WMO report documents spiralling weather and climate impacts (March 2025).
Land and water degradation, food and water supply shortages, drug-resistant infections from overuse of antibiotics, overuse of pesticides and disease, sea level rise affecting coastal areas, microplastics/single-use plastic pollution on land and in the oceans, rapidly melting ice at the Poles, heatwaves, droughts, extreme rainfall, powerful hurricanes, and more … leading to people and animals migrating, people and animals dying.
It’s all real, it’s all happening right now, and much of it is connected.
If you are lucky, all of this may still seem remote and abstract, at worst, a minor, sporadic inconvenience; things that only happen somewhere else to people you don’t know.
But, more and more of us and more and more of our families and friends are affected every day. Cancer and sickness from toxic chemicals used on farm land, lack of clean water, not enough food, daily flooding along the coasts at high tide, people being killed and the economic devastation of wildfires, heatwaves, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and more. Inevitably, all of us and all of our families will be directly affected. It is a matter of when, not if …
Yet, frustratingly, it can appear as if society has not made much progress against the degradation of our planet. The signs and the forecasts have been clear for decades. And there are many loud voices (of politicians and corporations) who actively work against that progress.
Why don’t we do anything about climate change?
We have always needed leaders (political, business, religious, etc.) with the courage to take the long view to recognize and act against the degradation of the Earth. Who will take risks against the political grain and act now–who do not succumb to greed and corruption, who will act for all people and not just rich donors and corporations.
But, even more than that, we need to educate ourselves and act.
We can do things as individuals that may seem incredibly small yet, collectively, they add up and have an impact. Also, even more importantly, individual actions provide an example that influences others to act. In addition, we do not need to suffer or support fools and charlatans–and there are many of those on the nightly news and especially on social media. If we care about our families, our children and grandchildren and then their children and grandchildren, we need education, resolve, and action (however insignificant it may seem). And, that includes how and where we spend our money–what we buy and who we buy from, how we choose to invest (if we are able to do that), and–very importantly–for whom we vote.
It is a trap and a fallacy to think that some person or some magic technology will or can fix everything for us. It will never happen. This is not social media or a movie or TV. No one person, no one government, and no one organization (even with good intentions) can do it all–the issues and challenges are global. We have to be thoughtful, take effective actions ourselves, and we have to work together (be willing to find that common interest) across borders, across political parties, across different religions, across skin colors, and against the politicians, corporations, and others that deliberately sow division among us in order to increase their profits and power. So, how do we get along?
Because we are all in this together; there is nowhere else to go.
Questions? Please let me know (engelk@grinnell.edu).
