Sea levels are rising, glaciers are melting, and summers are hotter than ever. Yet, somehow, climate change is still largely denied by many prominent world leaders. As Earth’s summers are becoming warmer and winters are becoming colder, addressing these issues quickly is the only way humanity will be able to turn problems around.

A consensus of scientific experts have agreed that fossil-fuel consumption is a driving force in global warming. Yet, over 56% of Republicans in Congress deny the existence of atmospheric climate change. A select few believe that climate change efforts are due to fail, and that the U.S. doesn’t have a chance in reversing it. In other words, as put by Senator Marco Rubio, “America is not a planet.” In February of 2015, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma even went as far as to bringing a literal snowball from outside into a debate to somehow try and prove that climate change isn’t affecting us.

2014 was once proclaimed the “hottest year ever,” but 2015 took the cake. Last summer, the U.S. recorded the hottest globally averaged temperatures since the nineteenth century. These hot temperatures extended into the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, also causing record high water temperatures that affected the wildlife. The newly-warm waters sparked many other events around the world, such as: heavy rains in California, fires in Australia, and more frequent and stronger typhoons in the western Pacific, according to CNN.

This climate change phenomena is largely attributed to the El Niño weather pattern, along with the issue of global warming itself. Even though many political figures reject these occurrences, the facts are as follows.

The ten hottest years ever recorded happened after the year 2000. It is a fact that the U.S is notoriously the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas which traps solar radiation in the atmosphere and causing Earth’s warmer temperatures. The existence of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere has caused temperatures to rise about one centigrade degree globally since 1880.

One reason that these political figures are so adamant to deny the existence of climate change is because they see it as a “wild left-wing idea.” When these people look at the world and see that global superpowers, like China, aren’t doing anything to fight global warming, why would they be the outliers?

According to NASA, as the effects of climate change continue to progress, we will see huge and detrimental changes to our environment. In future years we will see more droughts and heat waves across the world, stronger hurricanes, a sea level rise of one to four feet by 2100, and worst of all, the arctic becoming ice-free.

The longer people wait to seriously address global warming, the more vulnerable Earth becomes to the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is simply not possible to ignore what is happening any longer.

While thousands of people are weary of climate change, those that deny its existence are the reason we cannot make huge advances in the fight to stop it. It takes an educated and passionate country and government to be able to work together and truly change the world.

Humanity should feel truly blessed to live on this beautiful Earth, and the longer those people do not realize that it’s condition is deteriorating, the worse it gets. To avoid what we undoubtedly have coming for us, it is time for America to unite and inspire the rest of the world to fight for the health of ourselves and the planet we live on.