As I sit and reminisce on the past with my grandchildren, I
can’t help but focus on a particular time that most would have never believed would
happen before it did. It was in the late part of 2019 when a virus called
COVID-19 would be discovered. A few months later in the early part of 2020, the
world becomes infected with it. This very contagious virus originated in China
and was transmitted throughout the world through travel. Most countries took
the situation seriously, however, The United States of America was led by a President
that thought he knew it all. In his mind, it was nothing severe nor was it a
threat. Eventually, the governing bodies of America decided that masks and social
distancing would help slow the spread. What we thought would be a few months of
quarantine and mask-wearing turned into nearly a year. Under this President’s administration, a vaccine was dispensed to those in need in December of 2020. While
the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the only bizarre thing to happen in 2020, it was
one of the most significant.
However, one of the most important things to happen in my lifetime
was the world-wide deal to follow the Paris
Agreement. This was put into place in May of 2021. Luckily, the United
States elected a President in November of 2020 that would take office in
January of 2021. He took the climate crisis seriously and put forth the effort to decrease
the damage we have created on the planet we inhabit. This accord was revised to
project a plan that lowered the use of fossil fuels to .01% of the usage of before
it was agreed upon. Without
it, the Antarctic ice sheets were going to melt far sooner than anyone would
have predicted. The sea levels would have risen drastically
and many states and even countries would have been swallowed whole by the seas.
People’s homes, businesses, and the world’s overall way of life would change
drastically. With the advanced technology that we have now, we can look back
and see that we were so uncomfortably close to the verge of self-destruction
with our nonenvironmentally friendly ways.
To allow those of a younger generation to understand just
the slightest bit of what we were doing to the planet, I referenced the fire in
California was named “The Camp Fire”. It
was the most fatal and extreme wildfire the state ever had was in November of
2018. The climate change we were experiencing in this era was linked to warmer,
dryer days and caused fires. November is actually supposed to be a rainy time
for northern California. At the time, my husband lived about 20 minutes south
of where they finally got the fire under control.
Through lots of digging and research, I found some old
pictures to show my grandkids of what they predicted North America would look
like in 2040 if we didn’t change our environmental impacts. That was only 20
years from the time they created the image. They obviously know the cities
and states that make up the US and which ones would have been completely wiped
out. Also, the snow and ice towards the north pole are nonexistent in this illustration.
The polar bears and penguins would have become extinct.
I can say, looking back 45 years now, I am so thankful we
changed our ways and joined an accord that put the earth and the lives of our
future families first. We finally got hard at work, starting in 2021, and
created technology that allows us to leave the earth undisturbed. While mt
generation might have not been able to do much for the first 20 years of life,
we changed direction and it wasn’t too late. My grandchildren tell us all the
time how thankful they are they get to experience Disney World in Orlando like
I and their parents did. While Disney World is drastically different now, that is
just one small example of something we wouldn’t have been able to pass down if
the world kept going in the direction we were previously.
