If you hear the words “climate change,” the first images that might come to your mind is the face of a young Greta Thunberg and the famous 2016 Paris Climate Agreement. Well, that was 2016, now 10 years ago.
You might’ve thought that the climate crisis was slowly turning around and that countries across the global were committed to meeting their carbon emission goals and companies were well on their way to net-zero emissions. But do one internet search on the words “climate change,” and this perspective will be shattered completely.
One search on Google will get you headlines such as “Birds Aren’t Just Declining. They’re Declining Faster, a New Study Finds,” from The New York Times or “The Trump administration is disappearing climate change data” from The Hill, all in a single glance at the search page. Every day, another piece of data comes in with another heartbreaking statistic that disease rates are on the rise due to air pollution, a new species is endangered, or climate laws and regulations are being stripped away.
My Perspective
When I first got to college, I didn’t have a strong interest in climate change. I knew its importance but never found a personal reason to become invested in it. It always struck me as something that the government was working on solving, and with all the new technology that had been developed over the past decade, we were well on our way to solving the problem. However, I began working in a research lab about climate politics in my second semester of my freshman year, and I began to realize that the idea I held about climate change was wrong. The world was not changing — our emissions were getting worse as the days passed, and the pledges companies and countries had made were not coming to fruition. I found that the governments of the world were putting the breaks on progress. I realized that climate change is political, and as someone who aspires to practice law, I realized there is a whole sector within the policy-making process that is shaping our futures, and I have a chance to take part in it.
What’s GOing on
We are in a climate crisis. But in the political state that we live in, our current administration is not supporting sustainable practices and policies. Immediately when President Donald Trump entered office for his second term last year, he issued an executive order to the United States United Nations Ambassador to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement for the second time.
In regards to electric vehicles, a way that individuals can lower their personal carbon footprint, Trump ended the $7,500 and $4,000 tax credits for purchasers, giving the public no inventive to drive cleaner. In April of 2025, Trump dismissed approximately 400 climate scientists who were writing a report on the extent and impacts of climate change in the U.S.
It is clear that the current administration, from day one, has been on a mission to erase knowledge about climate change and push their agenda of drilling for more fossil fuels and shutting down clean energy solutions. The issue here is that climate change should not be political because the consequences of not working towards solutions affects all, no matter who you are.
Oil companies such as Shell and Exxon Mobil have known about the consequences of fossil fuels since the 1960s and 70s. However, this knowledge was not shared publicly because it hurts the bottom line of these massive and extremely wealthy companies, who bring in billions of dollars every year that just keeps growing. Our world runs on the burning of fossil fuels and creates billions of tons of carbon emissions each year, killing our Earth every second.
Moving Forward
With all this said, it is extremely difficult to have hope and keep looking towards a future full of the life. Since I began researching and learning about the extent of climate change a year ago, I’ve been hearing more bad news every day. It hurts to read the news. But we must realize that this issue is no longer someone else’s problem or the future’s problem. We have a limited time to lessen the damage that we have already done, because the point of return is long gone.
The more I read and learn, the more I get angered and fired up. Maybe it’s because I am still young and naïve and have always hoped for the best. But maybe it’s because I realize I have a voice, knowledge behind me, and a strong desire to change things. There is hope, as we have many people leading the change at the higher levels, but change starts at the smallest level, by talking to a friend or a neighbor. Knowledge truly is power and the more we know and can share with the people around us about the issues that our climate is facing, the higher chance we have of creating positive change that will turn us back in the right direction.