Climate Change – We Are Sinking, Queue the Music

Are we living in a movie scene? Climate change might be our sad ending movie.

When Titanic was sinking and everything was falling apart, those who were playing music at the back of the ship always made me think— they were in trouble, a catastrophe, yet they didn’t try to survive – instead, they decided to play a beautiful symphony. This dramatic scene, in my opinion, is reflecting the mass majority attitude toward climate change, albeit we are not as doomed as the Titanic musicians yet.

We still have time to take serious acts, but if we kept ignoring and overlooking the small changes we as individuals can do, we all will sink together – and it is not just a metaphor. In fact, just recently a study published by Pete Huybers – Earth of Planetary Sciences Professor – and other professors at Harvard University suggesting that the land along the coast is sinking, linking it with the rise of sea level due to climate change.

If you live by the coast, then sorry mate! You might consider a floating house if you want to stay there. According to National Geographic, the coastal cities may flood in the near future due to the acceleration in the melting of ice sheets rate. And yet, we continue playing music on top of our sinking ships overlooking this catastrophe.

While almost all of us have seen documentaries, attended conferences, and read articles about the issue, we the individuals keep practicing harmful habits and are not considering the changes we should take. Governments and organizations are working hard and are undertaking many regulations and decisions to limit our contribution to the climate change catastrophe.

Just recently my country, Saudi Arabia, invested $1.2 billion with Softbank to build solar plants in Riyadh. Aramco, a Saudi Arabian oil company, announced a campaign to plant one million trees by 2025 to lessen our carbon footprint. Also, by the end of 2018, the UN environment published the 2018 report, mentioning their contribution to fight cooling and heating emissions, in an effort to encourage companies to follow these steps.

These are recent examples to prove the hard efforts and serious actions undertaken by major entities around us, yet we are still not considering any fundamental changes in our daily habits. We should understand how the changes we have to make are critical, to abandon small but yet very harmful practices that dominate our lives. Here are varieties of simple changes we as individuals can take and adopt:

Starting by simple change we all can do, consume less plastic. Plastic releases methane and ethylene – which are two powerful elements believed to potentially exacerbate climate change. Consider the huge number of plastic bags consumed daily. Pick up your cloth bag when you are shopping, if every individual consider this change millions of plastic bags won’t be in demand and it will decrease its production.

Consider renewable energy. I know this might sound as something that could cost hundreds of dollars, but experts believe that renewable energy will actually become cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020 which is one year from now. Lucky us! We must be open to these new innovations as consumers. And there are exciting innovations already, such as solar water heaters. This innovation prevents pollution that is often created by regular heating systems, it burns fossil fuels to operate.

Participate in saving trees and forests. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, this natural process helps lessen our carbon footprint. We as individuals can participate in local campaigns that aim to save forests and plant trees. According to Paul Trianosky, CEO at the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the world’s forests absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels.

Actions by governments and organizations are not enough if we, the individuals, didn’t participate and start by simple and small changes in our daily habits. We are part of the problem, but we can also be part of the solution. Ignoring the climate change catastrophe will accelerate the problem, and if the ship sinks, we are all going down with it.