Blogs
Davis Ryland, Townsville, Australia, Youth Climate Advocate
Youth Climate Advocate in Australia Blog
After researching and discovering many great youth advocates within Australia, it is clear too see that there are many individuals and groups of people making change before it is too late. However, my most favoured youth group is by far the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC). This organisation is in fact Australia’s largest youth-run organisation; their mission is to build a movement of young people who are formulating solutions to the climate crisis. Through extensive research, many countries were studied to investigate which ones were involved in the climate crisis and it can be concluded that China may be one of the world’s biggest consumer of fossil fuels. Consequently, these insurmountable heights of heat that are released as a result of burning coal may be a main contributor to the estimated average temperature rise of 3.5 degrees celsius by the end of the 21st century. Furthermore, Chinese research has estimated that a one-meter rise in sea level would inundate 92,000 square kilometres of China's coast, thereby displacing 67 million people.
Examples of Global North countries include Australia, Canada, Israel, Hong Kong, Macau, New Zealand, and Japan. All of these countries participate in the Paris agreement, which is ultimately an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance. Once these countries sign the agreement, they must each determine, plan, and regularly report on their contribution to battle climate change as well as revealing their overall emissions within their country. This failure to reduce emissions and to meet the required standards will cost the world a minimum of $2 billion per day in economic losses from weather events made worse by human-induced climate change. The main purpose for the signing up of 189 countries that have joined the Paris agreement is to raise countries' climate ambition over time to reduce the chance and affects of climate change as it is all up to the younger generations. As a result, when the Paris agreement commences, it begins to be very effective, especially when more prominent and wealthier countries cooperate and become involved. Predominantly, as the richer countries commit to mobilising these tens of billions of dollars every year to help poor countries cope with climate change, it benefits the impacts of climate change on an equal footing to emissions reduction and therefore spreads the awareness of climate change to a large majority of people.
Some of the main factors that Australia can begin as a country to combat climate change includes burning fewer fossil fuels and using alternatives such as natural gas, nuclear power, and geothermal energy. Additionally, reducing our incredibly high usage of electricity within Australia may be one of the biggest benefits towards reducing gas emissions. An additional change that can be made is to start riding or walking to school/work instead of driving or catching the bus there as transport is Australia's third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Within the school we have been involved in multiple programs to help spread awareness of climate change such as ‘Pimlico Think Tank, ‘Give up the Straw’, ‘Bohle wetlands tree planting’, and ‘Pimlico solar system’, these have all been successful programs over the years. Another initiative which Pimlico may want to implement is to upgrade the recycling system to spread the word of climate change as well as keeping environment clean, and promote better human health. Perhaps more solar panels could be installed also to produce more sustainable electricity for our school with lower cost.
