$690,000. That’s the dollar amount Amazon Ceo Jeff Bezos pledged to donate to the Australian Bushfires. He is the richest man on the face of this Earth with a personal net worth of 116.7 billion dollars, 20 percent richer than the entire British monarchy. That inconsequential sum of money is what Jeff Bezos makes in about five minutes. Is that really the most he can do to help?  

     The people of the world need to wake up; half an entire continent is on fire, the biggest freshwater iceberg in existence is now entirely gone, global temperatures are spiking, and literal wonders of the world are now running at nothing but a trickle and we just keep living like we always have. Society has forced us to conform to set a schedule of behavior and care about many things that seem trivial when you consider that in 30 years our planet is unsaveable. A little past 30 years and mass species decline start, followed by unbreathable oxygen levels, new and aggressive cancers ravaging through the human population, and the disappearance of vital natural resources. 

     Many have decided to adopt an attitude of indifference or ignorance to the facts and continue to live in peaceful stupidity. This becomes especially frustrating when it is revealed that we have access to the technology for 100 percent clean and renewable energy for the whole world. It would only take 191,817 square miles of solar panels in the Sahara Desert in order to produce enough energy to match global consumption needs. 

     This is no longer an argument about the severity or the “validity” of climate change, this is becoming a very real and prevalent problem that will be affecting everyone personally before we know it. The excuse of ‘out of sight and out of mind’ will fade away when it’s the water lapping at your doorstep or the fire destroying the only place you have to live. 

     This may be what it takes to convince those so full of ignorance that they deny its existence entirely, but for those with cognitive and functioning intelligence, we need to be the ones that bring upon change and preserve a world that future generations can live on. 

     These wildfires started on the 11th of November, and have been ravaging across the Australian landscape since then, killing 25 people and about 1 billion animals, and even now the numbers are still climbing. The fire is mainly burning through the dry and highly flammable brush setting ablaze everything in its path. 

     This roaring fire is not the only indication that something is going on with the climate. In Greenland, two billion tons of ice recently melted in one day alone and left sled dogs stranded in a sea of water.

     Our planet has gone through periods of climate change similar to this many times in its lifespan. The only difference here is the obvious and drastic impact that our carbon emissions have had on the speed of the process. The Earth’s climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, unseen ever in the planets lifetime, making it impossible to further deny humankind’s obvious effect on the natural order of the Earth and the life upon it.