Of all the issues that influence your vote this coming November, this is one that members of all parties, from Green to Republican, can get behind. Global warming does not discriminate based on politics. Last week, students and activists from all over the country participated in the largest teach-in ever, called Focus the Nation. The purpose of this nationwide event was to raise awareness about climate change, informing everyone from kindergarteners to graduate students about its causes and effects, and how individuals can change their everyday actions to help stop the worst-case scenarios from playing out.

The University at Buffalo, coordinating with Daemon College, had its own Focus the Nation event in the Student Union and the Center for the Arts on January 31. As part of the teach-in, which took place in schools, homes, churches, and community groups across the country, event organizers screened a video called The Two Percent Solution. The video is informative and enjoyable, aside from the interlude/slideshow of people smiling with their hands to the camera and fingers painted green, set to some song by Death Cab. The film is slightly over an hour long, and is available on their website, focusthenation.org. When you have some time to kill, check it out—I highly recommend it. While you’re there, take a minute to participate in the Choose Your Future vote. Pick what you think are the top five most important policy changes our nation should implement. Polling ends on February 12.

According to the film, one answer to curbing climatic change is in revolutionizing the ways we consume energy. Currently, Americans get over half their electricity from coal. If we were to replace coal energy with wind, water, and solar power, we would have made progress—and we wouldn’t get all those trapped coal miners every year. The film also explained that using renewable energy instead of coal would benefit people in low-income neighborhoods, where power plants pollute the air and cause such problems as asthma. In addition, such action would stimulate the economy by creating green jobs for workers who would be responsible for creating and installing this technology. These green jobs would include positions for green architects to design energy-efficient buildings, researchers to find renewable energy solutions, emissions brokers to trade credits that allow companies to emit greenhouse gases, and construction workers to install solar panels, just to name a few. Building sources of Earth-friendly energy would eventually allow us to take down the polluting plants, improving the air quality and overall health of our nation, while stimulating the economy.

At the conclusion of UB’s teach-in, Dr. Ted Scambos, climatologist and lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, gave a lecture called Of Ice and Fire: Polar Impacts of Global Warming. In his lecture, Scambos explained that global sea surface temperatures have been steadily rising since around 1975. He presented photos from his investigative journeys to the poles, and satellite pictures of the Arctic. The images were clear: the Northeast and Northwest Passages, famously impossible to navigate due to masses of ice, are slowly opening up—the ice is melting in the Arctic Ocean. According to Scambos’ calculations, within 15 years, Santa Claus may be homeless.

During the event, one huge obstacle was alluded to—the apathetic notion that climate change only effects the walrus, penguin, and polar bear populations—and who cares about them? Why should we waste our money trying to save a bunch of big cracker-ass bears, you ask? Well, not only can we save the bears—in the process, we can save our economy, says Van Jones, co-founder and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. In The Two Percent Solution, Jones says, “The green economy isn’t just good for the polar bears. It’s important for the polar bears, but it’s good for low-income people, too. This is our opportunity, by investing in a clean-energy revolution, to have a green wave that lifts all votes. We have the opportunity to fight pollution and poverty at the same time by investing billions of dollars, retro-fitting, weatherizing the country, starting with low-income people.” Well, that makes sense. There’s all this work that needs to be done, and all these people who are unemployed—if we connect the people to these new green jobs, we could solve two huge problems at once.

So, what does this mean? Will this end-of-the-world scenario play out like in the movies, with oceans flooding over the coastal regions, drowning the Statue of Liberty? Well, we don’t actually know where the tipping point lies, but it’s clear that we are dangerously close to the edge. Over the brink are more intense hurricanes, slow increase of sea levels, thinning ice, warmer temperate regions, and a rapid loss of permafrost, which could lead to an even higher rate of climate shifts when greenhouse gases trapped in the ice are released into the atmosphere. Clearly something needs to be done, starting now. According to Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, and former consultant to Federal Agencies and White House staff, “The good news is it’s not going to happen next week. It may take a century or two for that to play out, but it’s inexorable… once it gets going, it’s going to be very difficult to stop.”