Last week in Paris, more than 120 world leaders joined in at the most important Climate Change Summit in history to discuss environmental issues, with the goal of writing up a climate change deal. While security decided to cancel some big events related to the meeting, due to recent attacks in Paris, that did not stop thousands of people around the world and hundreds in Paris who marched to put pressure on leaders to come to a conclusion.
Some of these thousands of marchers are a group of millennials who are joining scientist James Hansen in suing the Obama administration for failing to ditch fossil fuels as a major energy source in the U.S. Just in case you’re not sure, fossil fuels are basically marine or land plants that have been buried in the Earth and turned into coal, natural gas and crude oil -- hence, "fossil."
Fossil fuels are the top dog of energy sources, however they run out much faster than they can be produced, and they also produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane gas that trap heat in the atmosphere, which has resulted in global warming. Alternative energy sources would be water, wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass fuel and nuclear energy. These sources do provide some of the world’s power today, but could provide much more.
Among these young activists suing the government is 15-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh from Colorado, who told reporters that they’re “holding [the government] accountable for their lack of action." Tonatiuh is of the generation that will be affected the most by global warming, and wants to reduce the future's inevitability of things like rise in sea level, increased precipitation, extinction of animals like penguins, stronger hurricanes, more floods and droughts, and less fresh water. All of these things are expected to happen in the next century if the warming continues at the rate it is at now.
While the outcome of this lawsuit is uncertain, what we do know is that this case has made the fossil fuel industry very nervous, to the point where they have tried to get the legal action dismissed.
Obama said in the opening of his highly anticipated speech at the summit, “I've come here, personally, as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.”
Tonatiuh says he acknowledges the steps that the U.S. has made to slow down the warming, such as a push for more electric cars, investment in clean energy and reduction in carbon emissions. However, the goal of reducing warming to two degrees Celsius above the temperature levels prior to the Industrial Revolution would require complete elimination of greenhouse gases.
We live on a beautiful planet, and for those of you who saw Interstellar, moving humanity to a different planet is a tad far-fetched. We are simply animals who were somehow given the incredible chance to live on a planet with intrinsic beauty -- deep blue oceans, rolling green hills, tall and gorgeous mountains and colorful trees -- simply because it has the materials we need to survive: water and oxygen.
We got lucky. And now, because we’ve evolved into intelligent beings who created an industrial society, we’ve overindulged a bit on our energy sources, resulting in the deterioration of our planet and the resources crucial to our survival.
But I think 15-year-old Tonatiuh said it best: "The reason we are fighting for this is because of the world we want to grow up in, and the world we want our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to grow up in," he said. "This is not a selfish cause. We're not politically invested, we're not financially invested... We are in this because of the way it affects the state of the planet we want to be left with. That is the most noble cause, I'd say: Leaving our children a better planet than the one we are living in today. We are doing our part. We need political leaders to step up and do theirs."
Chills. What were you doing when you were 15?
