Editor’s note: This piece is part of a series of guest opinions from Crestview Elementary School 5th graders. Each piece was submitted with permission from the author’s parents.

Have you ever gone outside on a smoggy day wondering if there are dangerous gases in the air? There’s a good chance that more than half of the harmful gases produced are from cars, factories and airplanes. These gases, known as greenhouse gases, contribute to the warming of the planet by trapping heat radiation. We must stop harmful gases from getting released into the environment and heating Earth.

The first way gases are released into the atmosphere is by cars. Some people I know say that they have to drive or that it’s too far to bike wherever they are going. Many trips are under a mile, which is about the distance I ride to school with my little sister each day. I know more people could ride their bikes as they manage to do it during bike-to-school days. It takes us less than seven minutes to ride our bikes.

People are capable of biking one mile without driving. Even electric cars aren’t perfect for the environment. Electric cars use precious resources and energy while being assembled, emitting carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. When people go to charge their cars, they are using energy that comes, in part, from coal, which produces greenhouse gases. Bikes use less resources to assemble, and they are easier to fix. Finally, bike riders only use human-powered fuel like fruits and vegetables whose energy (sugar) comes from the sun. According to Brian Woltman, he has been riding a bike 23 miles every day for 19 years to work. It seems obvious that humans can bike a mile more often instead of driving.

There are other sources of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Going on exotic vacations and traveling may be fun, but they are also very harmful to the environment. First, airplanes need more fuel than cars or smaller vehicles, so they produce more gases that are released directly into the upper atmosphere and contribute to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is what happens when too many harmful gases get released into the air and create a greenhouse-like blanket around Earth, and trap heat. This leads to the warming of the planet. This warming also affects animals. Take the Adelie penguins in the Antarctic as an example. The number of breeding pairs of the penguins has dropped from 32,000 to 11,000 because of global warming melting the ice they live on, and humans are causing these incredible animals to go extinct. It is also bleaching corals, which kills them and reduces the number of places for fish to live.

Finally, buying disposable items instead of reusing plastic also contributes to global warming. While plastics can be recycled, it takes energy, and not all recycling plants will take certain types of plastic. For example, some plastic meal containers are not recyclable. This is because they are hard to recycle materials, and when places take them to recycle, it takes more energy. When that happens, more harmful chemicals get released into the air and trap heat in the planet. Gases also get released when the new materials get transported to recycling plants, further contributing to the greenhouse effect.

To conclude, harmful gases are getting up into the atmosphere and the air that we breathe, making the planet warmer. This is very harmful. It spreads diseases, and also the United States is producing more than one-fourth of the world’s greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. We need to stop that, and in order to do so, we need to do all we can to stop harmful gases from getting into the air. We can do this by riding bikes or walking, reusing everything we can and, if you absolutely have to, driving electric cars.

Mackenzie Woltman has biked to school approximately 834 days and 1,253 miles since first grade, and wants to be a paleontologist.