Picture this; like many other individuals lacking an activity to pursue, you are scrolling through social media and you come across a post that exclaims, “Save our planet! The Earth is heating up! YOU can make a difference.” How can I make a difference? Should I make a difference? You think to yourself. The post fades away with the swipe of a finger and your day moves along. Should we, the people,  make a difference? The answer is yes, climate change action should begin with a local contribution for the reason that it will prepare our youth for later issues and give the people hope for our planet’s future.

To inaugurate, Earth’s climate has been increasing rapidly throughout time, about 0.14oF per decade since 1880  (Lindsey et al.) which is leading our environment down a bad route. Many people know that our Earth is heating up like this, but not doing anything to help solve this issue. To cause production in solving this dilemma, we would need everyone to help; all ages, races, sizes, etc. The people that are easy to access especially, like family, neighbors, and anyone within our communities. Although some argue that if we put these issues into youth mindsets, it will damage them mentally and cause a lack of childhood, this is not the case. Getting youth involved is very beneficial to our environmental concerns, and even their mentality. The Article, “Scientific Advances Give Me Hope for Climate Change” reads, “a global youth movement on climate change that demands action… it leads to some ‘eco-anxiety’ fearing for their future. Such worry seems an unfair burden on those who will already inherit a damaged world.” (Liley 1), which shows that we do in fact need the youth to contribute and that playing a part in our issues will prepare them for our “damaged world”. Secondarily,  we can never fully get rid of the leading issue of climate change, but if we start devoting our time and effort to causing a difference now, we can give future generations (and even current ones) hope for our future, as mentioned earlier. The same article states, “We have till now achieved far too little to counter climate change, but we should proceed with confidence that a cleaner, healthier, and fairer world awaits.” (Liley 3) providing a strong message, that we should continue to have hope as long as we are doing our part.

So in retrospect, climate change should begin with local action. We the people should put the “change” in “climate change”. We cannot wait any longer for someone to do something about this, for we need to commence the action to get the ball rolling and get our people in the mindset of healing our sickening world. So the next time you come across a post advising to “Help save our planet!”, don’t just scroll past, consider how it will benefit us, and take action so that we have hope for Planet Earth.