Thoughts of climate and humanity

By: Charlotte Poon

I’m having these terrifying thoughts on a cold, winter day. What’s more or less terrifying was that I did not anticipate today being as cold as this.

It was fairly warm yesterday, I was sweating in my thin jacket and shorts as I took a stroll along a promenade. I found it surprising that the sea waters nearly reached the ground of the promenade I was walking on. It wasn’t a pleasant surprise, to be honest.

The switch from warm to cold weather was completely unexpected. By me, at least. I don’t know about the weather forecast.

I wonder if climate change will bring the extinction of the human race.

Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch.

Maybe my thoughts are overreacting because of my selfish discomfort.

But then, I’m not the only one being affected. The country I live in isn’t the only one being affected.

Storms have been worsening, inflicting more destruction on communities with landslides and flooding and the force of these storms causing entire buildings to collapse, taking homes and lives away. Of course it’s the water vapour building up rapidly in the constantly warming atmosphere.

Ironically, droughts are also a pretty big issue. Droughts are becoming more severe in countries that were already hot and dry. Heatwaves are already bad enough for me, yet I barely save myself from fainting with enough cups of iced water. And then there’s people who live in droughts.

It’s not just us humans. More than a few species of animals are being endangered by the strange, threatening changes in their habitats. Polar bears, turtles, elephants…even the fish are shrinking as the temperatures rise.

As much as I hate all of this happening, I don’t care about who has it worse. I only know the fact that this climate crisis has to stop. Everyone on earth is in danger from this. We can’t fight over our deservingness of pity when it won’t stop our planet from being destroyed by us, and in turn, destroying us.

I know we can still make a difference. We can take measures to stop our future from burning down. We can still try, we can still explore new, innovative ideas.

But we cannot reverse how much we’ve already tampered with the weather, and the weather won’t stop tampering with the flow of human activity through the natural environment.

It’s already looking bad enough, and it hasn’t been great for decades. Maybe that’s good enough of a reason for us to make efforts towards a future where our planet is still habitable.

I don’t know if I can still believe.

I can’t help but feel that these are useless platitudes we all hear, but never consider, let alone act on.

But I know it’s definitely possible. After all, wasn’t it also humanity that made so many great inventions and discoveries that changed the world?

Context: This written piece is based on my own thoughts on the climate crisis. It's a piece that mixes two different writing styles. The beginning starting off as more narrative-like. As you continue to read until the end, the writing turns into that of a persuasive style. I hope this written piece is something people can relate to.