When it comes to the natural world, what comes to mind? Do you think about the vast biomes filled with numerous ecosystems, all prospering with life? Or what about the lush oceans filled to the brim with majestic marine animals like the dolphin or the sea turtle? How about your own garden, which could be teeming with various different plants and flowers, surrounded by the sweet chirping of the birds. All these sound just great, but there is one thing that, over the past decades, has achieved more prominence than ever before, especially in recent years, and that is: climate change.
Climate change has had absolutely devastating impacts to the world around us. Many marine animals in the oceans are not even able to survive due to the sheer heat and rising temperatures of the oceans. The water, poisoned by acid rain that is almost a taunt from the sky, and it is exacting its revenge on the environment for being polluted by us humans, who are continuously releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and bringing death and destruction upon our world by our own hands. Day by day, the environment is being tainted by the fruits of human labour, and for many years, we have done almost nothing to stop this. The hostility of the current environment has been brought upon the earth solely by us humans, and solely us humans can fix it.
Because of what we’ve done to the planet, since 1900 the earth’s surface temperature has increased by 1 degree Celsius. This may not seem like a lot, however, in reality, the fact that this is a cumulative increase throughout the earth means that this really is a very significant temperature increase, and if we continue to disregard the health of the environment, its hostility will increase, eventually coming to bite back and bring us down with it.
This is the harsh reality, and if nothing is done to combat climate change, then the world will collapse into a barren wasteland, and I mean that literally. However, in the past few years, we’ve begun to oppose climate change, and various meetings have been held to discuss the strategies, one notable one being the United Nations Climate Change Conference, with the most recent meeting being COP 28, which took place in Dubai from the 30th of November 2023 to the 13th of December. In this meeting, a decision was made to transition away from fossil fuels, as to reduce carbon emissions by a large amount. These meetings hold very high significance in today’s world, as many important changes have occurred after these meetings, and hopefully, this ‘hostile environment’ will change soon enough.