Climate Change Reflection by Aishwarya Jha
Students at CDI were given optional projects they could create in order to make the connection between the stories we tell in kathak dance and saving our majestic rivers and waterways. While the focus is on India’s Jamuna river, rivers and bodies of water the world over, including here in the Bay Area, are experiencing the effects of pollution and climate change.
Aishwarya Jha is 11 years old and a Beginning Level 1 Kathak student at the Chitresh Das Institute.
Climate Change Reflection By Aishwarya Jha
What is climate change? Climate change is an increasing issue around the world. It refers to major weather and temperature changes that are bad for the earth. Some of these changes are natural, such as variations in the solar cycle. That means the sun is radiating on a certain stretch of the earth for a long time. But since the 1800s, a major contributor to climate change has been human activities, making it the awful situation it is today.
How do humans cause climate change?There are three main ways humans cause climate change.The first one is driving cars! If you have a non-electric car, you’re burning fossil fuels to make your car run. Fossil fuels are made from the remnants of dead plants and animals. These remnants are found in the earth’s crust, and they contain carbon and hydrogen. Carbon and hydrogen are two chemicals that can be burned for fuel and energy.
Burning fossil fuels is bad because when they are burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.That carbon dioxide gets trapped in the atmosphere, and heats up the earth.Then, since all that heat is trapped in the atmosphere, it packs together and raises the temperatures of the earth, causing global warming.
The second way human activities cause climate change: producing trash! But not just any trash — plastic. Plastics take hundreds of years to disintegrate. Meanwhile, millions of tons of plastics fill our landfills each year, and when incinerated, release harmful gases into the atmosphere. A lot of plastic waste also ends up in the ocean, killing birds and creatures in the sea. So the next time you throw away a snack wrapper into your garbage can, think about just how long that wrapper will stick around on our planet.
The third way is deforestation (the act of cutting down trees). Trees store carbon.When you slice into one, you release some of that carbon. When you clear a whole forest, all of the carbon that was stored in those trees gets released, floats up into the air, then gets trapped in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This is extremely bad for the earth, yet humans are doing it every day.Unfortunately, there are many more ways that humans drive climate change; these are just a few main ones.
Activists who are fighting against climate change
There are many people fighting to end climate change already, like 19-year-old Greta Thunberg, a very popular climate activist. In 2018, Greta started spending her school days outside the Swedish Parliament to call for stronger action on climate change. She lives in Sweden, and is slowly taking on climate change, a day at a time.Another person isAlexandria Villaseñor. She is a teenager, and she was inspired by Greta Thunberg. She lives in NewYork. One Friday, she took a piece of card board and wrote “School Strike 4 Climate.” Then she sat with her sign outside the headquarters of the United Nations. She inspired many others to sit with her. Fortunately, these aren’t the only people tackling climate change. There are many others out there!
What can we do to help get rid of climate change?
Be like Greta Thunberg andAlexandria Villaseñor! These two young people realized climate change was an issue, and took time out of their day to protest about it. In the process, they encouraged others to help with climate change. You can join them. Help tackle climate change by leading movements and inspiring people to join the cause. It can really work! But protesting and leading movements aren’t the only ways to fight for the climate. Here are three simple ones that you can do right now.
For starters, turn off the lights when you leave a room. Every time you flip a light switch on, you draw power that is often created by burning fossil fuels. If you exit a room but leave the light on, you are just burning unnecessary fossil fuels, and heating the earth.
Another way is to unplug your devices when you’re not using them. Say you’re charging a device. It reaches one hundred percent, but you keep it plugged in anyway.However, you aren’t charging it past one hundred percent, you’re just drawing more and more unneeded energy that’s created by burning fossil fuels. If you unplug the devices you’re not using, this will save energy.
Lastly, you can reuse old clothes. This is a great way to help reduce climate change because every time you throw out an old shirt, you are creating unnecessary garbage.
If you have any clothes that are too small for you, up-cycle them, give them to someone else, or recycle them. Be sustainable!If everyone does these things, we can create a better climate for the future. But we need to all work together. Let’s reduce climate change, and create a better future for everyone.
Come see Aishwarya and 115 of her fellow kathak and tabla students perform at the CDI School Show “Jamuna Ke Tat Par…” on Sunday, May 22nd at 6pm and the Samuel Johnson, Jr. Performing Arts Center at Capucino High School in San Bruno. Link for tickets here.