Xavier Cortada, “Longitudinal Installation (South Pole),” 2007.
In Brazil, the fires advance in the Pantanal, driven by climate change but also by the dismantling of environmental protection policies. About 19% of the biome has already been hit by fire in Brazil alone, this loss is enormous for us.
I realized that we were at a breaking point when at 3pm I saw the day "turning into night" in São Paulo, due to particles from the smoke of the Amazon Forest fire.
When I was a child, I naively thought that rivers don't dry up.
With the forests in Brazil burning, our city skies get darker and daker when the smoke hits, accidents happen more often and we all breath even more polluted air. The worst thing is that the burning is a political action and the corrupt are gaining from the plantations and pastures that are going to take the burned forest´s place.
An increase in ocean temperatures due to the effects of climate change has resulted in substantially more severe weather conditions such as Hurricane Sandy that struck the Jersey Shore on October 29, 2012. This devastating event killed over 100 people, left over 20,000 displaced, and 8 million households without power.
I am coming from a place of extreme privilege when I say I am grateful to learn about these things as an adult, rather than experience them as a child.
Typhoons used to hit my hometown, Fukuoka, Japan, every year. Apparently, the trajectory of them has changed. In the past several years, they have directly hit my hometown less. Instead, this area has been hit by enormous rain disasters it had never experienced. The heavy rainfalls caused big floods and landslides that killed many people.
We don’t get the summer monsoon rains like we used to. The city of Phoenix has become a heat island that has become so hot in the summers, the much needed rain that comes during monsoon season evaporates before it has a chance to fall.
Here in Toronto, I used to be able to tell which season it was by observing the nature around me and attending to what I then considered fairly stable weather patterns. I now have increasing difficulty making this seasonal distinction.
Hurricane season is six months and as a Caribbean island, it doesn't matter how prepared we are. Every year it is more stressful.
We feel helpless when there is no power and old trees have fallen on power lines, lay across every street, and crash into our homes.
There is an active volcano called Cotopaxi near Quito. I remember when I was a little girl looking out my window to see the bright snow of Cotopaxi reach its skirts. Now, I look out my window and fear for our future, climate change is real and advancing ruthlessly. There is no longer snow on the skirts of Cotopaxi volcano, to find it, one must climb to its peak. I do not know what will happen next.
Global warming is real, it is insane that some people do not believe it! it is time to take action and create a better world for future generations!
My home town has been experiencing the hottest summer on record, with 50 days over 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius). There has been so little rain and so much wind that large trees are snapping like twigs everywhere I look.
There is nothing more terrifying nor worrisome than waking up in the morning to find the city you live in has had record-breaking rainfall as one of the most beautiful rivers in the coastal city of Qingdao floods. We cannot keep pretending climate change is not a serious issue if we want humanity to continue its existence.
The waterline of the Yangtze River is getting higher and higher in every flood season in summer. People in this city (Anqing) build the levees higher every year, but we still worry the water will go over the levees and inundate the whole city and the farmland when the rain falls.