step in reversing climate change.

It’s incumbent upon diplomats from around the world to convince world leaders to adopt policies and inspire innovation through massive tax credits that reverses climate change. This can include private-public partnerships that develop technology free of the elements that can kill you. There’s work on this already under way, but until fossil fuels become the new alternative source of energy, the work will have to continue.

And since it’s highly rare for the general public to get hold of our diplomats, it’s incumbent on Representatives Adriano Espaillat, Eliot Engel, Jose Serrano, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to get the word out to them.

Climate change is inescapable no matter what part of the world you travel, and our diplomats are perhaps our biggest advocates to countries such as China, India, Russia, and Germany. Otherwise the devastation will continue, and the threat will be inherited by the young.