I threw a piece of paper into the garbage today. Logically, I know that’s terrible for the environment. I understand that average surface area temperatures are projected to possibly increase 3 to 10 percent by the end of the century. I also know that one fourth of the earth’s species are predicted to be on the track to extinction by 2050 according to the Nature Conservatory. But, I didn’t recycle that piece of paper.
This article is not meant to speculate whether global warming is man made or not. The fact is that many of us believe in man-made global warming and understand its effects. And yet, every so often we leave the lights on, leave the water running or don’t recycle.
So that poses the question—why aren’t we more concerned?
I know the first time I heard my science teacher present a lecture on climate change I was terrified of what was to come of our planet, and I was inspired to do my part to keep the earth clean. But, my year went on and I didn’t notice any drastic changes taking place in the environment. Each day seemed about as hot or cold as the day before. About a year later, when I received a similar presentation on global warming, it didn’t seem as scary. This was nothing new. And the more I heard the idea, the more commonplace it became to me. Of course I’m only one student, but I did have a fairly typical upbringing.
Relating to that, lacking urgency is the distant feeling people associate with climate change. It’s a common belief that climate crisis won’t result in a dire situation until some other generation’s lifetime. For a lot of us, that’s a get-out-of-jail-free card.
It’s also possible that we don’t feel the need to religiously recycle because we don’t think our decisions always matter. It’s easy to feel like one piece of paper in the garbage isn’t going to affect the earth’s climate. Both luckily and unluckily for us, our decisions always matter.
It seems there is a lot of indifference toward climate change today, and apathy is a tricky idea to circumvent. So many terrible situations unfold each day, but people almost always find their way back to their everyday lives. We hear about public shootings, genocides and murders all over the world, but we usually don’t walk around in a constant state of depression. An important part of humanity is the ability to shut some unpleasant sensations out of our minds. We can’t empathize with every victim and still expect to lead a happy life.
So what do we do? First of all, we should recognize that humanity has a tendency to be apathetic. It’s only natural, because we can’t feel responsible for everything bad. However, we can sift and choose certain causes to care about. We can make the choice to care about and be scared by global climate change. It’s difficult; when a warning is repeated over and over again it may start to seem mundane.
Even this article is a repetition of that same warning. But, for those people that believe in the validity of man-made climate change, I think we should allow ourselves to be scared. We have to use that fear to motivate us to not throw another piece of paper into the garbage.
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