By Harsheen Sethi
Picture Credits: CNN
The recent fire in the Amazon rainforest was a real eye-opener to the world — or at least it should have been. For long, the state of our climate has been ignored, pushed away, or dubbed ‘fake news’, but there seems to be nothing fake about the fire that took away most of one of the biggest forests in the world. While the fire was enormous and left destruction in its wake, it’s not un-fixable. Just like the rest of the issues surrounding the climate today, change is still possible. The only thing left to do is take charge.
However, you can’t ‘take charge’ if you don’t know what’s actually happening. While the fire seems as bad as things can get, we are well into a climatic apocalypse today. Only less than a month ago, a memorial was held for the ‘Ok’ glacier in Iceland. Yes, a glacier. Seems silly, right? Not so much once you realize its significance. The memorial was held as a way to raise awareness of the drastic changes in climate happening in Iceland. Ok was the very first Icelandic glacier to melt and disappear. Something that has never happened. Glaciers have been in existence since before mankind and today we have them disappearing into the Atlantic Ocean. Combine this with the forest fires, and you should have loud alarms ringing in your head.
In case major forest fires and disappearing glaciers are not enough for you, awaken your inner minion and your love for bananas, because their production is at an all time low. The most important fruit crop may not be as widely available in the coming decades. With every year passing, the average temperature of the world is increasing, and along with unbearable summers it will also create less than optimum temperatures (26-27 degrees Celsius) for the growth of bananas.
These are just a handful of the impacts. It’s nearly impossible to predict the impacts in store for us for we have barely crossed the threshold of what climate change holds. One big misconception is that this means the end of our planet Earth. It’s not. Our planet is made of some of the strongest components from space. It has survived meteors, it has seen dinosaurs walk its surface and disappear, it has had an ice age and still create an environment for mankind to live. Climate change is only another hurdle in its existence. The earth will still remain, it will still revolve on its axis and circle the Sun. There’s little we can say for where mankind fits into its future.
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