One of the ‘burning’ issues of the world that often gets neglected is Climate Change. Many world leaders are very much aware of this issue and yet have managed to dismiss it. This is why Greta Thunberg; a 16 year old girl from Sweden sat in front of her country’s parliament protesting against climate change. She sat down every Friday skipping school holding a banner demanding climate justice. With passage of time she has been able to unite many people especially students from all over the world to demand for climate justice. This movement is popularly progressing with hash tag #fridaysforfuture, which says skipping school every Friday for the sake of future.

Let me come back to it, Climate Change is happening, our one and only home which holds our entire existence is burning. Glaciers are melting, sea level is rising threatening the small island countries. Glaciers are about to vanish from almost half of UN- designated World Heritage sites in less than a century according to research in journal Earth’s future. Few days ago a polar bear was found 700 km away from its home wandering into Russian villages seeking for food. Struggle for polar animals is becoming real. Let’s not miss out marine animals, a giant whale was found dead washed up to the shore. Once they tried to find out its cause of death, they found 88 tons of plastics inside its stomach. 90% of seabirds have fragments of plastic in their stomach. By 2050 this number may rise to 90%. UNESCO estimates that 100,000 marine animals die because of plastic pollution every year. At least 65% of the world’s fish are suffering from plastic ingestion.  Natasha Daly published her work in National Geographic saying ‘For animals, plastic is turning the ocean into minefield.’ According to Business Green, marine plastic pollution costs up to $2.5bn a year. There are nearly 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in our oceans, of that 269,000 float in the surface. A whopping 6.4 million tons of plastics are dumped in oceans. Most sad of it all is the fact that most of the areas of the oceans are declared ‘dead zones’ where no life can grow anymore.

Economic and population growth has led to atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide and has been dominant cause of climate change states Climate change synthesis report 2014. The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30 year period of the last 140 years in northern hemisphere. No doubt, all of these happenings have human influences involved in it. A recent UN report concludes that 1 million species carry the risk to extinction thanks to human activity. This will cause serious consequences for human beings and life on earth. There is no doubt that if nature is in trouble then we are in trouble.   

   In the 2015 Paris climate pact, international leaders agreed to restrain the global temperature rise to 2C with an aspiration to limit this to 1.5C. The world has already warmed by around 1C over the past century, fueling sea level rises, heat waves, storms and the decline of vulnerable ecosystems such as coral reefs.

Many rich countries showing commitment towards Paris agreement should decrease utmost emissions; some target percentage should be set and be worked on seriously. If fifteen percent is set then we can stay below two degree warming target. Two degree goal would require a steep drop in greenhouse emissions supported by a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, particularly coal, mass deployment of solar and wind energy and the eradication of emissions from cars, trucks and airplanes.

This is a fire, a burning wound and no doubt this can be healed. There’s a saying before you change the world, you have to change yourself. Same goes for this problem. Healing the planet starts in your garage, in your kitchen, and at your dining table. We have to speak up, making sure that people around us are making correct decisions. Spreading light via articles, social media, and any other means possible, ‘Reduce-reuse-recycle’ should be our motto. Giving up old vehicles which emit smoke and using electric vehicles opting to drive less and drive smart. Cleaning our area day to day and I can’t stress this enough; plant trees. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. A single tree will absorb approximately one ton of carbon dioxide during its lifetime.

Next time somebody throws a rapper on the streets, advice and aware them not to. Change must start and should happen now. Animals living in different subtropical areas are dying. Sea level is increasing, snow is melting, and plastic pollution is costing us a lot of money. More so, it is costing us our healthy life. In these past few days countries like England, Ireland, Switzerland and The Government of Catalonia have declared climate emergency. When’s your country doing that? We already have solved climate crisis. All the facts and information are there, all we need to do is act. Activism works. Action can change future, our future, our generation’s future and our planet’s future.