Winter Never Came
Winter in Bulgaria used to be fierce and cold with temperatures below minus 20 C back in my childhood years. As a country in Southeast Europe, Bulgaria has all four seasons. I anticipated every one of them throughout the years, however, this time winter never came. We did not have the traditional snow for Christmas and December felt like spring. In Russia the situation was similar. It was around zero C where it previously would be minus 30 C or even minus 40 C.
While I was in Russia in January, grateful that I could enjoy at least some snow, I started seeing every media channel getting flooded with the news about the Australian fires. This year they started earlier, will end later, and are more uncontrollable than ever according to the 2020 article by Nicky Phillips and Bianca Nogrady in Nature.com.
And the fires are not the only issue. Every year 750 billion tons of ice is melted due to the high temperatures according to TheWorldCounts. This translates into 24 thousand tons of water added to the world’s oceans every single second. Only Greenland’s melted ice is about 11 billion tons per day in the summer. Another extremality is the increasing temperatures in Antarctica. On the 6th of February 2020, the record high temperature of 18.2 C was recorded in the Argentinian research center Esperanza on the Antarctic Peninsula reports the 2020 New York Times article by Derrick Bryson Taylor. All these events that bombarded me in the course of a month were not an anomaly. They showed an emerging climate trend that was alarming. This made me feel like we as humankind are not doing enough to stop it.
One of the main culprits for the global temperature increase is carbon dioxide. Our planet cannot cool off with the same rapid speed at which we, humans, release carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a byproduct of our industries. The huge corporations and businesses that are the main pillars of stable economic success are one of the biggest carbon dioxide emitters. Changing the way businesses operate is a possible solution. However, this is easier said than done. The transition to the “greener” business system is slow, costly, complicated, time, and energy-consuming and results in fewer profits. It is basically a bundle of all things that the business world wants to stay away from.
Currently, more than 100 members of the US congress openly deny or question the existence of climate change and some of their views on the topic can be found in the 2019 article written by Ellen Cranley in Business Insider. I acknowledge the fact that shifting to a completely different way of managing our economies might cause serious problems and some politicians are strictly against businesses concentrating on being “greener”. This might lead to an economic crisis with many potential problems like shortage of essential goods, unemployment, and poverty. However, the ice keeps melting seven times faster than 40 years ago, Greenland keeps losing tons of ice every summer and temperatures keep hitting record highs in an increasing number of locations. Ninety-seven percent of scientists believe that human activities significantly contribute to such alarming climate changes.
In the attempt of protecting the stability of businesses, politicians might oversee the bigger picture. We need to come up with better solutions rather than just pretend the problem does not exist until it is too late and it affects us beyond the point of recovery. Instead of focusing on maximizing profits, we should invest our effort, creativity, and work into finding more innovative and environment-friendly ways of doing our everyday jobs.
Raising awareness of the problem and its consequences globally is crucial in order to take action on an individual level. But if only I am trying to make a difference then what is the point? One person compared to more than seven billion is not going to change anything. Yes, but we are social creatures. Scientists have proven that if people around you are already taking action to be environment-friendly, you will subconsciously strive to make more sustainable decisions too. Personally, I do small things like cutting down my electricity consumption, recycle, and substitute the car with a bike ride or a walk. How did I start doing this? Seeing my friends and family do it or talk about it was enough to make me change my habits towards a “greener” lifestyle. On the other hand, I am inevitably influencing my community towards such actions. Eventually, the governments and businesses will feel pressured to adapt their policies to the growing number of people who support a more mindful lifestyle.
Breaking the vicious cycle which destroys the homeostasis of Earth is a challenge but we need to take on our duty of human beings and synchronize our daily lives in accordance with the planet. Because above all we are Earthlings performing the dance of life which would not be possible if Earth does not play the music.
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Vesselina Tasev is a student majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication at American University in Bulgaria. She wants to raise awareness of climate change and global warming issues.
