Article written by: Veronika Makovey

Last week a friend of mine announced, mere moments after I brought her up on putting her soft plastic rubbish in the wrong bin, that she doesn’t care because she doesn’t think global warming is an actual thing. Now, I must point out that this is a very educated friend, who reads many scientific journals and articles, who is very much across worldly events. Needless to say, I nearly fell off my chair. Aside from the fact that it made me seriously question our friendship when two people can hold such opposing opinions (well it’s really more than just an opinion for me, as climate change dictates how I live each day and seeps into my daily life decision making). It left me wondering how a great deal of people can be so convinced that climate change isn’t just a fictional narrative that most of humankind is currently conversing.

Just like during the recent political election, when most of Australia took sides, I proceeded with caution to ensure I was not blaming or shaming my friend but rather engaging in her opinion with an open-mind and from a place of curiosity, in order to fully comprehend or pinpoint where that opinion originated. Her point centered on the fact that the Earth has shown cyclical weather patterns over the last 100,000 years or so, therefore proving that this is just another cycle, which will inevitably result in human kind being erased, just like on previous occasions, therefore recycling, reducing, rethinking and promoting a circularity in our product use are ineffective as the future is bleak regardless of our efforts.

She was not wrong in regard to the Earth’s cyclical patters, as indeed over the last 650,000 years seven glacial advance and retreat cycles have occurred. The last cycle ended with the ice age approximately 7,000 years ago, which is when human civilisation began along with the modern climate era (NAASA, 2019). These changes in the climate were associated with the small variations taken by the Earth’s orbit altering the solar energy received by our planet. However, since the mid-20th century 95% of all temperature changes have been proven to be directly correlated with human activity and this rate is only increasing.

See here this very sophisticated and scientific graph, which gets straight to the point. Man is that spike is higher than any Louboutin’s can contend with.

How are these statistics obtained you might ask, gosh so hungry for facts! Well, NAASA has been known to launch things into space, and they have one or two Earth-orbiting satellites up their sleeve that collect many forms of different information about the planet, it’s climate and give a clear image on a global scale of what our big picture future entails. The data all shows substantial evidence of a changing climate, from extreme weather, ocean acidification, declining arctic sea level, decreased snow cover, rising sea levels in parts of the world, shifting wildlife populations, warming ocean, shrinking ice sheets. Other ancient evidence is found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. “This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming” (NAASA, 2019). The National Geographic (2019) are also in agreeance that these changes have all began to emerge and will continue to do so as humans release into the atmosphere the heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

So there are the hard facts that I will continue to hold closely until further research emerges, which might challenge my thinking yet again. As for the question of how to change people’s minds? Well that has been circling for the test of time, all you can really do is live your life as you desire, in alliance with your moral values and set an example and hope that maybe, just maybe others will get on board. Or just start a magazine, where all of your colleagues are on the same page as you so that you can relish in that deep state of naivety envisioning the whole world becoming conscious green queens.