Ecoanxiety; Will I have a future?

To wonder if you will have a future is something that many people experience. Not most, but many. My unnerve rests in the future of our planet.

Ecoanxiety, noun, “extreme worry about current and future harm to the environment caused by human activity and climate change.” What many people don’t understand about the state of our climate is that we are not just, “at risk of global warming and climate change,” the climate crisis is now. We are living through it and we have the knowledge, technology, and physical ability to mitigate its effects and preserve our Earth, but we continue to argue about it rather than doing anything productive about it.

Society doesn’t see climate change as the threat that it is. We hear about wars all the time. Humans fighting against humans, violence, threats, crimes, people dead. What if I told you the effects of climate change that we are experiencing aren’t very different? 

Climate change is a world war. It is humans against our literal world but it isn’t deemed as important as such. Climate change can kill, it has killed, and continues to kill. In America alone, upwards of  1,500 die each year due to our planet's retaliation for our foul way of treating it. These people lose their lives to extreme heat, flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. This is the price we are paying.

At the rate we are going, within the next decade, climate change and global warming could get to a point of no return within the next decade. Change needs to happen and it needs to happen now. If not the future of my generation and the generations following will be diminished. At this point, humans will not be able to adapt to the severity of climate disasters and our kind will be altered dramatically. By 2050, over 14.5 million people will die each year from climate change. I will only be 41 years old at that time. 

Every year we break a new record for the hottest day, month, or year that our planet has seen. As this trend continues, Ecoanxiety in the younger generations increases as well.

As a high school student with a passion to make a change and a love for nature, I want a career in environmentalism. More specifically, I want to be an environmental lawyer, journalist, and/or activist. However, with project 2025 looming over me, I can’t help but wonder if this career will be a plausible option by the time I get my bachelors degree.

Project 2025 would essentially eliminate restrictions on fossil fuel drilling, carbon emissions, and more. It would eliminate the clean air act, and even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Weather Service. If these plans are to follow through and they are able to abolish the policies that protect our environment, a career asan environmental lawyer would be completely unrealistic. There would be no policies to protect.

When talking about the state of our planet and the rate of climate change, I am also talking about my future. My career, my quality of life, my way of life. So much is uncertain, but in this case, it doesn’t have to be.

No one is perfect and everyone could be doing more to help the environment. If everyone does their very best to do their part, the universal effect could be dramatic. We would see significant improvement. More than anyone, however, we need to get our world leaders to understand the weight that is the climate crisis. They are the ones that can use the resources and knowledge we have.

Moreover, will I have a future? In some way or another, yes. Will I have the future that I want for myself and that my family wanted for me? At this rate, it is certain that I will not. However, I will do everything I can to improve my future and that of future generations.