Environment Journalist of the Year: Runner-up

WARNING: the aim of this article is not to make you lose hope but to give you the motivation to help solve this global dilemma. 

Since 2018, Climate Change has been a trending topic on the news, never quite grabbing the headlines, more a filler for impending ‘breaking news’. Greta Thunberg has, almost single-handedly,  brought attention back to climate change. As she’s eloquently said: ‘they’ve had 30 years of blah,  blah, blah and where has that led us?’ Exactly, nowhere. We all need to do our bit, so just spending an extra 5 seconds washing your yoghurt pot therefore it can be recycled is worth it. We need to care, must care, but our motivation is slowly ebbing away, and we cannot let that happen. 

Climate activism started in the 1990s, yet emissions soared by 32% between 2000 and 2010. No global pact was signed until 2015. An extra 14% has accumulated since 2010, bringing the total  increase in carbon emissions since 2002 to a whopping 41%. 

The British Government isn’t taking this crisis seriously: talking more rubbish than they can recycle (only recycling 50% of what we but in the recycling). It promised to reduce emissions by 80% from the 1990s. We are on target, right? Wrong. Parliament is said to have invested 1 billion pounds to tackle climate change and making burning peat moss in Scotland illegal, though more than 1 million  

disposable coffee cups and lids were used by the House of Commons in 2021 alone – equivalent to  1,500 cups per MP. There is a law to not recycle non-recyclable materials, yet not one to recycle  recyclable materials. Still our government invests half a billion pounds in coal. The government has  long pledged to implement their Deposit Return Scheme but not until late 2024.  

According to the IPCC, the climate emergency is a code red for humanity. Our government is failing  us – instead of talking about ways to solve and fund climate change, it talks about P&O Ferries and office closures. Parliament needs to stop arguing and debating and just work together! 

Everywhere I go, I hear people say: ‘Recycling a plastic bottle won’t tackle climate change’. Ok, you might be right, but what about if everyone in the UK recycled one plastic bottle every day, or  shopped at a bulk store? We would recycle 24,352,800,000 plastic items! In school, I try to talk to  people about reducing the consumption of red meat, and we all agree we should all use less… but nobody follows this pledge through! The term hypocrite springs to mind!  

The problem is people believe in change, but do not realise it starts with them. In Germany for example, when you work in an office, people give you a distasteful look if you throw your plastic bottle into the wrong recycling bin. Peer pressure is a powerful thing, so if we used it better like our  German friends, the world would be a better place! 

Our outlook on the climate crisis needs to change, and it is in our hands to help while there is time. Our society is failing the earth, this is not a matter of opinion anymore; we need to open our eyes to the facts.