Climate Change - and what WE can do about it

31 October 2021

Climate change, climate change, climate change. You hear about it every day. But how much do you actually listen to what you hear?

You’ve probably heard these statistics before, but let me just repeat them one more time. Almost 1 million species are predicted to be wiped out by climate change. The last 7 years have been the hottest in recorded history. Emissions are expected to continue rising steadily by 5% in 2021. Etc, etc, etc...

You may be someone who is well aware of climate change and its looming threats. You may be someone who “spreads awareness” and verbally supports climate change activists. The thing here is, it's all very well signing petitions, or complaining about what all world leaders are doing wrong, or posting your support for climate policies on Social Media. But unless we take our own real, tangible action, unless we make sure that we are practicing what we preach, all we really are is hypocritical.

One way to, so to speak, “practice what we preach” would be to reduce the enormous amount of waste of light and heat energy, for instance by taking the effort to switch lights and air conditioning off in classrooms when it is not needed. As a school, we have a significant amount of power to help impact the environmental situation worldwide: not necessarily through immediate or direct action like recycling or cleaning beaches - though that is also incredibly important - but by influencing younger generations, by building habits that will last them a lifetime.

So today, by all means sign Greta Thunberg’s petition urging governments to take action against climate change - https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/climate_action_now_loc/?cGKhGsb

But whilst you sign, perhaps you could also sign your own personal petition - one that asks you to think twice before you print, reminds you to turn the lights off when you leave a room, and encourages you to put a jacket on instead of turning on the AC.

Mari-Elena Arutyunova