#stopclimatechange

Climate change is a phenomenon that refers to the ecological disturbance due to massive shift in temperature of the atmosphere of our planet. I cannot stress enough on the fact that this is happening for real. Studies showed that only 42% of Americans still think that anthropogenic climate change is a conspiracy theory (The Economist -Why don't Americans believe in global warming? 2008). However, the data that scientist have gathered over the years does not lie. According to United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) we need to take strict and severe actions to control our carbon emissions this year to avoid experiencing further heatwaves, fires, floods, rising sea levels, and ecosystem destruction and other elements of a horrific but real nightmare (IPCC, 2022). Still there some are news outlets running a very profitable disinformation campaign against the real state of earth; framing a completely different picture that is consumed by 90% of the American population’s notion that this climate change phenomenon is not anthropogenic to begin with (Wright, Weather.com, 2017). Mainly because huge news publishing companies like Fox News have always given platform to extreme right wing republican fossil oil guzzling trump supporters to explicitly talk about climate change on the national television (Nuccitelli, D. (2013), widely disinforming public so that it makes life a little bit more consciously convenient to live as an average American consumer. I know you might be wondering, why am I talking so much about some deplorable facts of a first world western country when I myself come from India. I believe because:

1) Climate change is not a country specific issue, it is very much an entire planet issue (What are the effects of climate change?, 2022) 2) Culture is United States of America’s biggest export (Farhi and Rosenfeld, Washingtonpost.com: Made in America, 1998). The endorsement of ideology culture from the USA has a deep impact on how Indians form their opinion on various global issues till now (Malviya Influence of western culture on Indian society, 2021). 3) Carbon emission from India has been rapidly increasing because of current fossil fuel industrial and ever booming Indian Silicon Valley and its semiconductor war (Oskarsson and Bedi, 2018).

In the coming years we have to see how we deal with the western disinformation influence and design policies that are looking towards sustainability to save ourselves from the getting smitten with convenient “empirical” commentary and simulatenously burning the planet away.

Refferences:

• Earth day illustration by Alex Nabaum

• IPCC, 2022. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, in press.

• Wright P. 87 percent of Americans unaware there’s scientific consensus on climate change. Weather.com; July 11, 2017. Available at: https://weather.com/science/environment/news/americans-climate-change-scientific-consensus

• Nuccitelli, D. (2013) Fox News found to be a major driving force behind global warming denial | Dana Nuccitelli, the Guardian. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/08/global-warming-denial-fox-news.

• What are the effects of climate change? (no date) Greenpeace UK. Available at: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/challenges/climate-change/effects-climate-change/?source=GA&subsource=GOFRNAOAGA024K&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk5ibBhDqARIsACzmgLRZjpwQ03fliPmGoGySJS4iZzorfpY7hVIqf1ZMpBaOxNzo_VLiE_MaAt2ZEALw_wcB (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

• Paul Farhi and Megan Rosenfeld (1998) Washingtonpost.com: Made in America www.washingtonpost.com. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/mia/part1.htm.

• Shashank Malviya, Influence of western culture on Indian society (2021) Times of India Blog. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/know-your-rights/influence-of-western-culture-on-indian-society-37332/.