By Niamh Casey
Climate change, and environment issues in general, are the most talked about topics these days, and for good reason. It seems it’s every other week that a new environmental disaster is being reported on and at this stage, we are becoming desensitised to it. For over a month, we were reading gut-wrenching reports about the fires in Australia, before that, it was the rainforest and there’s always huge pieces of ice breaking off from the North Pole, which is endangering species everyday with the mass melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. With all this news of despair and disaster regarding climate change, it is easy to think that no matter what we do, nothing is enough. That no amount of carbon tax or environmentally friendly products can save our climate now, but this isn’t necessarily the case.
We have made some strides of late, especially with the global effort we have seen so far, and people seem ready to act fast (the everyday citizen, that is) along with many celebrities and public figures. Huge achievements have been made no doubt. This global effort is clear when we look at the number of trees that can be planted just with a strong driving voice behind the campaign. It is this mass effort that is needed, and the next step truly is to target large companies. It may sound neo-communinstic but hear me out. It is large, un-economically friendly factories that produce nearly three quarters of global carbon emissions. To be exact, 71%, according to a new report from climate change non-profit CDP in conjunction with the Climate Accountability Institute. In fact, it is 100 specific companies that produce the largest contributions to global carbon emissions.
Here’s where the possibly radical suggestion comes into play, but the solution is clear. Either changes are enforced on these companies or they get manually shut down by international forces. Change has to happen, and it has to happen soon. Urgent times call for urgent responses and as a whole, people have really made great strides in the right direction to help climate change prevention. However, currently, it’s not enough to save us, but all is not lost. If the power of driven people can plant 1.6 billion trees in a year, a feat which we saw in 2019, then that same power can get 100 companies, and more, to change their ways, or get them shut down. Hope is not lost and it’s not time to give up the fight. We just need a bigger, worldwide and possibly extreme effort from every global citizen. Is it time for a revolution? Possibly. Is it possible to prevent climate change? To a certain extent, yes. Can we do it? I think so, we just have to act now.
