Written by Dhriti Guruprasad, a grade 11 student.

The year 2020 has been an eye opener, from protests against the injustice faced by black lives in the USA to the Coronavirus pandemic which has taken the lives of over 633K people and helped us check and strengthen our healthcare system. But one thing that we might have missed, rather disregarded in this “year of reforms” As I’d like to call it, is climate change.

Since the beginning of the pandemic various countries around the globe came to the conclusion that it would be wise to lock their doors and shut their windows and declare a country wide lockdown, which has now become our best defense against the virus. This also meant no travelling Domestically or abroad and large scale factories with a large labour force would have to be shut down.

A recent article published by The National Geographic brought to light the fact that China, who had topped the charts when it came to CO2 emmisions in 2019, has been successful in controlling and decreasing the rate of emmisions. This might’ve sounded like a success to the rest of the world and it sure was, But that didn’t mean that the climate change issue was no longer relevant.

Environmental activists all over the world have begun urging people and spreading awareness about how the decrease in emission will not affect the worsening condition of our climate and how this very pattern of emmisions should be continued in order to slowly achieve our goal of a sustainable environment.

Our planet has seen a 1-degree rise in the temperature and it seems highly unlikely that we will be able to keep it below 1.5 degrees. If we were to reach this target, life on our planet is going to be severely disrupted. This is why children across the world along with Greta are calling for a Climate Emergency. They are calling for decisive action from governments and elites and other duty bearers on the climate crisis. They are calling for the younger generation to raise their voice against climate change.

You might’ve heard or read the terrifying piece of news that there is a possibility that polar bears could go extinct due to starvation by 2100 or about how tiny hidden microbes could be speeding up the melting process of ice sheets in Greenland and this is making them look pink and how the ice in the artic is on fire.

We read these articles, see these videos and feel bad for a span of 60 seconds and continue scrolling through social media. We ignore the fact that our planet is slowly dying and all we’re doing is sitting and watching it die. We can help. Even if a bunch of us did the bare minimum we could help.

What can you and I do?

This question has been asked a million times and there are more than a million answers to it as well but it won’t matter unless you take it upon yourself to make those small changes like – using a bucket to bathe instead of taking a shower or reducing the amount of plastic you use.

Along with these important steps that can be taken to help fight climate change, it is necessary to be vocal about the issues surrounding climate change by investing in clean energy companies, holding yourself accountable for your actions and being aware of your impact on the planet, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in your daily life.