Recently, I’ve been reading a couple books about the environment. Ironically, as someone who aspires to do right by nature, I haven’t actually read a lot of books on the matter. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve read numerous articles and watched countless videos as well as a few documentaries, but, for some reason, not many books.
There have been a few environmental fiction—or cli-fi (climate fiction) as some people choose to describe it. However, somehow I found myself with some new books on the environment and it’s the kind that gets deep and rough with all the excruciatingly detailed data. As a girl who believes in numbers, these data excite me. Finally, I could start learning about the truth behind environmental sciences—but, boy, was I not ready for reality.
As you may know from my blog and social media posts, I am an active advocate for the environment. Even so, there is very little that I know about the climate crisis that we’re currently facing. Yes, I am well aware of the plethora of plastic waste swimming freely in the ocean. And yes, I am also aware of the alarming rate the ice caps in the poles are melting. Yet, somehow, amidst all that, I managed to completely ignore or overlook some of the scariest signs of the changing climate—although they have been so incredibly close to home: the extreme weather.
There’s the increased frequency of wildfires all over the globe—the newest one, as I’m sure we’re all aware, being the devastating bushfire in Australia earlier this year. There’s the numerous floods in various cities all over the world, including the major flood happening also on New Year’s Day in the Jakarta area. We might be wise to also count the seemingly endless bouts of earth quakes happening all through 2019—not to mention rigorous storms and merciless heat waves over the past few years.
The funny question is: how come most of us don’t see the signs either?
While How We’re F***ing Up Our Planet serves the current reality on a platter—dressed in easy-to-digest infographics and not-so-colourful words—for beginners like me, The Uninhabitable Earth paints a picture of a blazing and unforgiving future for the planet. Between these books, there’s the red string that connects the two—which is what we know as The Paris Agreement.
With this agreement, some of the world’s greatest nations have come together to finally commit to fighting climate change, in which they aim to not let the earth’s temperature to rise above 1.5ºC more than the pre-industrial age. You might think that the earth’s temperature could rise 5ºC and we won’t even feel a thing. Well, no, it’s actually terrifying if the earth’s temperature surpass even 2ºC more than the pre-industrial era.
For starters, we could lose so many major cities in the world—as they will most likely be drowned. How could this happen? Well, remember the melting ice caps? If you think all that water just goes out of sight out of mind, you’d be wrong—it has nowhere else to go other than our cities. Millions and millions of people will be displaced from their current homes and somehow must make the most of getting jam packed into the remaining land.
Secondly, food crises will ensue. If you think planting more trees will solve all your carbon footprints problem, think again. There could come a certain point, when the heat from the sun and the level of carbon in the air could make it incredibly difficult for plants to grow or produce the same kind of nutrients as they do now. This means: they might not help us fight global warming anymore.
Thirdly—and this might be the scariest one for us all at the moment—we should all probably get used to the idea of pandemics, as there could be numerous micro-threats that have yet to show themselves and/or be spread around the modern civilisation. For all we know, COVID-19 could just be the start.
Okay, yeah, I know what you’re thinking—”that whole thing is still a hypothesis, it might not actually come to pass.” The problem is that we have seen the tips of these slowly melting icebergs for years. Like I’ve said already—the floods, the wildfires, the storms, the heat waves, the earthquake, etc.—but it doesn’t just stop there.
These crises and disasters will influence every sector of the industry, our governments and our lives. Take Syria, for example. It’s oversimplifying to say that the whole Syria crisis happened because of climate change—there’s just too many factors involved in it. However, it is not too farfetched to say that it’s been catalysed by the food crises due to the excruciating draught. Such a seemingly ordinary problem, and yet, look where they are now—torn apart and displaced.
It should be of no surprise to us—natural resources have always been the cause for war and conflicts. Imagine what will happen when resources become more and more scarce.
Again, how come most of us seem oblivious to these facts then? They’re just so close to home and hard to miss. So how? It turns out—and you might have seen proofs of this—that when a scientist alarms the public about a threatening fact, they are shut down as an “alarmist”—or, in layman terms, a lunatic. That’s pretty much what happened to Al Gore, when he released The Inconvenient Truth.
People just refuse to believe bad news somehow. As I was reading these books, I was also watching the HBO Series, Chernobyl. Somehow, it felt incredibly fitting with the current pandemic—both these incidents could be avoided or prevented had the authority and public listened to the experts from the start.
Sadly, and terrifyingly, that’s exactly what’s currently happening to the environmental scientists—they’re being dismissed and silenced, because everybody refuses to believe in the truth.
Now, if we choose to believe those experts and open our eyes to the signs all around us, what can we do to affect change? David Wallace-Wells recommend us to put people in power who believe in those things as well. He, however, diminished the impact individual actions can have on the environment. Somehow, he seemed to think that our changing lifestyles will get the earth nowhere. Personally, I’d disagree.
With a changing lifestyle, there’s a lot we are saying to the world. For me, it often means voting with my money. Choosing to buy from an ethical brand or a packaging-free store is my way of telling the people in charge and big corporations that this is what they should do too. And, yes, maybe voting for the right leader to enable your country to become more carbon negative is a groundbreaking act, but it doesn’t have to be the only one. If one person inspires another person to change their lifestyle, it will set a ripple going that nobody can ever ignore.
So, how about you? Would you want to be part of that ripple?
Recently, I’ve been reading a couple books about the environment. Ironically, as someone who aspires to do right by nature, I haven’t actually read a lot of books on the matter. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve read numerous articles and watched countless videos as well as a few documentaries, but, for some reason, not many books.
There have been a few environmental fiction—or cli-fi (climate fiction) as some people choose to describe it. However, somehow I found myself with some new books on the environment and it’s the kind that gets deep and rough with all the excruciatingly detailed data. As a girl who believes in numbers, these data excite me. Finally, I could start learning about the truth behind environmental sciences—but, boy, was I not ready for reality.
As you may know from my blog and social media posts, I am an active advocate for the environment. Even so, there is very little that I know about the climate crisis that we’re currently facing. Yes, I am well aware of the plethora of plastic waste swimming freely in the ocean. And yes, I am also aware of the alarming rate the ice caps in the poles are melting. Yet, somehow, amidst all that, I managed to completely ignore or overlook some of the scariest signs of the changing climate—although they have been so incredibly close to home: the extreme weather.
There’s the increased frequency of wildfires all over the globe—the newest one, as I’m sure we’re all aware, being the devastating bushfire in Australia earlier this year. There’s the numerous floods in various cities all over the world, including the major flood happening also on New Year’s Day in the Jakarta area. We might be wise to also count the seemingly endless bouts of earth quakes happening all through 2019—not to mention rigorous storms and merciless heat waves over the past few years.
The funny question is: how come most of us don’t see the signs either?
While How We’re F***ing Up Our Planet serves the current reality on a platter—dressed in easy-to-digest infographics and not-so-colourful words—for beginners like me, The Uninhabitable Earth paints a picture of a blazing and unforgiving future for the planet. Between these books, there’s the red string that connects the two—which is what we know as The Paris Agreement.
With this agreement, some of the world’s greatest nations have come together to finally commit to fighting climate change, in which they aim to not let the earth’s temperature to rise above 1.5ºC more than the pre-industrial age. You might think that the earth’s temperature could rise 5ºC and we won’t even feel a thing. Well, no, it’s actually terrifying if the earth’s temperature surpass even 2ºC more than the pre-industrial era.
For starters, we could lose so many major cities in the world—as they will most likely be drowned. How could this happen? Well, remember the melting ice caps? If you think all that water just goes out of sight out of mind, you’d be wrong—it has nowhere else to go other than our cities. Millions and millions of people will be displaced from their current homes and somehow must make the most of getting jam packed into the remaining land.
Secondly, food crises will ensue. If you think planting more trees will solve all your carbon footprints problem, think again. There could come a certain point, when the heat from the sun and the level of carbon in the air could make it incredibly difficult for plants to grow or produce the same kind of nutrients as they do now. This means: they might not help us fight global warming anymore.
Thirdly—and this might be the scariest one for us all at the moment—we should all probably get used to the idea of pandemics, as there could be numerous micro-threats that have yet to show themselves and/or be spread around the modern civilisation. For all we know, COVID-19 could just be the start.
Okay, yeah, I know what you’re thinking—”that whole thing is still a hypothesis, it might not actually come to pass.” The problem is that we have seen the tips of these slowly melting icebergs for years. Like I’ve said already—the floods, the wildfires, the storms, the heat waves, the earthquake, etc.—but it doesn’t just stop there.
These crises and disasters will influence every sector of the industry, our governments and our lives. Take Syria, for example. It’s oversimplifying to say that the whole Syria crisis happened because of climate change—there’s just too many factors involved in it. However, it is not too farfetched to say that it’s been catalysed by the food crises due to the excruciating draught. Such a seemingly ordinary problem, and yet, look where they are now—torn apart and displaced.
It should be of no surprise to us—natural resources have always been the cause for war and conflicts. Imagine what will happen when resources become more and more scarce.
Again, how come most of us seem oblivious to these facts then? They’re just so close to home and hard to miss. So how? It turns out—and you might have seen proofs of this—that when a scientist alarms the public about a threatening fact, they are shut down as an “alarmist”—or, in layman terms, a lunatic. That’s pretty much what happened to Al Gore, when he released The Inconvenient Truth.
People just refuse to believe bad news somehow. As I was reading these books, I was also watching the HBO Series, Chernobyl. Somehow, it felt incredibly fitting with the current pandemic—both these incidents could be avoided or prevented had the authority and public listened to the experts from the start.
Sadly, and terrifyingly, that’s exactly what’s currently happening to the environmental scientists—they’re being dismissed and silenced, because everybody refuses to believe in the truth.
Now, if we choose to believe those experts and open our eyes to the signs all around us, what can we do to affect change? David Wallace-Wells recommend us to put people in power who believe in those things as well. He, however, diminished the impact individual actions can have on the environment. Somehow, he seemed to think that our changing lifestyles will get the earth nowhere. Personally, I’d disagree.
With a changing lifestyle, there’s a lot we are saying to the world. For me, it often means voting with my money. Choosing to buy from an ethical brand or a packaging-free store is my way of telling the people in charge and big corporations that this is what they should do too. And, yes, maybe voting for the right leader to enable your country to become more carbon negative is a groundbreaking act, but it doesn’t have to be the only one. If one person inspires another person to change their lifestyle, it will set a ripple going that nobody can ever ignore.
So, how about you? Would you want to be part of that ripple?