Climate change has many faces.
A man in the Maldives worried
about relocating his family as sea levels rise, a farmer in Kansas struggling
to make ends meet as prolonged drought ravages the crops, a fisherman on the
Niger River whose nets often come up empty, a child in New Jersey who lost her
home to a super-storm, a woman in Bangladesh who can’t get fresh water due to
more frequent flooding and cyclones…
And they’re not only human
faces.
They’re the polar bear in the
melting arctic, the tiger in India’s threatened mangrove forests, the right
whale in plankton-poor parts of the warming North Atlantic, the orangutan in
Indonesian forests segmented by more frequent bushfires and droughts…
These faces of climate change
are multiplying every day.
For many, climate change can
often seem remote and hazy – a vague and complex problem far off in the
distance that our grandchildren may have to solve. But that’s only because
they’re still fortunate enough to be insulated from its mounting consequences.
Climate change has very real effects on people, animals, and the ecosystems and
natural resources on which we all depend. Left unchecked, they’ll spread like
wildfire.
Luckily, other faces of
climate change are also multiplying every day.
Every person who does his or
her part to fix the problem is also a Face of Climate Change: the entrepreneurs
who see opportunity in creating the new green economy, the activists who
organize community action and awareness campaigns, the engineers who design the
clean technology of the future, the public servants who fight for climate
change laws and for mitigation efforts, the ordinary people who commit to
living sustainably…
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