Personal Reflection on Climate Change

Climate change is a pressing world issue, whose fires are fueled by global
warming, and whose impacts are projected to affect all individuals – rich or poor –
and all countries–developed or under-developed. It is caused by rapidly increasing
greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere due primarily to burning fossil fuels.
This includes changes in the global energy balance due to variations in the Earth’s
orbit around the Sun, and changes in the amount of energy received from the Sun,
and collisions with comets or meteorites. In the same way, internal processes
operate from within the Earth’s climate system, and include changes in the global
energy balance due to changes in ocean circulation or changes in the composition of
the atmosphere.

We may have witnessed many successes throughout the ages, but today we
are witnessing what is possibly our biggest failure. Temperatures are rising world-
wide due to greenhouse gases trapping more heat in the atmosphere. Droughts are
becoming longer and more extreme around the world. Tropical storms becoming
more severe due to warmer ocean water temperatures. Forest are on fire, our
oceans are filled with toxic waste, and ecosystems are collapsing. We are quickly
moving towards a mass extinction phase. In fact, climate change has already affects
our health and well-being through more extreme weather events and wildfires,
decreased air quality, and diseases transmitted by insects, food, and water.

When on I see on the internet there a lot of people debating over climate
change, and it puzzles me. Why is there a need for discussion over whether climate
change is real or not? It’s not an opinion, but a fact and stands true no matter what
we choose to believe. Climate Change is our reality and to deny it would be an action
of absolute ignorance and utter cruelty towards our environment and ourselves. The
climate crisis is not a looming threat, we are now living with the consequences of
centuries of greenhouse gas emissions. A failure to act urgently now will mean a
reverse in development gains for the poorest and most vulnerable people in society,
an erosion of biodiversity, increasing difficulties in providing food and shelter, as well
as the potential loss of entire countries due to the impacts of climate change. We
have to inform people about its urgency. Our future is in danger. If we do not take
action fast, it will not be long before ours will be a story of extinction like that of
thousands of species before us.

A climate emergency needs to be declared globally together with political

actions and individual efforts. I encourage humanity to discard single-use plastic and
adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle. But we can only accomplish this when the system
supports us. The things we use every day come in plastic packaging and these are the
necessary things. I can choose a cloth bag for shopping but the packaging of the
products isn’t up to me. I can choose not to pollute the water bodies but whether
the factories continue to do so, or not is not under my control. I cannot cut global
carbon dioxide emissions all by myself. When a law is made and strictly
implemented, it alters our decisions regardless of our personal preferences. The
profit-oriented capitalist companies have to understand that money will be of no use
when you won’t have air to breathe and water to drink, and our leaders need to stop
defending and protecting them. Hence, change is a necessity at this point; it has to
be brought one way or another. So, to all those who think that climate change is a
hoax or not as big a deal, I say, if we choose to ignore climate change, then we are
willingly choosing extinction.