By Kelia Kalibata
NAIROBI, Kenya, December 11 – Climate change is a big thing in our world. I know this because I am the daughter of a climate change speaker. When I was about 5 years old, my mum told me about climate change and that it is caused by global warming and that it impacts our world in a bad way, especially poor people around the world . I was devastated to hear this, I asked her ‘’how can we stop it?’’ She replied ‘’ you can spread the word about it’’
So here I am!
Today as I speak, greenhouse gases are increasing and this makes our world warm leading to fires and floods. There are so many problems like we lose about 1.2 trillion tons of ice from the Arctic each year! But there is something we can do about it. We can use RENEWABLE ENERGY, such as windmills, solar panels, Hydro energy, tidal energy, biomass energy and geothermal energy.
According to my research we are already 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than in 1900. If we reach and exceed 1.5 degrees, our world will be very difficult to live in because of too many fires, droughts and floods like you saw on TV here in Kenya a few days ago.
Just think about it; we cut down about 42 million trees per day and 15.3 billion trees every year! That means plants are not available to use carbon dioxide and there is less oxygen being produced!
But here is the thing, we put 14 million tons of plastic into the sea every year killing so many beautiful fish, how sad is that?. My research says humans are the main cause of all of this and more. So it means we can do something about it, right?
Well, we can start by using more public transport like; buses and trains or we could start using bikes or walking. Even better, we can start using electric cars and even electric buses. We can reduce our food waste. We can consider our long distance travel by using more electric train instead of airplane. For example, in France, they have put in place a law to prevent flights of less than 2 hour to encourage people to use trains. We can stop cutting down trees for furniture or construction!
If we do all these things and if every body around the world does them, we can easily stop climate change in the next 25 years.
I am asking all the leaders at CoP28 this year, where my mum also is, can you please listen to children and stop doing things that are not good for trees, fish and people. Thank you.
