[Que song: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) R.E.M. ]

Climate change. We hear about it everywhere-and I mean everywhere. People denying its existence, claiming, ‘how can the earth possibly be warming, it’s snowing outside!’ Even our own president tweeted, ‘’It snowed over 4 inches this past weekend in New York City. It is still October. So much for Global Warming.’’ Others are coming up with plans to deter it, in the hope that if we act now we can stop it before it becomes irreversible. But what is climate change? According to the online dictionary definition, climate change is ‘‘a change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels.’’

Now, something we should get out of the way before we even get to solutions is that climate change can be natural, and has been in the past. The earth goes through its own natural processes and fluxes, naturally heating and cooling of its own accord, based on the environment surrounding it. The climate change we are currently experiencing is very much unnatural, caused by fossil fuels being released into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases form a sort of blanket around the Earth which takes in some heat from the sun and releases the rest back into the vast expanses of space. The fossil fuels we burn are greenhouse gases which add to the already abundant layers of gas, causing more heat to be trapped in the atmosphere.

Causes of climate change and global warming vary, but some of the larger ones are fracking, transporting goods, producing power, and manufacturing items. All of these actions produce greenhouse gases. If we don't stop it, or at least slow down its progress, we will continue to have record setting disasters like hurricane Maria that hit Puerto Rico in 2017. The sea levels will continue to rise, flooding cities like New Orleans which saw as much as fifteen feet of water in some places when hurricane Katrina hit back in August of 2005.  

All may seem bleak, but there are some things we can do to turn the tide in our everyday lives such as taking mass transit or biking instead of driving somewhere. According to the ‘mass transit’ article on drawdown, “All mass transit modes use scale to their emissions advantage. When someone opts to ride a streetcar, bus, or subway rather than driving a car or hailing a cab, greenhouse gases are averted.” The benefits of these alternate methods of transportation are more than just environmental. When the volume of cars on the roads is reduced, traffic lessens. Fewer accidents and fatalities take place; along with a serious drop in air pollution. As great a solution as this is, I’ve decided against implementing it in my daily life. This is because as a fourteen year old I don't drive anyways, and technically my mum driving me places counts as carpooling. I have considered taking the bus to and from school but I currently live thirty to forty five minutes away from school, so the bus ride would be ridiculously long. At the present moment I also am lacking any sort of communications device, so if I got lost or something I’d be screwed.

So if that's not a solution I can use, what is? After quite a lot of thinking I selected changing to a plant rich diet. Changing your dietary consumption to lessen or exclude meat entirely has a massive impact on the environment, given that a meat full diet comes with a high cost. That cost being one-fifth of global emissions; Drawdown has quite a bit to say on this particular eating habit and tells us, “If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.” That's truly wild. When we consume mostly plants we not only reduce emissions but also tend to be overall healthier, which itself lowers rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes. The article proceeds to inform us that, “According to a 2016 study, business-as-usual emissions could be reduced by as much as 70 percent through adopting a vegan diet and 63 percent for a vegetarian diet, which includes cheese, milk, and eggs. $1 trillion in annual health-care costs and lost productivity would be saved.” In a time were it’s no longer necessary to eat meat to survive, why are we still doing it? I think it's mainly because we live in a society that just really likes meat, despite the obvious harm it causes the world. I chose this solution because not only is it is something I can implement in my day to day life, but it will also be a bit of a struggle for me. My plan is to slowly, over the next few months, limit myself to one meat based product a week. I will be starting on the first of April, and I hope that by the start of highschool I will have fulfilled this goal. Currently, I eat upwards of ten meaty things a week and fully acknowledge how much harm it does to the environment. I also acknowledge that at present meat plays such a huge role in our culture that I don't believe I will be able to abstain from this practice entirely.   

Hopefully, by undergoing this project I will have lessened the burden that we as humans have placed on our planet. To be honest, I have no idea if me doing this will have much of an impact in the grand scheme of things. I suppose that doing something, anything, really will be better than inaction or the inability to change. Who knows? I may look back on this paper I wrote in eighth grade may years into the future and see this as the turning point the world needed to get off its butt and do something, but I highly doubt it. Others like Greta Thunberg are already trying their best to convince the world of this catastrophe, and I send them my best wishes.