Essay Sample about Climate Change

Is it true that around 150,000 deaths are recorded each year from climate change causes and doings? Well, It’s very true and in some ways life threatening for the rest of the world, even for those who have good shelter and medical help. Climate change is only present in the world because of burning fossil fuels, causing the planet to heat over time. This has been happening the worst for around 50-100 years from the time people of the world started resourcing fossil fuels like oil and coal. Climate change with children's lives relates to the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sections five, 17, and 25. The best article that relates strongly to children and climate change is Article 25 in the UDHR which reports, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” (UDHR). Demonstrations and discussions taking place show the reasoning behind why climate change is a huge issue in the world, especially for those who are very wealthy and barely have homes or shelter. Children shouldn’t have to live in such a way where they might end up dying from their drinking water, mental health problems, and development delays. 

Subsequently, most people throughout the world believe that climate change is just something made up, but in reality it’s a very real thing. For example, those who do not have access to clean drinking water or even healthcare, are the ones who believe in it every single day. Imagine waking up in the morning, you would usually sit up, grab the glass of water filled up the night before, and start taking a sip without a question on if it's sanitary enough to drink without getting sick from it. Pretty easy for everyone to do without questions about the water you're drinking. But it’s not the case for those affected by climate change. You may wonder how in the world climate change could affect water since; it's everywhere for everyone to get and have access to. But in places like Africa for example there are thousands that feed off the water from local rivers that over time have been ruined and worsened by floods due to climate change. There is a quote from an article titled ‘Explore Climate Change’ that has a topic of climate change and how it affects individuals and they note that, “The climate crisis is the biggest global threat to human rights we’ve seen in our lifetime” (Explore Climate Change). Being what this article has stated, children around the world with poor drinking water, shelter, and resources are the most affected, even more than adults. Children most of the time won’t be able to grow up and have lives of their own from the consequences of climate change. 

Equally as important, the discussion of climate change affecting children, there needs to be greater awareness of the fact of childhood being a very important vulnerable state of life to grow. And climate change is stopping that development for millions of children around the world. From a resource titled ‘Climate change is harming children’s mental health - and this is just the start’ there is a message in greater detail that explains how climate change really is affecting many children points out, “From birth to age five, children are highly vulnerable to infectious disease, environmental toxins, heat exposure and dehydration. Physical health problems can delay reaching developmental milestones in areas such as cognition and language, and these interact with and increase mental health vulnerability” (Vergunst and Berry). When explained, it may be difficult to understand but basically from the time children are in the womb to the time they are running out and playing, climate change may affect them more and more every day by certain diseases created by this, which may be very harmful if not treated. And that is where it gets scary for some families because hundreds of thousands of people around the world don’t have access to that help, doctors, and local hospitals as we most do. ‘Climate change is harming children’s mental health - and this is just the start’ has another in depth reasoning on the best way to help prevent and eventually stop this crisis implies, “The best way to protect children from the effects of climate change is to aggressively mitigate global heating and supercharge adaptation to the harm it has already done. This may seem obvious, but the persistent failure of national governments to collectively tackle climate change has crushed optimism and nibbled away at hope” (Vergunst and Berry). As Vergunst and Berry tell us, the government plays a key role in protecting those children and simply just individuals around the planet. Without government intervention it does not doom the people of the world from seeing their children grow up and be able to have a sheltered life but it certainly won’t be able to do it as quickly without some type of help with resources, medical help, and supplies. 

Even though climate change has taken a big role in human nature with not letting children develop correctly from mental issues or poor health, their shelter and living day-to-day has also taken a toll. In places like Burundi, Africa, they struggle with day to day life style including shelter, food, resources, and medical treatment. Places like this take the biggest hit from climate change because neighboring nearby countries can’t afford to help them, more or less help themselves. From floods, droughts, and an escalated or drop in temperature it makes it hard for countries like Burundi to supply themselves because of destroying their main source for food, their crops. Every single individual in the world has a right to have shelter and food but if that is taken away from some, like in Burundi, they won’t be able to regather and pick themselves up again for a long time. To form a piece of evidence that this is actually happening and taking away shelters from people, two very educated folks on climate change agree that, “Hot days are becoming hotter and more frequent, and droughts and heavy storms are occurring with greater intensity and loss. Rising sea levels, the result of melting ice sheets and warming ocean temperatures, threaten homes and critical infrastructure” (Fowler and Doherty). As these two said, the rising temps and storms have very large threats on homes and shelters around the world in that range of being very affected. Scientists around the world try to calculate and predict when bigger storms are coming or when more and more of the ocean will unfreeze but it's more of an estimation. In words of trying to protect individuals and their belongings, we as a world have to try to  minimize climate change causes. But being the hardest thing in the world for people is to change. You can’t just go out and make individuals change and especially not large companies from burning fossil fuels but it can be shortened and narrowed down over time, and that's all we can do to protect those who don’t have access to health treatments, food materials, and for some even a shelter. 

Climate change takes a huge toll on the environment and the lives of individuals, especially children. Children have a right in the world to have access to water that will not get them terribly ill, shelter over their heads to protect them from dangers, and anything to protect them from later having development problems. Not to say climate change doesn’t take a toll on adult lives, it does, but children are the most affected ones in areas where climate change may affect them. More diving into the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ is article 25. Article 25 basically regulates that individuals have a right to a shelter, clothing, food resource, and security to different things like their health or widowhood. Climate change relates so greatly to this article as climate change affects every one of those reasons shown in Article 25. Pollution of fossil fuels drives climate change forward every single day and as it keeps driving it up and up things like very harsh storms that cause droughts, is a way individuals around the world who have little help can’t have clean enough water to drink or to even bathe in. In less recent studies some scientists have shown that around 150,000 to 250,000 people die because of climate change related reasons. But more recent sources have shown in the present day there's over 5 million deaths per year because of climate change related causes. The last seven years of time has been the hottest recorded weather and temperatures ever recorded. And aside from climate change affecting people it also is affecting over a million different species around the world that in most cases help individuals like us survive. Being that earth is losing around a trillion tons of ice in the ocean around the world per year, this crisis is something that needs to be taken seriously so people and children around the world can survive and not grow up in their lives wishing it were done sooner.