Human society has made lots of progress, especially in the last 200 years. However, one of the things that has powered our massive progress has been fossil fuels: these are fuels that we can dig out of the ground and burn to keep us warm and make electricity. The problem is that these fuels have been hidden away for millions of years. From a time when the earth was very different. As we have burnt a lot of this fuel in a short time, we have released the carbon dioxide that was trapped away. And we’ve released it in such large quantities that it changes how much is in the air that we breathe. Even when this changes by a small amount, scientists have shown that it causes a warming of our earth because more of the sun’s heat is trapped in our atmosphere. The warming results in a warmer earth, more heat waves and warms the oceans too. The heating of the oceans leads to more rain clouds and stronger storms. More heat at the poles means more melting ice and this can raise sea levels over the next thousand years.

The good news is that because our scientists have found out about it so soon, we still have a little time to do something about it.

The great news is that there are already alternatives to fossil fuels for many of the things we do.