What to do about climate change, and why should we care?

I loathe our ocean.

From my doorstep, where you could once gaze and admire the ocean’s crystal blue, something has changed: it is now a poignant display of our ocean’s anguish. 

Our ocean, now reduced to a pitiful acid-green, levels rising as if to protest mistreatment, serves as an undeniable testament to climate change’s devastating effects on our home, earth. 

NASA estimates that, since 1971, our ocean has absorbed over 90% of earth’s warming, much of which is due to human activities. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas leads to excessive emissions of greenhouse gasses. Besides the ocean and atmosphere, global temperatures, weather patterns, and ecosystems suffer relentlessly due to climate change.

To combat changes, supporting candidates who rally behind international collaboration is crucial. Leaders should rationally pioneer diplomacy as the earth is a system where components influence one another; a single country’s excess greenhouse gasses will affect another. Global challenges mandate global procedures. 

International collaboration engages in sharing technologies, data, and resources, as well as upholding a nation’s responsibility to address climate change. It’s been indicated as effective as it has enabled parties to foster mutual support, modernize, and confront climate change jointly.

For instance, the Paris Agreement (2015), the third international legal agreement that addresses climate change, has united 195 parties, with goals of achieving carbon neutrality and net zero targets. Countries continue to pledge reinforcement of climate commitments, impeding carbon emissions, and supporting one another. 

While political barriers may hinder international collaboration, significant advances in history have demonstrated otherwise. Despite political differences between allied countries around the world, cooperation is prioritized within the UN to defeat common enemies. Similarly, nations must unify to fight climate change despite political disparities.

To implement change, we need to pressure initiative and responsibility from our elected officials and back candidates who campaign for international collaboration.

“We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it,” said former President Barack Obama.

Climate change is devastating us, both physically and mentally. A profound sense of anxiety creeps at me each day as climate change, insidious in nature, progresses. Our ocean’s transformation is already transparent, as is our failure to initiate change.