Get Well Soon: Climate Justice for All of Us
The sun shines brightly on the faces of thousands of youth who squint their eyes both against the sun and with determination. Many hoist signs above their heads with the strength reserved for a great injustice, boldly shouting chants and voicing their concerns about climate change inaction:
“Rise before the sea does!”
“Planet over profit!”
“The climate is changing! Why aren’t we?”
Though diverse in age, color, and shape, these youths gather outside their capitol building with a single goal: save the world. They are fighting a battle for their futures, their hopes and dreams, and their health. They are part of the millions waking up around the globe, seeing the torture of their Mother Nature, and refusing to let the greedy write their history. This error that has gone on too long stops now because we are a part of nature. To betray nature is to betray us. To save nature is to save us.
Each one of us holds the responsibility to stay informed, demand change for the better, and keep politicians and companies in check. We can no longer rely on the people who continue to deny climate change to fix anything. It is up to us. Large corporations are the number one contributors to climate change and the destruction of Earth. When left unchecked, these corporations have the freedom to poison the Earth, you, and me. As the impacts of climate change worsen, so will the health of every human being.
Climate change will hit minority communities the hardest, including those with chronic illnesses like myself. I was born with a genetic mutation that causes three interconnected, debilitating diseases: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Mast-Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). For as long as I can remember, I experienced symptoms of dizziness, regular fainting, chronic migraines, allergies, and easily dislocated bones. However, I was only diagnosed with this genetic mutation in the last year because there is so little research about it. For years, I was in the darkness, spending weeks unable to get out of bed and haplessly searching for anything that would help. I am far from alone in these symptoms, far from the only person who could not find help from the medical community. I had to learn how to manage these symptoms through trial and error, with the support of my parents and others I met through online communities of suffering people.
On my journey to improved health, I discovered that I could greatly reduce my symptoms by managing stress, maintaining a strict, nutrient-dense and organic diet, filtering my water, and sleeping regularly. This has enabled me to focus on my education so that I can help others with chronic illnesses in the future. However, without clean air, clean water, and a thriving Earth, not only will I descend into sickness but so will the rest of humanity whether they have preexisting conditions or are healthy. When we are fighting for the Earth’s longevity, we are fighting for our own longevity. Let us look at the symptoms of human impact on Earth — pollution, warming climates, biodiversity loss — and treat those symptoms. Together, we can eliminate the destruction of Earth through collective lifestyle changes, just like I have eliminated my symptoms through lifestyle changes.
The first symptoms we will examine are water, air, and land pollution. We’ve all seen the shocking images of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, growing and destroying like a tumor consuming our Earth. We’ve seen turtles suffocated by plastic bags, mother birds cut open to reveal their bellies filled with trash rather than food for their chicks. Even our own bodies contain plastic waste, because it works its way from the oceans, into our water sources, air, or up the food chain, and into our blood. The trash in the ocean is slowly beginning to equal the garbage stinking up our land, garbage that symbolizes our mass overconsumption and unchecked corporations. Our trash injures and poisons wildlife, contaminates water, alters human hormones, and causes illnesses including but not limited to compromised immune systems, organ failure, neurotoxicity, and cancers.
Air pollution results from mass transportation, industry, and even the evaporation of contaminated water. Politicians of the world have agreed to reduce carbon emissions and pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, which is far too late. Already, pollution forces children in Beijing to wear masks just to go to school. Today, pollution of the air we breathe causes an astounding yearly death toll of seven million people, along with unprecedented rates of respiratory disease. Improving air quality demands sustained and coordinated government action at all levels. But beyond air quality, pollution combined with carbon emissions is causing a warming climate, which comes with a whole new set of symptoms.
Climate change is accompanied by the melting of glaciers, which is causing the exchanges of warm and cold water in the oceans to change at a staggering rate. This is leading to rising sea levels, which will inevitably result in millions of homeless people — just like those who have already had their homes flooded in Bangladesh — as well as less arable farming land. Homelessness will impact minority communities first, including those with chronic illness, because they will be unable to afford what they need to be healthy. Additionally, the ocean dysregulation is creating extreme weather events capable of devastation that may even match the devastation humans have brought. This unpredictable weather, decreasing lands, and poor air quality is a major threat to agriculture, with farmers struggling to adapt to a dying world. But changing weather is not the only thing threatening our food supply. Because of profit-seeking farming practices and the use of herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides, 90% of soil is dead. Soil that has had thousands of crops mass-produced upon it no longer has nutrients to offer, and the lack of nutrients in foods will soon contribute to malnourishment even in first world countries. Yet soil is just one place experiencing biodiversity loss.
Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction at a rate greater than when dinosaurs were wiped out. Regarding oceans, it is estimated that over fifty percent of our oxygen originates from the oceans — but without phytoplankton, which is threatened by the loss of whales and sharks as well as plastic pollution, noise pollution, and oil spills, the oceans can no longer purify the air in a world where pollution is increasing. Losing phytoplankton combined with ocean dysregulation will result in empty oceans, which scientists predicted to occur by 2050.
As far as terrestrial mammals go, we’ve encroached upon their territory so much that they struggle to survive. Cutting down forests at a rate of 400 football fields a minute, pouring concrete and asphalt over rich land, mining for metals, and over-consuming nonrenewable resources and energies. As biodiversity disappears, humans become more at risk for diseases because it will increase pathogen transmission across a wide range of infectious disease systems. Each animal that goes extinct has a ripple effect throughout the world because each animal plays a crucial role in maintaining the Earth. Healthy biodiversity is crucial for healthy humans.
Pollution, climate change, extreme weather, and biodiversity loss. Every symptom we have discussed results from human impact on Earth and goes full circle to impact human health. If there is one topic we should agree on, it is that Earth is a living organism and if it dies, we die. We must listen to screams of Mother Nature and fix this error before it becomes an irreversible mistake. Here’s ten tips on how you can save the world:
- Reduce personal plastic consumption by investing in a reusable water bottle, bringing your reusable bags to supermarkets, and choosing to buy products that use less plastic.
2. Reuse the plastics you buy.
3. Recycle, but do it properly.
4. Buy locally grown food to reduce the carbon emissions of food that must be transported across the country.
5. Purchase from businesses with sustainable practices.
6. Support local businesses.
7. Lower meat consumption.
8. Educate others about climate change and the daily choices they can make to help save the world.
9. Participate in climate justice activism such as strikes and rallies to encourage politicians to take action against climate change by creating stricter legislation to hold companies and countries accountable for their impact on the world.
10. Write letters to politicians and large companies expressing your view on the necessity of climate action.
The environment is in us, not outside of us. As American-Indian Author, Deepak Chopra wisely stated, “the trees are our lungs, the rivers our circulation, the air our breath, and the earth our body.” In this way, we are all interconnected, and what you do to the environment, ultimately you do to yourself, your family, and your future. We must heal the world if our planet and the innocent lives upon it are to survive. We must act now. Even in the midst of a massive health crisis like COVID-19, climate change continues. And we must not underestimate environmental degradation and the impact it will have on human welfare like we did the spread of coronavirus.
Get involved. Make your voice heard. It is time to save the world.
Dakota Kirk is an eighteen-year-old Tucsonan with a love of climate activism, education, and science. Her own struggle with incurable genetic diseases sparked her passion for the biological sciences, which she plans to major in on her journey to help others with chronic illness. Dakota works to bring climate change awareness to her community. In her free time, Dakota loves to read and write, play the piano, skateboard, and teach ASL to her peers.
