No matter who you are, where you are or think, the harsh truth of climate change will eventually affect your life negatively but we can turn this doesn’t need to be all doom and gloom. We need to stop showing a blind eye to the problems we face with Climate Change due to the damage it’s causing everywhere from the wildfires in Australia to the flooding as the result of the rising sea waters. Even if we can’t successfully integrate a plan like the Green New Deal, we don’t need to focus those large steps but start with the small things in our lives.
In order to stop the ever-growing problems that come from climate change, the public needs to change its outlook on the matter instead. Based on Nsikan Akpan who emphasized a point about the mental phenomenon called Mental Dissonance in his book, “When humans see these scientists show graphs & statistics, people don’t want to see the truth or at least accept it.” This mindset pushes away facts and fills that hole with the opinion instead because, to be frank, nobody wants to deal with the responsibility or even act upon the responsibilities of Climate Change. This problem can be resolved with a change of perspective. In 2014 Ram Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at San Diego had a brief interaction with Pope Francis. Originally Ram had a Spanish speech ready about the carbon emissions and the outcomes from the sudden change of heat but forgot it on the spot, but he then changed the subject entirely, “Most of the pollution is coming from the wealthiest 1 billion people, and the poorest 3 billion are going to suffer the consequences.” Looking at this change of ideals, instead of emphasizing the facts and statistic he changes the topic to a moral and philosophical stance which worked. After the confrontation, the Pope integrated climate change to his speeches and even sent a tweet. This may have impacted the 1.2 Billion catholic communities who listened in but doesn’t take in that it won’t solve the problem for everyone.
Even if everyone can’t help, economics can. There should be a harsher tax placed on distributors that produce large amounts of carbon by our agricultural system, due to how easily preventable this problem is. To illustrate this problem, think about how the food on your plate got there. Just to make it you would need an enormous amount of space, time, and materials. Also preserving and transporting only makes the situation worse by resing methane when the food isn't eaten, the only problem is that nobody wants to waste food but it happens. The reason why it is so hard for anybody to take action by what they eat is due to our amount of choice and portion size. In this modern time, we have gotten used to large portion sizes in restaurants to a point where we’ve gone blind to how much we eat, to accommodate, our plate size has increased by 36% and the outcome is expected. Obesity, overeating, and wasting.
Some may argue that even if we were to do a massive change like the Green New Deal wouldn’t be able to sustain ourselves to a point where it isn’t plausible. I do understand that 100% no emissions mean, it means zero Oil Business, or zero Natural Gas, but this needs to be unplausible due to the scope of this situation we are in. Originally the IPSS, a group of the best climatologist claimed that “An increase of about 1.5*-2* would be fine, but we have ended up on track to go way past their predictions.” Sure, jobs are going to be lost with this change, but most people don’t take in the fact that protections are already placed on for those in this predicament. From watching news channels it seems people don’t understand what the Green New Deal is trying to do, in the 14 pages they summarize that this won’t be instant but a rather slow integration to electric cars and wind turbines to not put such a harsh blow on our debt
Sure, you are one person facing the problems faced in life at the moment and its easy to assume that someone else can handle the problem of Climate Change this monstrous worst-case scenario that has been placed in your hands but realise, everyone thinks that as well, everyone will be affected by this, and everyone can be the resolution to this problem which starting with you.
