Climate Change: Larger Than It Looks

‘Do you think little things make a difference when it comes to a problem as massive as climate change?’

One could find the news channels flooded with the news of climate change, with flashy headlines talking about the impacts and effects it has on us and on the earth. And we sitting in front of it and maybe sipping a cup of tea claims to do our best to deal with it. However, the question is that, is climate change really a thing to worry about and are we doing every bit of what we can do to minimalize its effect?

Climate change is one of the most pervasive and threatening issues of our time. With climate change, the frequency, severity, duration, location of weather and climate phenomena like rising temperature, heavy rains, rising sea levels, droughts - are changing. Also, there is a close relation of climate change with human health. The climate change (global warming) is affecting the air we breathe, respiratory organs, increasing the risk of cancer, skin problems and allergic illness.

So, are we doing every bit we can to deal with the climate change and moreover does a single person’s contribution even matter to such an enormous problem?

Well, everyone thinks that way, but it does matter. In an interview of M. Sanjayan, Senior Scientist Conservation International with Laurence Singer, Founder of Trash is for Tossers, she talks of how every other thing is compostable, reusable or recyclable and how she managed to minimalize her trash in such an efficient manner. She even runs a website where she gives tips and answers questions about living a zero-waste life.

Our every action towards the waste we produce each day gets accumulated to serve as a larger problem. Throwing up a little amount of food may seem like a small thing but ends up affecting us all. In the US, roughly 40% of the food produced never gets eaten, which is over 365 million pounds of food each day. At the same time, about one in eight Americans still do not have a steady supply of food on the table. When this wasted food decomposes, it releases potent greenhouse gases, disastrous for nature. In a report it comes out that by simply choosing a Mediterranean diet, we can solve 15% of global warming pollution by 2050, which is equivalent to taking out a billion cars off the streets in terms of vehicle emission.

Even on a smaller level, one could make a larger difference, by applying the policy of 3R’s which we were taught in our schools, which is, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In our daily lives we can do this by simply saying no to plastic bags, stop wasting food, carrying your own water bottle rather than buying one, saying no to all the extra materials in the take away pouches. By simply reducing single-use coffee cups from routine, we can reduce 365 cups a year, which is not an insignificant number. If every single one of us try to implement these methods in our daily lives, we would clearly be able to see a massive shift towards a more sustainable future.