On a late Wednesday night, the documentary “Before the Flood” aired on television. The Leonardo DiCaprio narrated film focused on how climate change is affecting the countries and oceans of the world. The critically acclaimed documentary made me stop and think about how I’m living my life. As a United States citizen, I have the privilege to take long, hot showers, eat beef daily, flush my toilet whenever and throw away anything I please without stopping to think of the consequences.

Climate change is a serious problem. Every time I begin to think about how my family of six has contributed to climate change, I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt. The life I have been living, unknowingly, has been a life full of waste and dependency on fossil fuel. A massive change on not only my life, but my fellow Americans and the rest of the world’s lives needs to be made in order for our future children, nephews, nieces and grandchildren to live in a world with rainforests, glaciers and icebergs.

The United States is so dependent on fossil fuels to run our houses, cars and buildings that we barely consider what it does to our environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the burning of fossil fuels, like gasoline and coal, was responsible for 79 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. With the technology to have clean and reliable energy, like wind and solar power, anywhere, it is crazy that the government wouldn’t recommend its citizens to invest in wind and solar power and try to cut back our greenhouse gas emissions. The reason why the government isn’t making a substantial effort to change the energy dependency from fossil fuels to solar and wind is because big fossil fuel corporations send lobbyists, people who attempt to influence government officials, to Washington D.C. in order to prevent their loss of profits.

But that doesn’t mean we should just accept the status-quo and continue our lives as usual. Americans need to make a change whether it’s locally or internationally. We need to tell our government officials to vote in favor of greenhouse gas emission cuts, and if that doesn’t work, we need to elect somebody who will. We all share this one planet, so we can’t take it for granted.