What if you woke up one morning and found that your taps have run dry or if you had to run out of the space that you call home because the lashing rains have flooded its insides with nothing but the dress you currently have on and your brand-new PlayStation has drowned in its waters.
As of today, the Earth is the only home we have, and our selfish acts of negligence have worn her patience thin. We are at the brink of a climatic catastrophe and we have no choice but to act NOW!
Every year I look forward to spending my vacations with my extended family who live in a little hamlet in the Indian state of Kerala. The joy of witnessing the golden hues of sunrise and sunsets amidst the lush greenery and the healthy company of loved ones is inexplicable. But the last two years (2018-2019) have been different and difficult for all of us. The rains lashed fury as it pelted mercilessly for days and nights with no signs of abating. At first it felt fun to watch the heavy droplets hit the parched Earth, but the worrying rise in water levels, fluctuating electricity and being cut off from the world in spite of the technology we owned, that had run out of charge, had given our exciting vacation a terrifying twist.
After a fortnight of rains and floods and managing to take a roundabout journey to the city of Bengaluru, we had landed ourselves in our grandparents’ home where incessant drought had caused the borewells and hence their taps had run absolutely dry!
Our generation have been witness to technological wonders that were unimaginable on another day in the past but we are also the generation who has got a taste of the Earth’s fury.
The Amazon is burning, the coral reefs are dying, glaziers are melting, ecosystems are collapsing, and can we still be in denial?
The Earth is our home and we need to use technology effectively, tweak our lifestyles and plant more trees to repair the damage we have done.
Quoting Greta Thunberg, “The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have the facts and the solutions. All we have to do is wake up and change.”
I am Siddharth Menon from Grade 6F. I chose ‘at the brink of a climatic catastrophe’ because I believe that we, as a generation, who are witnessing rising temperatures, droughts and floods raging our planet cannot continue to believe that we will not be affected by it. Climate change has the power to scramble everything we do and achieve and will transform and touch every aspect of our lives. Each one of us needs to address it, act upon it because the Earth is our home and we, the residents of this home, must do it NOW!
Note from Author: This story was written for TedEx Modern in 2019 for the topic ‘At the brink of climatic catastrophe.’
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