Climate: A War to be Won

by Risha Chaurasia, The Youth Outlook staff writer

“We are the last generation with a real opportunity to save the world,” –Laurence Overmire

No words could’ve been truer. With ever-increasing carbon emissions, sea levels, global warming, and extinction, the world is not in a good place ecologically. Resources and fossil fuels are vanishing like water on a hot summer day and forest cover is dwindling. Currently, forests cover 31% of the total land area, approximately 4 billion hectares in size. This has been reduced from a former 5.9 billion hectares, about 1.9 billion hectares of forest coverage have been cut down. Add to this the substantial surge in carbon emissions, carbon dioxide levels today are higher than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years. All this has led to a surge in global temperatures.

You see, nature is interrelated, mess with one element and the rest come tumbling down.

Increases in temperatures speed up the melting of ice caps, 750 billion tons of ice are

melting every year. This leads to the loss of habitat of all the animals that make the poles their home. Polar bear numbers have shown a massive drop and they are expected to decrease by 30% by 2050. The world’s largest carnivore holds more importance than what is attributed. Polar bears are the apex of the ecosystem, they maintain biological populations, which are essential in the smooth functioning of the ecosystem.

We must give our future generations thought and strive to restore our home. We, the youth have a giant responsibility on our shoulders, either we break the bubble and do something or we see the ecosystem collapsing. We are the ones the earth will be given to and it is our future we will be building on.

“We already have the solutions. All we have to do is, wake up and change,” – Greta Thunberg