Although the nature we live in constantly undergoes changes, those changes become detrimental if the process is not organic. The recent global warming trend is of significant importance because it is not product of natural processes. Human activity across the globe has caused it and today, its effects are evident everywhere, disregarding borders. At this point, only efforts on a global scale can prevent further damage.
Fortunately, many countries have high youth population who are very dedicated to raising awareness on this issue. Through the use of online platforms, the youth from all around the globe have been able to exchange their creative and innovative ideas with an audience much bigger than their immediate communities. Through smaller steps such as distributing reusable water bottles on their campuses in order to reduce the use of plastic ones, to holding conferences and to voting on a policy change, they have been able to educate people at the grassroots level about their environmental responsibilities.
In fact, this is what our world needs the most: education on minimizing their carbon footprint. People need to know the steps and begin to incorporate them into their daily lives. In this sense, the youth have and continue to contribute much to transform their societies into more environmentally conscious spaces.
The main reason to why this movement is mainly youth-driven, is not only due to the youth’s creative ways of tackling this issue but also because of their tolerant and adaptive attitude towards the proposed solutions. The youth are not only willing to sacrifice but are also not afraid of taking risks in order to ensure a better and secure future.
However, the youth alone cannot bring a change. In order to be fully successful in achieving a drastic decline in global emissions, our societies need to invest more in advancing cost-effective and eco-friendly technology and people of all generations have to accept fundamental economic and societal changes in some areas of their traditional lifestyles.
Purchasing energy efficient appliances, installing solar panels and switching to electric cars are some examples but so are planting a tree, reducing waste and using less hot water.
When the topic of “climate change” comes up, most people have a vague idea of what caused that change. In order to alter the direction of the world’s climate in the next decades, we need to change how people view it.
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