Sidd Sachdeva

Sidd Sachdeva

AI for social good

Earth Day Reflections

4 minute read

Published:

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“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall

Like most people, I agreed and nodded my head when teachers and talking heads said we needed action on climate change all of my life. However, I avoided thinking about it too much. For me at least, it seemed to me like I couldn’t make a difference, so why bother? I’ve come to realize that the truth is that everyday of my life I’ve been making a difference. I eat meat that comes from a fossil fuel powered industrial agriculture system, take flights that cause more emissions than the average Indian emits in a year, and consume way too much products, packaging, and services that consume mind-boggling amounts of land, water, and fossil fuels. Being a citizen of modern industrial civilization, especially a privileged citizen, means that whether I admit it or not, I’ve already had a significant negative impact on the environment, probably more than most people. And the fact that so many people, especially those with means, live like I do means the world is more dangerous than it was when I was a child.

And to be honest, I don’t really believe that we can reverse the problem. It takes decades for industries to change, and we don’t have decades.There is more carbon under the rapidly melting permafrost than everything humans have ever emitted waiting silently to be released. As ecosystems are decimated by extreme events and human consumption, huge amounts of carbon are burned into the air and nature’s biggest carbon sinks are being destroyed. And all of that says nothing to the political resistance that real action on climate has met, not just in America.

All of this is incredibly daunting, and for most of my life, I’ve dealt with it like most people: by looking away. The thing is, reality has a way of punching you in the face. I saw blackouts in California caused by the yearly wildfires that have now become a fact of life. I saw Indonesian wildfires turn the most prosperous and clean city in the world, Singapore, into a haze-filled hellscape where it is dangerous to go outside for weeks. I saw countless cities and farmers in India reach water day-zero as the rains stopped and aquifers dried up. And that’s just been my personal experience as someone who is mostly insulated by wealth from these crises.

The reality is, my and everyone else’s life will be radically altered by changes in our environment. I have seen firsthand there’s no ignoring it and no escaping it, only delayed confrontation of the truth. Despair doesn’t help anyone either. But that shouldn’t stop us from acknowledging reality. Where do we go from here? What does it mean to be a part of a civilization that is hurtling toward self-inflicted destruction and suffering unprecedented in the history of our species?

I don’t have all of the answers, but part of what I think it means to live through climate collapse is a fundamental re-evaluation of everything I take for granted. My 23 years of existence have happened to be during the time when humans have inflicted more damage to all life than we ever have in our history. The world I grew up in is not normal, even though most of the time it feels like it is. The world I will live the rest of my life in will be extremely different than anything any human has ever experienced. A world where avocado toast, cheap coffee, and swiss chocolate turn from delicious snacks to distant memories. A world where immigration toward opportunity becomes migration toward habitability. A world where water and land management are more valuable than asset management. A world where the best ways to reverse climate change are also the best ways to adapt to it, such as nature-based approaches, reductions in consumption, and investment in communities. A world where some will use ingenuity to survive, and others will use violence. A world where resilience is more important than efficiency.

Most of all, it’s a world where sooner or later, whether through redemption or by force, we will all learn that we cannot continue taking so much more from our planet than it can give. On this Earth Day, I’m thinking about how to live in that world, and I hope you do too.

If you’re curious about what you can do, here’re some things I’ve done that have given me answers when I felt like I had none.

  • Read: https://drawdown.org/
  • Join: https://www.sunrisemovement.org/
  • Give to: https://www.nature.org/en-us/

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