Greenhouse gases cause global warming.
Global warming directly threatens our health by increasing temperatures, changing weather patterns, causing sea level rise, and affecting mosquitoes and other vectors that carry disease. In particular, global warming has an impact on air quality exacerbating asthma and cardio pulmonary disease. This all means more heat related illness, more respiratory illness, more diseases carried by mosquitoes, ticks, and rodents, and more property damage and resulting economic hardship. Our excessive use of fossil fuels, such as oil, has created much of this pollution and distracts us from the research, development and use of sources of sustainable energy that would keep our air and environment clean and safe. Oil drilling releases nitrogen oxides that contribute to smog and acid rain, and methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.