It’s been a while since I last wrote an article. I struggled to find the time last month; I returned to my second year of sixth form to find a larger work load as well as the extra pressure of university applications and extra-curricular commitments. Most of my spare time I spent socialising rather than writing, largely because I was celebrating my 18th birthday!
When digging through previous articles I’d written to find inspiration for this month’s article, I found a piece I had written three years ago, just after my fifteenth birthday, regarding my environmental concerns about the world I was growing up in. Since then, politics has become increasingly polarised and conspiracies about climate change have become more common. I have also changed as a person (and my writing has thankfully improved), so I thought it would be poignant to write a more reflective piece this month about my attitudes towards the current state of our environment, now I am officially an adult!
I was born in 2007, when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. I share my birthday year with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Spice Girls’ Reunion Tour and perhaps most notably the iPhone, which has changed our cultural landscape forever, both making it easier for people to engage with politics but also facilitating the spread of fake news about issues such as climate change.
In 2007, the IPCC also released their Fourth Assessment Report, which changed the way in which we consider climate change as a society by confirming that recent warming has been driven by human activity and raising for the first time that some effects could be irreversible. The former UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, Achim Steiner, declared that the report “removed the question mark” over whether human activity was driving climate change and its widespread significance led to forty-six countries responding with a ‘Paris Call to Action’ which further strengthened UNEP.
Since 2007, there have been several environmental breakthroughs. Renewable energy has become increasingly efficient, widespread and cheaper to install. Between 2008 and 2018, the amount of solar power installed globally increased by 5000 per cent and has become ten times cheaper, illustrating how the demand for renewable energy lowers prices. There have also been notable policy outcomes, such as The Paris Agreement of 2015 which raised public awareness about climate change. The Climate Change Act of 2008 is an example of a policy outcome specific to the UK and introduced the independent Climate Change Committee to review the government’s ‘carbon budgets’.
Once more, climate change has become a much higher-profile issue in the public eye – Greta Thunberg’s rise to fame in 2018 with her ‘School Strike For Climate’ movement is what inspired me to attend environmental protests and events from a young age, make positive changes to my own lifestyle and, most importantly, demand systemic action.
However, there have also been some newly-founded environmental challenges since I was born. For one thing, the climate crisis has worsened, with the last nine years being the warmest on record globally. In recent years, there has been debate amongst scientists about whether the 1.5 degree threshold set out by the Paris Agreement has been met, a level at which irreversible changes, or tipping points, become far more likely. There have also been more extreme weather events, such as the floods in Pakistan in 2022 which displaced 33 million people and submerged a third of the country underwater. During the Canadian wildfires of 2023, an area larger than Florida was engulfed by flame.
As I touched upon briefly, the rise of social media has led to a ‘post-truth era’, resulting in climate change becoming a mere matter of opinion to some, despite it being heavily backed up by the most respected scientific research. Trump’s first and second terms as President have resulted in a new wave of climate denial, as well as the slashing of legislation intended to mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change, a topic I covered in more depth in an article last year.
However, as easy as it is to write about the past, as someone calling for more action on environmental issues, I have to paint an inspiring vision for the future and the next eighteen years of my life.
First of all, I think it’s essential that we continue to make progress in the renewable energy sector, particularly in the face of the cost-of-living crisis which is driven partially by an over-reliance on North Sea oil and gas. As a teenager who is reliant on buses and trains, I also think it is essential that public transport is universally accessible and affordable given it has a much lower carbon footprint than travelling by car. It is also bizarre to me how it is significantly cheaper to travel abroad by plane than by train when aviation is one of the most polluting sectors.
Installing innovative low carbon technologies has to be a priority, as well as building more infrastructure such as sea walls to combat the effects of climate change which we are already witnessing. I also think a transition to a circular economy which prioritises reusing products and minimising waste is vital.
Of course, it’s easy for me to say what I think needs to be done about the climate crisis because I am not in a position of power or restricted by financial constraints, I do think it is important that governments work collaboratively and internationally, whilst emphasising the infinite benefits of a green transition and portraying it as a positive opportunity rather than merely as a response to the climate crisis.
In eighteen years, I will be 36, and countries have a choice: to tackle the brunt of the climate crisis hands on whilst creating a positive future for us all, or to continue to brush it under the carpet and watch as we face the increasingly extreme effects of climate crisis which have rapidly worsened during my childhood.
I hope you found this an interesting and informative read, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue! Feel free to send me an email (my address is mayrosepuckey@gmail.com) or contact me on Instagram or Substack (@maypuckey).
