We celebrate Earth Day on the 22nd of April of each year. I find it a bit sad that we have to celebrate the protection of something of which we cannot live without. It is, after all, the most popular slogan among environmental protection organizations, that “There is no Planet B.”
Before I proceed any further, I would like to clarify one thing: I am biased as I write this. My environmental sensitivities are probably higher than the average person’s out there. I understand that some of you may regard environmental change to be of only minor significance, inevitable and/or unsupported by scientific evidence and I do not intend on proselytizing you through this text.
Thus, I am not presenting any data (although I could easily have done so) because I know that those who believe it to be true don’t need to see them, whereas the rest will just disregard them.
Now that we have clarified this, I will take my biases one step further and claim that the environmental change is real because I can feel it. Living in a place like Cyprus where the temperature routinely hits 40C in the summer, I may not so readily be in a position to understand a difference between 43C and 40C, but where I can certainly feel a difference is at the “edges” of summer. I now need to turn the air condition on even on April and October. And apparently, others can feel it too, in different ways: In a study presented by NASA half a year ago, it was found that sea levels have risen by 3.4mm in the last 15 years (so much for not presenting scientific data!) In the same study, the case of some inhabitants of the Solomon Islands was presented. They said that some of the islets close to the larger islands had disappeared. NASA confirmed their claims through satellite imagery.
BP, the energy company, had until recently, a commercial in Euronews: It advertised the company’s environmental responsibility by focusing on its research for the use of algae as fuel. I honestly didn’t know what to think about it. On one side, it is good that a company that produces a major part of our fossil fuels (the primary source of temperature rise) is looking at cleaner sources of energy. On the other, algal blooms have become more commonplace in recent years, exactly because of the warming up of our planet. Would BP have considered the use of such an energy source had algal blooms not expanded that much? I do not know.
What I do know for certain, is that each and every one of us is a signatory to a treaty of much greater importance than the Paris Agreement: We are signatories to the social contract that requires us to spare some resources for those coming after us. It is a form of sacrifice, no doubt. But then again, wouldn’t any parent sacrifice themselves willingly to ensure their children’s’ wellbeing?