by Evelyn San Miguel ‘26

Climate change, for decades, has been something inevitable but ignorable by those it affects the least. Until now, the year 2023 was the hottest on record, a record that will likely be broken in 2024 and the years following. We’ve known about the existence of climate change since 1896, when Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius predicted that changes in carbon in the atmosphere could create a greenhouse effect. And since then, awareness about climate change has increased, but meaningful action hasn’t. Many of the deadlines for carbon neutrality, clean energy transitions, or effectively saving the planet are set for 2025, 2030, or 2050 at the latest. We need to start making changes, and fast.

The catch is that our summers have become unbearable, our cities have already begun to flood, and our air quality has started to deteriorate to dangerous levels. This year had an average temperature of 58.96 degrees, 2.4 degrees above the usual temperature. We need to convert to clean energy, we need to stop destroying our environment, we need to utilize alternatives for our most harmful commodities, and now. Climate change may not be inevitable if we do something about it, but it will be if we don’t.