Tackling Climate Change through Sustainable Lifestyles
One of the biggest challenges facing the international community today is the issue of climate change and its effects. It is widely accepted that emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, from human activities are causing global warming and a change in the earth’s weather patterns. Global warming is affecting different parts of the world in different ways. However, wealthy and industrialised nations are able to cope with the impacts more readily than poorer nations where the effects are more harshly felt.
Today’s youth are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change and the last that can do something about it. Climate change is without doubt a key driver for achieving sustainable lifestyles. Whether we realize it or not, each and every one of our actions impacts the environment, and we may not realize how harmful our everyday behaviors and actions are on the environment.
It has been projected that the world population will reach 9.6 billion by 2050, and if that happens we need an equivalent of almost three planets to provide the natural resources to sustain current lifestyles. Nearly all growth as projected will take place in the developing world. This will put immense pressure on our natural resources, biodiversity and the ecological balance of the planet. We need to change the way we view our resources and, more importantly, how we use them.
Climate change will not be effectively managed until individuals and communities recognise that their behaviour can make a difference. Young people today constitute an important group within our consumer societies, and the habits they develop now will play a decisive role in future consumption patterns. Their decisions as consumers exercise a growing influence on markets and lifestyles. Therefore, they deserve special attention in efforts to change wasteful consumption patterns into ones that are more attuned to sustainable development.
We must act now to ensure that future generations will have enough to live on and bequeath to their own descendants. If we do not change our ways, nature will check us in its way. Promoting sustainable consumption and lifestyles is more urgent than ever.
