INTRODUCTION

We have felt the hot sun scorch our backs and foreheads, leaving behind a trail of sunburns. We have seen the sad images of children suffering from malnutrition, their meals days apart so much so that their bones protrude through their skin, their lips dry, crack and bleed and their eyes so sunken in their eye sockets that they appear to be popping out. On the news, we have witnessed the gruesome aftermath of a harsh drought: hundreds of livestock fall and die, their carcass littering the once green lush grass now dried up, disappeared and in its wake, a brown carpet of nothingness is taking over. The once cool, wet air filled with small brown dust particles that float and fill our mouths, our noses and our eyes; yet it is as if the dust has filled our eyes so much that we fail to comprehend the reality of the change happening around us or better yet we find it easier to ignore the ever-evolving climate change fluttering around us.

Understanding The Effects of Plausible Deniability on Climate Change

Ignorance is bliss, they say, a phrase that people have strategically used to ignore information or current happenings and instead pursue their self-interest. Especially now as the world approaches dangerously high levels of climate change, with the world now 1.1 C warmer than it was in the 19th century and the amount of CO2 in the air climbing to levels of about 50% it is alarming that many humans beings have taken to plausible deniability to avoid having to actively acknowledge the existence of the problem and subsequently work towards its reversal.

For many human beings, including you and I, climate change and environmental sustainability is a problem delegated to big Cooperates, the government and activists. The excuse for this lies somewhere along the lines of ‘they caused it…they should fix it’ catalyzed by the fact that living an environmentally conscious lifestyle is expensive. Unless everybody cooperates,  individual efforts feel utterly insignificant. Many people find themselves in a conundrum of cognitive dissonance where their beliefs and actions seem to conflict. We post about climate change on our social media, talk about it with our peers and even lament the sad state of things but fail to live up to our words with action. For many of us, it is easier to live without caring, believing that one’s carbon emissions and lack of contribution to the cause are too insignificant to make a difference in the grand scheme.

CONCLUSION

Now the world looks to world leaders assembled at the 2022 Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP27, expectant that they will deliver a solution to climate change and environmental sustainability. I am left to wonder whether the real answer should come from home. Whether it is time for you and me to acknowledge our contribution to the problem and work on our contributions to reverse this. The solution towards charting a course of action towards environmental sustainability and tackling climate change should demand that each one of us be accountable and hold each other accountable. Are our eyes too filled with sand to understand that the future of our planet rests in our hands? You are the change.