Beat the air pollution

Yoseph Worku (Ethiopia)
Honorable Mentions

        You might be tired of hearing about climate change, probably, now you’re hearing it for million times, but let me tell you my story. I grew up in small city called Haromaya. The city was well known for its beautiful lake. For me and my community that lake was not just a lake, but everything. I grew up playing and swimming in it, my father used to sell fish for living, my mom used to wash clothes in it, our goats used to drink from it, our community were used to went to the lake yearly to worship our God, the trees around the lake were used as a courthouse; courthouse which did not punish people rather preaches love, me and my dad used to enjoy watching wild animals’ fight and their life around the lake. For us, life was all about and all binds to that lake. We drank the lake, we breathed the lake, we ate the lake and we lived the lake. Things were exceptionally good for all of us until after sometime the lake depth started to drop, the rainy season started to pass without the usual rain. Life progressively became difficult task to lead. There was a season when my father’s crop did not grow on at all; the fish production decreased significantly, for uncountable times my dad came back with empty net. He sold all our cattle to feed us. But it was very hard for us to try for the next season. That year’s low productivity and drought forced us to move to Diredawa, a nearby urban city; I spent the rest of my childhood missing my home town. You can imagine how difficult it would be, getting use to urban life, where lake is only known by fame, and you crossed wild animal only in a zoo.  It took me 10 years to go back and fed my starving memories with pleasure. But I could not found the lake, found-out, it didn’t stay for long after we left, running away from the climate: it was gone for not coming back and took all my childhood memories with it. Climate change cost me my child hood, and it’s counting down to cost my life, the planet.
          How many of us have witnessed these kinds of scary scenario? Have you ever had such an experience? Okay, unlike me, you might be from the luckiest few for not having a past history but let me assure you that weather you like it or not, our fate is the same. According to IPCC’s report the climate change will be irreversible after 2100(high confidence). The change after mid-century will be even faster than the next few decades. In other words, those kinds of scenarios will be day to day news. Yes, this will affect developing country early but it’s only a matter of time to reach to developed nations. Weather you live in the white house, or in the China’s great wall, you are not safe, I am telling you, it’s just a matter of time. So you might ask now “wot should we do then?” I literally don’t know what we should do, but I only know few things, I know we need to do something and I know it needs to be now! The time to wake up from this silliness is NOW or NEVER!! We only have few decades to intervene; we only have slight chance to save the world. We have been ruining every opportunity in the past, we have done enough mess on the world to cause what we are facing now, luckily we still have one chance, one last chance, I am begging you, let’s not ruin this time. Unless everyone on board, we won’t make it.  Now is a critical time than ever to cooperate, I know, we might have different interest and I am sure one of the big issue is economy, foxes, forget about economy we are talking about survival! We will lose many species to the level of not securing world’s food need. What are we going to do then? We are losing around seven million people yearly because of climate change. That could be your mother, your sister or even you! So, if not now then when?
        The world is waiting for all of us to intervene: You don’t need to be a doctor, politician or professor all you need to be is a human being. Our planet is ill, unless we start hearing its pain, it is going to die. But it won’t die alone; it will take all things living on it with itself. So we need to manage our patient, the planet, we need to start hearing its pain, its symptoms and watch its signs to appropriately manage it. So we need to change our approach and change starts from oneself, we should stand being environment soldiers. We should start writing, singing, and shouting for the environment. We should start lobbing the policy makers this way to make them environment friendly. We should vow to our-self to make our every move environment friendly, for example use bike rather than car, use recycling Paper bag rather than plastic one and advocate those who are environment friendly. Then we can stand together for the left chance. And we can start hearing world’s pain.
            So let’s start hearing the world’s pain. Let’s began our reign towards climate safety. Let’s be the people who thinks more than today, scarifying our daily interest for tomorrow’s forever. We are very lucky that we have IPCC on-hand; they clearly studied and pointed out all the possible direction with satisfactory evidence so all it takes is our motivation. So, let’s not ruin this time, because, I couldn’t find a better motivation than life, and unless we stand together to fight for the planet, there is no chance!