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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Howard chapter.

If you know about our planet today, you should know that it is dying. We should not ignore this issue or think that it is simply a fairytale. Climate change affects everyone on the planet and it is time to make a change. Based on recent news reports, Australia is just one of many places that climate change is rapidly destroying. The recent wildfires in Australia have already been one of the worst in its history. If this doesn’t tell you that we need to take action, I don’t know what will. 

If you do care about living on this planet for a long time and combating climate change, here are some things that we can do. It will not stop climate change from happening, but any measure to become more environmentally friendly will help.

  1. Try a plant-based diet

A plant-based diet is one method for combating climate change. A plant-based diet revolves around eating a meal that is primarily focused on plants and limits consumption of meat. It also has many health benefits such as reducing risk of heart disease, lowers chances of getting certain cancers, and obesity. This meal plan helps fight climate change because eating meat and dairy is one of the leading causes for our climate crisis. I am not encouraging anyone to stick to this plan for the rest of their life, but it would be beneficial for a week or two. 

  1.  Take the metro, subway, or walk one day out of the week instead of using a car.

According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, “Transportation is now the largest source of carbon emissions in the US.” Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions should be one of our main goals in finding solutions to improving our impact on Earth. Using public transportation has many environmental benefits that could lower your carbon footprint exponentially.

  1. Be mindful of what you throw in the trash. 

Often times, we don’t think about the impact of what we throw away in the trash or recycle. Recycling can help save resources and energy, save water, and keep trash out of landfills. We can protect our planet from further damage by thinking about little things such as recycling to help our future.

 

Deni Dedmon is a sophomore speech-language pathology major from Albany, GA. Her first love was writing but her second love was helping others, which led to her choosing a career in speech pathology. When it comes to her writing, she loves to write about everything, from entertainment (she’s an avid Kehlani fan) to book reviews (she’s been reading since the age of one) to controversial topics and current events (ya know, your average angry black girl things). Being the oldest of five girls, she is also passionate about young black girls, their self-esteem, and making sure that they’re proud of being who they are. At the age of seventeen, she became a contributor for MTV Founders and a spring writer for Affinity Magazine.