Earth Day is typically a fun day to remember how beautiful the planet is and to remind your friends to take shorter showers or carpool to the movie theater. I have fond memories of planting trees or learning about ecosystems on Earth Day in elementary school.
But shortening your showers or keeping your lights off is not enough anymore — it is time for much more drastic measures. Our planet is in serious trouble and should be the number one priority for every single government on this Earth. Yet, for some reason, it is not.
Protests organized by the British grassroots organization “Extinction Rebellion” have been happening around the world from April 15 to April 29. In New York City, about 300 people showed up outside City Hall demanding a national emergency for climate change be declared immediately.
There is no problem more important than the fact that we are killing our planet and are only a few years away from the point of no return. In fact, that point could be as soon as 2035, only 16 years away.
In less than two decades we could be facing irreversible damage that will lead to rising seas that could swamp coastal cities and searing heat waves that would cause tens of thousands of deaths, drought, wildfires and extreme storms.
And yet, President Donald Trump wishes to declare a national emergency for Mexicans entering the country when entire cities are at risk of going underwater.
It is infuriating that not enough people realize the severity of climate change and that we are already feeling its effects. Too many people see it as a problem for later generations to deal with.
This is not something we can sweep under the rug for later. If we do not deal with it right now there will not be a ‘later’. These protests are necessary — it is time to turn to civil disobedience to get the attention of our legislators.
We must move beyond trying to convince people that climate change is real. Instead, we need to start targeting the corporations that are pumping out fossil fuels at an unimaginable rate and focus on becoming emission-free as soon as possible.
Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Banning use of straws and carpooling will do nothing if we do not target these corporations that are causing most of the climate change anyways.
I refuse to be a part of the generation that stood by and watched the world fall apart when the solutions were right in front of us. The argument that investing in renewable energy is too expensive is completely irrelevant. Climate refugees and destroyed cities will be even more expensive.
A national emergency needs to be declared and the world needs to come together to fix what will soon become irreversible. Renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydro need to be the norm and plastic usage needs to be brought down to zero.
If we do not make these changes now our oceans will rise, our cities will flood and our storms will strengthen. We must prevent the ocean from becoming more plastic than wildlife and the casualties of all living things from rising astronomically.
