This summer was unlike any other when it comes to our climate. Deadly flooding in Europe, raging wildfires all over the US, and the Gulf of Mexico literally being on fire. All in all, this summer was one of the worst for our planet, and it’s going to get worse. 

Humans have been inhabiting this planet for over 300,000 years, yet within 200 years, we have managed to bring the Earth to its breaking point. After the Industrial Revolution, humans began to make things faster, taller, better–adding more pollutants to our Earth than ever before. The result was cities covered in smog, soil being so eroded that nothing can grow in it and the extinction of species that had been here long before us.

 However, all that seemed to change in 1987. World leaders from all over the world put aside political differences to sign an agreement to help repair a significant part of the Earth’s atmosphere: the ozone layer. With this protocol signed, many saw it as hope for the future of our Earth.

Today, people cannot put aside their political differences for even a moment to see that we are killing our planet. 

Stating the simple fact of “climate change is real” somehow enrages people. But there is one simple thing we have to understand if we want any chance at survival: we have to change. We have to change the way we talk about our planet, the way we interact with our planet and the way we take care of our planet. Healthcare is not going to matter in 20 years if we are fighting fires to survive. 

We must talk about our climate with a sense of urgency. If we are not careful with every move we make, in every law we sign and every bill we pass, we could cause irreversible damage to our planet. We have to start taking care of our planet before we get to a point of no going back.

On the bright side, we still have time, so we have to act now. By cutting CO2 emissions by just one third (https://www.c2es.org/content/what-we-can-do/), we are already on the right path. There are so many other things we can do to help our dying planet: solar panels, rain gardens and crops to help reduce soil erosion, just to name a few. 

We have just over six years to make these changes before our planet is destroyed forever (https://climateclock.world/). We have to start considering that our actions have consequences and start acting like we care about our planet.