Climate Change - When do we stop?

Șeșureac Alisia

10th Grade A

Nowadays, on most subjects, the world is split into two. There is no grey area to be in, you are either for or against something. And so is the case with climate change. There are many who are strong advocates for saving Earth, and there are just as many who either refuse to believe in the existence of climate change or to do anything to restore a  balance.

Nonetheless, over the past decades, people have stepped up, and numerous changes for the better have been created, and so naturally, there is a question that sparks up in a lot of people’s minds. Maybe not all of the time, however, when there is a silence lurking around inside your head, you can feel the question start to rise from the shadows. When do we get to stop? When do we get to say we did enough and just try to go back to our old ways?

Unfortunately, the answer upsets a lot of people. There is no stopping. In order to secure the Earth’s health, we have gone on a path we cannot return from. There is a simple logic behind this. The way we used to live our life — throwing garbage in whatever trash can we can find, buying fast-fashion clothes, leaving on the lights as much as we desire, using plastic straws — has been damaging the planet. If we go back to that way  of living, no matter how much progress we have made, we will go back to point zero, and we would have to start again, and again, and again, running into this vicious cycle in which nobody gets to win.

Moreover, we can already see some changes in nature. For instance, green sea turtles are no longer endangered. That is incredible news! However, that still means we have to torture ourselves with the sogginess of paper straws, because we do not need them back on the list. Another example is how tigers are slowly getting back their numbers in nature. Just because they are getting their balance back, it doesn’t mean we can start hunting them again. We must make a few sacrifices, so that we would be able to thrive in nature and not die of heat in another 50 years.

To conclude with, I know that this type of information upsets people, however, we live together in a community, which means that sometimes we must think past ourselves, and act for the collective good.