Our Earth: Holding Ourselves Accountable for Our Actions

In school, we are often referred to as “Canada’s Future Leaders”, and that we must take action. We are given the knowledge and the tools to make a change in the world. But, the world is changing - climate change is one of the leading global issues in our current society, and we as a community must act quickly so that the planet can recover.

Many of the articles in the news discuss the catastrophic state that our Earth is in - how we are currently in the Anthropocene epoch, where all human activity is impacting the climate and environment, and how time is running out to change the irreversible actions of climate change. Scientists say that we only have 20 years before there’s no turning back. That’s a terrifying and intimidating statistic, and we can feel unprepared or overwhelmed, not knowing what to do. Especially being so young, and the stakes being so high, we may feel unsure of what actions we can take to truly change the course of the Earth.

Enter Greta Thundberg: a 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist, attracting the attention of government officials, the UN, as well as many news sites. Starting from September 8th, 2018, Greta would sit outside the Swedish Parliament every Friday on strike, to protest the lack of action the Swedish Government on the climate crisis. Since then, she has inspired many thousands of other young people all over the world to take action, and hold their own climate strikes to protest the lack of action. Her actions have influenced the actions of others all around the world - for instance, schools across Canada are striking on May 3rd for climate action. For Toronto, the strike was held at Queen’s Park. Greta Thundberg is incredibly well-spoken and has addressed many MPs and the House of Commons as well as the UN. She holds adults responsible for their actions, saying “You say you love your children above anything else, yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.” She goes on to say, “We can’t solve a crisis without treating it like a crisis...We are running out of excuses and we are running out of time.” Her words represent the real and terrifying truth, and hold all of us accountable to start taking action.

But how can we? Many believe that we must take large-scale actions in order to make an effective change. After all, not all of us can be Greta Thundberg, standing in front of important government officials and adults, holding them accountable. However, we can take her message and spread it - we can become more like her in that we can hold people in our community and ourselves to responsible for making a change. The small actions we can take, such as lessening our carbon footprint by using greener forms of commuting, consuming and wasting less, and using energy wisely are all examples of small actions we can take to slow climate change. As well, though it can be a big adjustment, we can reduce our carbon footprint by eating less meat. According to a chart provided by Shrink That Footprint, a meat lover’s diet produces about 3.3 tons of greenhouse gases based on the 2600 kcals of food consumed per day. A vegetarian diet is ⅔ the average diet, and almost half for a meat lover’s diet. It’s not that everyone must switch to a full-time vegan diet; however, by reducing our consumption of meat at least once a week, we could all make a considerable difference in the emissions of greenhouse gases, and lessen our carbon footprints.

We have come to a point where there’s no turning back; we must face the climate crisis now, so that our future is not endangered. An article by Business Insider states that there’s too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that planting trees won’t help. There’s not enough land to plant enough trees that would slow the rising climate. It is our responsibility to take action now, in the ways we can. It may not look like it, but if we all take small actions against the climate crisis, and act as climate activists by spreading the message of our changing climate, we can make a difference for our future.

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