Bethany and her Concern for the Climate

Whenever my mother tells me stories about her childhood, a frequent theme weaving through them is the concept of stable weather. She talks about how you could always predict the weather in Wisconsin based simply on the month and season. She talks about the April Showers that brought May flowers, about the hot, stagnant air of September, the dog days of August, the crisp, chilly air of October and November, and the constant snow that blanketed the ground from December to mid-march.

The Wisconsin I know, which is only 30 years older than the Wisconsin she knew as a child, is vastly different in terms of weather. One can see the difference simply by looking at the weather from the past year; we only had three or four hard snow falls that melted and re-froze because the temperature fluctuated between 35 and -30 degrees, there essentially wasn’t a spring — there was snow on the ground in late March and temperatures went from negative to blazing hot abruptly — and there was a heat wave in July. Now, in August, we’ve gotten a bunch of rain and the temperature is unpredictable.

Wisconsin isn’t the only state experiencing weird weather patterns, and catastrophic storms, earthquakes, hurricanes, tropical storms, droughts/fires, and floods have wreaked havoc across the country and abroad. More and more frequently, the world experiences what are considered “1000 year” events, dubbed this because they historically rarely happen. Now, it’s the norm.

These events are only one consequence of how we currently interact with our planet, which is why protecting the planet is important to me; I’ve already seen the effects of not doing so. Animal extinctions, famine, disease outbreaks, poverty, and a whole host of other issues are caused and exacerbated by human interaction. Not only do these things negatively affect the planet, they affect the people too, as many of these result in a huge loss of life and cripple infrastructure.

Now more than ever we have an obligation and responsibility to change the way we live and interact with the planet. In the past, we may not have realized the negative impact we were having, but we do now, and there is no excuse for us to ignore it. Currently, my generation and many generations after will suffer immensely while trying to improve an inherited problem. However, if we start making a honest effort right now, later generations may stand a chance at having a healthy planet and a healthy people.