What is sustainability and why we should care about it?

It is impossible to live in the 21st century and somehow miss the climate change discussion, but with the scientific community, activists, and many concerned citizens mostly agreeing that there is a real and deadly danger to the entire population of the Earth on the one hand, and lobbyists, sceptics, and people who are not sure, on the other, you can be forgiven for being misinformed. So let us give you a very rough overview of what is going on with our environment and why you should care about it.

We know for a fact there are many things wrong with the planet. Since about a hundred years ago, scientists began noticing a rise in the Earth's global temperature and began speculating its cause. The latter half of the 20th century was finally able to home in on climate change, more commonly known as global warming, as a problem with an increasingly shorter amount of time to solve. So how is Mother Earth doing today? Poorly, to say the least. According to the CRC, the planet is getting warmer than expected; the sea levels are rising, various biomes are shifting and becoming unliveable to their current populations. There are more severe droughts, floods, wildfires, and what's worse, the whole thing may become irreversible through the so-called "Hothouse" effect where one change in the climate makes another worse, spiralling the climate catastrophe out of control.

You may have gotten the feeling that this crisis, while looming and vital as it is to the entire human race, would be swiftly tackled. However, it seems the opposite is true. Don't get us wrong; there have been some positive changes. One crucial change was creating the Paris Agreement, where every country on Earth tried to find a common goal to slow down climate change. But since the agreement is not legally binding, many countries either have not met their goal or have actively worsened their pollution.

From how climate change is talked about, it would seem that all we need to do is stop driving cars and perhaps eat a bit less meat, and that's it. But sadly, reducing emissions alone won't nearly do the trick. The way we live, the number of things we produce, send from country to country, and how we think about the planet all make climate change a complex problem with no single solution. If we want to live on this planet, we need to learn how to live sustainably. That means changing our daily routines, our lives, and our countries to be accountable not just to the people and to the economy but nature as well. The one thing you can do right now to make the world a more sustainable place is to start taking the crisis seriously, talk to people about it, see if you can make a change.