Jezel Tracey '24

by Jezel Tracey '24 on November 17, 2022
Opinion Staff

A regular day of fall on a college campus looks like girls wearing Uggs and guys wearing the same sneakers as they did in the summer. However, this year, fall in Friartown is a bit different. One day, winter is approaching. Next, winter takes a pause and the sunshine is almost 40 degrees warmer than it was before. As animals begin to prepare for hibernation, emotions prepare for seasonal depression, and the leaves prepare to fall, the weather is saying something different. Although most do not pray for the cold, when it hits almost 80 degrees in November, the prayer becomes for the world more than it is for themselves. When a friend gets sick around this time, their response is “it’s because the seasons are changing.” However, this has been the response for most people for the past three months. Whether it’s cold when it’s supposed to be hot, or hot when it is supposed to be cold, the Earth is undergoing an inevitable change: global warming.

Global warming is exactly what it sounds like. When the earth is affected by global warming, it experiences abnormal shifts in weather. However, the problem of global warming is deeper than the decision fatigue that one might experience as a result of not knowing what outfit to put on. Rather, these shifts in weather increase temperatures that can be uncomfortable and damaging in a month like November. Hurricanes, storms, great bodies of water drying out, and wildfires are evident in today’s most recent disasters.

What seemed like an increase in temperature or a nice day of summer meant death, calamity, and catastrophe for the animals around us. When the Earth is warm during times that it is not supposed to be, the ecosystem reflects just that, and the environment as well as society is negatively impacted by it.

Every year, the temperature of the earth increases. Global warming is not news. However, seeing its effects in daily life makes it feel more real or present. It should not be viewed from a superficial level, but rather from a more serious perspective. While it is affecting your choice of outfit, ultimately it has very damaging and catastrophic effects on the future of the earth.

Generation Z has never been the one to take things seriously. In today’s society, the primary source of news comes from social media. While it does play an impactful role in informing the world about what is going on, what often cycles through the feeds and timelines is not an awareness of a given situation. Instead, more memes are being reshared about children never being able to grow up because of the decreased fate of the world and Thanksgiving becoming a cookout. Oftentimes jokes like these are used as coping mechanisms to distract society from the threat global warming has on humanity’s existence.

It is important to look at global warming as not only an environmental issue. Rather, many societal factors need to be considered as well. Oftentimes when individuals have conversations about global warming, they look at what is being affected more than who is being affected.

There are a plethora of communities that don’t have the privilege of turning on the air conditioning when it reaches 80 degrees in November. Specifically, low-income and impoverished communities are susceptible to becoming a victim of natural disasters due to a lack of the proper financial resources to combat them. While the victims of tragedies are taken into account, the reasons why they become victims are not.

While climate change does affect the fate of the Earth’s existence, this does not mean there are no solutions to the issue. Some things one can do to help prevent or slow down the process of global warming are switching to a plant-based diet, recycling, and walking more than driving.

Conversations about global warming are bigger than Twitter and Instagram memes about the world ending. To understand and be proactive in change, it is important to look at the causes, effects, and impacts of environmental issues.