This world is constantly changing as the ever-populating planet’s inhabitants are continuing to use its natural resources, damaging its atmosphere. With the pollution increasing, the extinction of species and the icebergs melting, this problem is continuing to increase according to seniors Emma Tilley and Amber Birdwell.

“I think that climate change is a huge issue that our community is ignoring,” senior Emma Tilley said. “Pollution is increasing and our CO2 emissions are at an all time high.”

According to Tilley, these are among the many facts that today’s communities ignore. And it will only get worse if the citizens of this Earth continue to stand idly by and watch this world worsen.

Some students feel there are actions we can take to prevent this problem from worsening.

“We can work on reducing our carbon footprint,” Amber Birdwell said. “We can buy sustainable products [and] we can reduce our plastic consumption.”  

Birdwell has already started to take action against this changing climate.

“I don’t waste water and I use a lot of reusable products and try to cut out as much plastic as I can,” Birdwell said.

In addition, people can institute resolutions as a community to better this environment’s state.

“We should take small steps as a local community to limit Aledo’s harmful impact such as                                                                   encouraging carpool and putting recycling bins around the city,” Tilley said.

Anyone can take part in these actions to better the state of the changing world that is withering away beneath the feet of those upon it.

“I think that the world is going to look like Wall-E,” Birdwell said.

For readers who are unfamiliar with Wall-E, it is a Disney Pixar movie about a robot (Wall-E) who is programmed to clean up a world where nothing living is among it and only polluted air and waste remains. 

The issue of climate change is currently being discussed in the news and with many speeches from the youth of the world.

“I think that a lot of the people pushing for action are portrayed as extremist in a negative way and there is not enough attention for people taking moderate action and just making slight changes,” Birdwell said. “There’s too much pressure to completely change your lifestyle and not just make some small improvements.”

Students feel as though there are many factors of our everyday life and events that take place constantly in the world that are harming the ecosystems and setting the world up for a dystopian future similarly to Wall-E.

“The agriculture industry is affecting climate change a lot more than people think,” Birdwell said. “And actually at the top of the list [Chloro- Fluorocarbon], the chemical that keeps your refrigerator cool and keeps air conditioning cool is completely messing up the atmosphere as in climate change. I also read that the vapor trails from airplanes are not just clouds, they are worse and they actually trap in more heat.”

The responsibility of raising awareness and being the striding cause for a better change has been noticeably left to the youth of the world to solve.

“It’s our generation that has the media to actually see the damage that is happening worldwide and I think the older generation is denying it because they don’t want to deal with it because they haven’t seen in throughout their whole lifetime,” Birdwell said. 

Teens believe that climate change is not and has never been something that citizens, as inhabitants of this world, can ignore any longer.

“Just because you don’t see the effects of [climate change] in your personal life, where you live right now, doesn’t mean that it is not hurting other people who are less fortunate at a much larger scale,”  Birdwell said. “And we need to not be ignorant and pay attention to the cries that are being ignored right now.”