For years humans have and are destroying, exploiting, and demolishing our beautiful planet. We drill into the earth’s veins to suck out its fossil fuels. We then pollute its environment by burning these fuels and releasing greenhouse gasses which heat up the atmosphere .
We all know that this leads to climate change, but directly or indirectly all of us contribute to this traumatic crisis that has been haunting both our planet and our youth for years now.
“When George finds a way to escape the spacecraft Artemis, where he has been trapped, he is overjoyed.
But something is wrong. There’s a barren wasteland where his hometown used to be, intelligent robots roam the streets, and no one will talk to George about the Earth that he used to know.”
– Goerge and the ship of time.
by Lucy Hawking.
This an excerpt from the cli-fi series ‘Goerge and the secret key to the universe’ by lucy and stephen hawking.
This book depicts the fear and anxiety that is in every kid about the horrible future waiting for us if we do not stop exacerbating our already worsening situation because of climate change.
“What often scares children the most is how they see the ‘adult world’ failing to take sufficient urgent action on these threats, whilst at the same time dismissing, criminalizing, pathologizing and patronizing their feelings and voices. Children and young people are increasingly taking center stage in protests about the need to take urgent action, whilst simultaneously often being the focus of society’s anxieties about the psychological impact of the crises; ‘we mustn’t frighten the children’. ”- Caroline Hickman
As defined by the American Psychology Association “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change” is called eco-grief.
According to a survey conducted by Bath university in 2021 across 10 countries, 45% of children and teenagers said their feelings about climate change negatively impact their daily life and functioning; 75% said they feel the future is frightening and more than half of them_56%, were in agreement that humanity is doomed.
As Gen Z experiences heat wave after heat wave, the effect of climate change runs through its blood and causes eco-grief in everyone. From infants to young adults the whole generation is experiencing trauma all because of the unsustainable lifestyles that we are leading everywhere today.
It’s an ordinary Monday morning, you wake up and brush your teeth with a plastic brush and squeeze your toothpaste out of a plastic toothpaste tube, one day this plastic ends up in the ocean to kill millions of marine species. Next you go take a shower instead of a bucket bath, wasting water that millions of people do not have access to, after that you get dressed and put your makeup on, the leather belt you’re wearing is probably the slaughter of animal skin and the industries that manufactured your make-up products probably release tonnes of carbon dioxide every day. You then get on to your car which is also green-house gas emitter to drive to work.
In one way or the other, all of us finally generate a HUGE CARBON FOOTPRINT at the end of the day through our unsustainable lifestyles.
The next time you think about driving your car to work think of the millions of children in the future generations who are going to suffer because YOU.
Start taking small steps and actions that are going to lead to a huge impact.
Millions of people can write articles and news stories like this about how to make ourselves sustainable to save the planet but true change only happens when the people reading apply these changes into their lives.