“Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The individuals who argue that climate change isn’t happening from human involvement are like the individuals who argued that the world is flat, the facts don’t match their opinions and everyone will laugh at them in the future. However, the difference now is that future generations may not live long enough to laugh at the ignorant.

College students across the country (and world) are taking a stand as they engage in individual protests against the leadership of their colleges who refuse to divest from fossil fuels.

Students from the University of Oregon even created a mock wedding with the bride being the coal industry, and the groom being the University of Oregon mascot—the Duck. The wedding started from a protest by Divest UO and other divestment groups who were protesting the UO Foundation’s refusal to drop its holdings in the fossil fuel company.

Alongside the protests from the University of Oregon, students at the University College London “covered themselves in oil for an orgy… as part of fossil fuel protest”. Rest assured they got half-naked, but they didn’t act like an orgy; they just took over a hallway outside a meeting full of UCL Council members. In other instances like Harvard, students are also pushing their administration to divest their $31 billion endowment in fossil fuel companies.

Well done students, now you can tell your future children that you weren’t a part of the problem, but rather a part of the solution.

So, what is the message? Students are tired of the complete neglect in taking steps towards alleviating climate change, and they want a leader to step up and address the issue.

I can already hear a rebuttal arguing that there isn’t enough evidence to prove climate change, which somehow still floats around in peoples’ minds.

According to a member of the National Science Board and former Reed College President, James Powell, global warming consensus in the scientific community exceeds 99.99 percent.

The increase in global warming is not natural, the current warming trend is something that has never been seen in the last 1,300 years. Humans are the cause, which is why we can see the increase in carbon in the environment—which creates a hotter climate—starting around the industrial revolution. Furthermore, each year we continually set records for the hottest months.

Due to all of the increased heat, there have been large scale changes within the animal kingdom as well. Scientists have estimated that one-third of animals will be affected by the problem of climate change in the next century because of unsuitable habitats and ecosystems.

As many people in the older generations have been able to blow off this mass destruction of ecosystems, young adults realize just how much is at stake.

With climate change comes increased drought causing more famine and conflicts. Have you heard of the Syrian war? According to the New York Times, a large part of the war was started from a drought crisis that was made worse by human influences on climate change. Other outcomes include more extreme natural disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012 being the largest Atlantic hurricane on record. These events will only continue to get worse in the years that follow.

If you deny the evidence and still firmly believe that climate change isn’t a problem, just sit back and stay out a position of power so that these educated students can rise up. They are ready to listen to the facts and lead the fight against climate change.

“As Americans, we respect human dignity, even when we’re threatened, which is why I’ve prohibited torture and worked to make sure our use of new technology like drones is properly constrained,” said President Barack Obama.

The irony is that President Obama has approved drone strikes that have resulted in the mass deaths of civilians.

Roughly 90 percent of the people that were killed in drone strikes, approved by President Obama, over a five-month period were not the intended targets, according to the the International Business Times. This means President Obama should sit down and stop pretending like he cares about the rights and liberties of others.

Although drone strikes are beneficial in keeping our troops out of danger, the drone strike programs have neglected to collect adequate intelligence to avoid civilian casualties, and have also lacked in accountability.

The Obama administration created the guidelines for when drone strikes should be used, therefore Obama should be excruciatingly criticized from both parties. Furthermore, the president’s cabinet should have known the specific details about the drone operations because it takes his cabinet 58 days to approve the drone strikes.

The U.S launched strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia, followed by a coalition of drone strikes in Iraq and Syria. We are killing civilians across several countries.

I bet if commercial media adequately covered this issue most Americans would have argued for drone reform yesterday.

The last bit of icing on the cake of shame is that drone strikes have become so out of control that a former drone operator said that kids were called “fun-sized terrorists,” and when the operator decides to kill a kid it is called “cutting the grass before it grows out of control”.

But that doesn’t matter because we’re still the good guys, right?

Overall, what this means is that there is not enough accountability and intelligence collected on the suspected terrorists to the extent that, if in doubt, we say screw it and shoot—then we make jokes about it.

The question now is what do our political candidates (otherwise known as the people who can fix this mess) have to say about this issue?

President Obama obviously supports drone strikes. Bernie Sanders said he would continue drone strikes, but acknowledges that we should be very selective with our engagement. However, he did not state how we would selectively use drone strikes in the future.

Ted Cruz considers drone strikes to be a beneficial tool, but their use should be evaluated because of possibility to potentially capture and interrogate suspected terrorists.

Hillary Clinton supports the continued use of drone strikes and has argued that it was one of the most effective counter-terrorism strategies during her time at the Obama administration. She is a part of the problem.

Last but not least, the grand wizard himself, Donald Trump, has not outlined any particular strategy relating to drone strikes.

There are a lot of politicians who like to talk about upholding the rights and freedoms of others while combating terrorism, but who will advocate for more intelligence and greater government accountability? I will let you decide that, but what we have to understand is that the civilians who are affected are no different than us.

Is this what we stand for? A country that ruthlessly kills people for no reason? This doesn’t make us look strong, it makes us look scared to the point that we are willing to kill kids because of a possibility that they may become terrorists.

We have to have more intelligence before we strike, and this program has to be held accountable. This isn’t negotiable. We need a leader who will stand for what’s right and protect the dignity and liberties of others, even when we’re threatened.

Follow Zach Moss on Twitter @ZachMoss6

“Most Americans Say Torturing Suspected Terrorists Is Justifiable.”

The current views on torture are absolutely appalling, and I will prove to you why. However, before anything is to be said, it is important to look at what the facts tell us about torture, then talk about why torture is a problem.

The first case, which reviewed the use of torture on suspected terrorists post 9/11, is known as the Panetta Review. This review is a series of memos which documented the use of torture and its outcomes. As it turns out, the Panetta Review confirmed that the use of torture did not result in saving any lives from potential terrorist attacks. The report continued to explain that the majority of detainees who underwent torture either disclosed nothing or gave false information.

Torturing suspected terrorists ignores these funny things we have called rights from a tricky piece of paper called our constitution. Oh, wait, I can already hear the bigots argue that our constitutional rights are only for citizens even when it’s our government doing the crime.

Does being American make us more of a person than someone else?

Without rights to decide if these people were even guilty, at least 26 of the CIA’s estimated 119 detainees who were tortured were “wrongfully held”. Furthermore, at least 17 detainees were tortured without the approval from CIA headquarters. What is the point of rights again? Maybe to stop an abuse of power? Oh, but never mind that only counts for Americans.

Without rights to adequately test whether or not someone is guilty of a crime we’re no better than the people from the Salem witch trials. Continuing to torture, especially when it can’t be justified because it has been proven to be ineffective, is a human rights violation and it disregards all standards that make us better than the bad guys.

With is being an election year, it’s important to view what our presidential candidates have to say about the issue. Donald Trump has called for expanding the use of waterboarding and more extreme methods of torture in order to extract information from suspected terrorists. He really does feed off ignorance.

Next Ted Cruz, as the slick politician he is, says that he is against torture, but he does not say what constitutes torture. At first glance he appears to be a decent person, then thoughts may change when you realize that he doesn’t even consider waterboarding to be torture.

Hillary Clinton says her view on torture is generally a no but, in typical Hillary fashion, she added that sometimes it may be necessary. Last but not least, Bernie Sanders says that he would not support torture without exception. I guess no detainees would be “feeling the bern” under the Sanders campaign.

Overall, we should not support torture for many reasons which include the fact that it blatantly does not work, and it is against basic human rights. To add to the problem, one of our presidential candidates will have to address the use of torture which will show the international community what the U.S stands for.

At what point do we finally look into the mirror and start to question if we still act like the good guys?

“I call on every Mississippian, no matter what our race or region or party, to rise above our petty differences and build together the Mississippi our citizens deserve.”

These are the words shown on Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant’s website. Governor Bryant, it must feel ironic when you talk about rising above our petty differences. You’re morally repugnant and you should rethink your values.

On April 5, Governor Bryant signed into law a bill permitting LGBT discrimination based on religious faith. His argument insinuates your religion gives you the right to take away other people’s rights. This particular law is disgusting and anyone who supports it should take a long look at themselves.

This law clears the way for employers to cite religion while determining the workplace policies on dress code, grooming, and bathroom and locker access. Governor Bryant said in a statement that he signed the law, “to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, organizations and private associations from discriminatory action by state government.”

What this law is saying is that if you walk into a restaurant, and you’re a part of the LGBT community, they can refuse to serve you and kick you out. If you’re a part of the LGBT community and you work for someone who doesn’t like your sexual preference, they can fire you for it.

This law doesn’t simply give a cake shop owner shop the ability to deny baking a cake for a gay wedding, this law gives the cake shop owner the ability to kick the LGBT community out at the door.

So if you do not pretend to be so straight it hurts, you will be punished.

Can you imagine what would happen if the Mississippi government supported discrimination against any other group—such as Christians? There would be a holy war against the Mississippi government.

To really provide context to how bad this law is, let’s take out the LGBT aspect of the issue and lets replace it with, say, discrimination of people because of their race. Is this starting to sound like history repeating itself? The reason why the discrimination against LGBT is similar to the discrimination of blacks is because both groups are oppressed for something they are born with.

During your childhood, did you ever learn about the discrimination against blacks? Were you as appalled as I was that people who are nice, law abiding citizens, who just so happened to be black, could be subject to such a high level of hate and intolerance? Well, guess what, people are using the same arguments to justify their hate and discrimination against the LGBT community.

However, now is different from the past, we have the opportunity to reflect on our history and realize that an individual’s right to deny someone is just a nice way of supporting discrimination against anyone who is different. So lets call it what it is: you’re supporting your “rights” even if it is at the expense of other people’s.

If you really call yourself a supporter of rights, it should be with all law-abiding citizens, not just the ones you approve of.

Do these individuals who want to discriminate against the LGBT community propose continuing to live in a segregated society? Do they want to take everyone who considers themselves a part of the LGBT community and ship them off to their own island?

We cannot continue to allow our society to preach intolerance and discrimination against those who are different. Our country is guilty of extreme discrimination and hate in the past, and we are now continuing to move in that direction.

Although this article is focused on the law in Mississippi, this is not just a one-state issue, this is a societal issue that each one of us must address. We can either be the generation who works to end this discrimination, or we can be marked in the history books as another generation who hated other people just because they’re different.

If you support Donald Trump, you by default don’t support minorities—otherwise known as our fellow Americans that aren’t white males—and I will prove it to you.

Donald Trump has continually demonized various minority groups in the U.S in order to create fear and insecurity against anyone who isn’t a white male. The point is to use these scare tactics as a means to have everyone huddle around him and to bring him to power because, as he puts it, he is the only one who can solve these problems. If you don’t believe me, let’s just look at what he has conjured up against American minorities.

In a campaign statement, Donald Trump said 25 percent of U.S. Muslims, “Agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad.” However, before we all start panicking and vow to keep all Muslims out of the country, let me just say that he is factually incorrect.

He decided to say something that he hoped would fit his agenda and no one would fact check him. In reality, the data Trump used against Muslims was from an extremely controversial study by Center for Security Policy that, according to one official who works for this organization, was not meant to represent the American Muslim population. Also, for the sake of conversation, what would the impact of his quote have on the Muslims that serve in the military and put their life on the line for us?

On another dark note, Donald Trump doesn’t just stop the Bigot bandwagon for Muslims. One of his other hobbies is spreading false facts that severely impact Mexicans. Trump famously said, “The Mexican government forces many bad people into our country.” To cut this short, there is no evidence that Mexico sends “bad people” into the country.

Another quote adds, “Hundreds of thousands of (illegal immigrants are) going to state and federal penitentiaries.” Yet again, Trump’s statement is incorrect; it is a fact that Trump is blatantly wrong about the majority of Mexicans entering into the U.S.

Last but certainly not least, Trump does not seem to be a fan of the Black community either. According to Trump, crime statistics show blacks kill 81% of white homicide victims. If you don’t see a pattern here I’ll be blunt: this is false. According to the FBI in their 2014 report, the percentage of whites killed by blacks was 15%, as opposed to 81%.

It’s okay Trump, you only maintained an error factor of 5.4 times larger than the truth. In a time as racially charged as this, you almost have to wonder what group he was trying to appeal to by posting wrong statistics about black crimes.

As a whole, Trump does not seem to even be a slight fan of being factually correct. Why does he keep spitting false facts into the air that end up hurting American minorities? He wants to make us afraid. Trump wants us to fear the “other” as we rally around him for protection.

If I had a dollar for every time Trump used a minority as a scapegoat for power, I’d have enough to buy his “self-financed campaign”— which is not self-financed. If you still support Donald Trump, it is clear that you—by default—don’t really care for non-white Americans who are deeply impacted by his purposeful scapegoating that has won him a crowd.

You do not listen to facts; you are living in a wall of ignorance so big that Trump would put it on a border to keep non-white people out. However, there is another option, maybe Trump supporters know exactly what his intentions are, but they don’t care because they are, in fact, bigots.

My recommendation is to listen to the facts because they point to the truth, and the truth is that Trump is not our savior.