It’s on the telly, posters around shopping centres, on the banners of protesters outside your local Tesco. But what does climate change mean, and why is it important?
When I think of climate change, I think of the extreme weather disasters happening around the globe at the moment and a future that looks similar to the jungle-like post-nuclear landscape of Earth from the show The 100. Unusually, what also comes to mind is sustainability and the natural course life stubbornly follows, despite our best efforts to prevent it.
It’s quite silly to believe our planet will stay the same forever. It’s unrealistic. We see change every day of our lives, so how can we put such an expectation on a literal 510 million km² land mass we happen to inhabit?
My dad would always say that this was going to happen anyway, except it’s happening faster because of the energetic activities of our ancestors during and after the Industrial Revolution:
1. Burning a hole in the ozone layer.
2. Making huge leaps in technology at the expense of our fellow man and overall planet health.
3. Obtaining various forms of carbon and burning it, releasing carbon dioxide, amongst other nefarious things, back into the atmosphere in large quantities.
And yet, despite knowing this, as if the warming of the globe isn’t currently 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age, major corporations have continued their operations.
Though the silver lining is that more people are getting concerned. The impact of climate change is affecting more and more people through more frequent and disastrous tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding, inconsistent temperatures, and hurricanes..
It’s important to recognise that people have power. As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers. Together, people achieve amazing things. If everyone chips in, whether that's protesting, signing petitions or even as small as recycling or minimising petrol consumption, it helps if everyone contributes. It enables charities and causes to fight back and hold companies accountable for their contributions to climate change. It can pressure them to invest in research and projects on how to do their operations in more sustainable and environmentally-friendly ways.
And as saddening as it is, I think in the years to come the work of the nameless innovators of the present, tirelessly trying their best to make equipment and form solutions to work with the changing climate instead of against it, will pay off and they will be rightfully recognised for their amazing accomplishments. Their work is safeguarding not just our race, but the future of the other animals and plants on our planet as well.
"Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here; it is happening now."
Barack Obama, 2015
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