Our WWII: Climate Change

Source: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-economic-policymakers-willingness-climate-efforts.html

On Thursday January 24, I attended the Poly GIP event that involved an educational, eye-opening presentation by Aaron Fyke on climate change. Aaron Fyke is an expert on renewable energy and a founder of several successful energy companies. Going into this presentation, I knew that climate change was going to be a major problem that my generation needs to address in their lifetime, but I guess I always put it on the back burner of things I need to worry about. It's easy to ignore issues when you feel powerless or hopeless to solving them.

Aaron Fyke talked about people falling into two camps regarding climate change: denial and despair. Very few fall into the category of actually doing something about the problem. As a believer in the dangers of climate change who had no idea of the things I should do to address it, I already knew I fell into the despair camp. And, as I listened to the first half of Fyke's presentation, I felt like I was moving even deeper into the despair camp territory. As Fyke listed the different ways climate change is already negatively impacting our planet, I grew more and more pessimistic about our chances of fixing the mess we have made. Between the increase in frequency and danger of enormous hurricanes, fires, heat waves, droughts, and floods (including sunny day floods!), in addition to ice melting, ocean levels rising, and the risk of spreading more tropical diseases, it was hard not to despair over the future. I kept thinking of phrases like, "goodbye world," "nice knowing you," or "I had a good time being alive for this brief period of time."

When we pump 110 million tons of man-made global warming pollution into the atmosphere each day, produce more destructive and harmful energy every 24 hours than 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding, and release CO2 at a faster rate than in the past 66 million years, it's easy to understand how exactly we are killing our planet. But, it's harder to understand how we can save it. After Fyke detailed the effects climate change is having on our planet (if you doubt the existence of climate change, take a look at Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, as well the Sonoma County, La Tuna Canyon, Thomas, Mendocino Complex, Camp, and Woolsey fires), he went into some of the ways different countries across the world are trying to address climate change. I gained some hope as Fyke talked about sources of renewable energy (wing, solar, etc.) and electric cars quickly dropping in cost, thus gaining popularity. The cost of being environmentally friendly always worried me, because when it's easy and cheap to not worry about the climate change, why would people in our capitalist, money-driven society take the effort of being environmentally conscious? However, Fyke said that in the coming years, it is expected that the cost of electric cars and other more environmentally friendly options will decrease and therefore gain more presence on our planet.

Towards the end of his presentation, Fyke addressed different ways people can try to reduce and hopefully end climate change. He talked about people marching, protesting, and VOTING for change. He also described the need for every type of person (not just STEM people) in this field, which made me happy. He described career opportunities in the humanities (public relations, journalism, entertainment, politics, education) and business (entrepreneurship, property development, finance), both fields that I could see myself going into someday.

One of my major takeaways from Fyke's presentation was our timeline. Humanity has around 10 years to get our act together and solve this problem. And this is not like some random school or work deadline. There will be no extensions. There will be no re-takes. WE, meaning the entire planet and all of humanity, must cooperate and focus on addressing this pressing issue before it's too late and we pass the point of no return.