Blog Post
Our house is literally on fire! Climate change is a non-discriminating evil that is affecting every life equally. From a constant rise in temperatures each year to rising sea levels. Save or escape- Global Warming has posed a very important question for us! Scientists have predicted that the temperature will keep rising for the decades to come mostly because of the greenhouse emissions produced by human activities such as the burning of coal, oil, and gases. Deforestation is also one of the major causes of the rising carbon dioxide emissions. It is true that if humans were to become extinct, the Earth will thrive in our absence. The planet will restore itself when we are gone but will our civilization survive this massive climate crisis that we are currently facing? Solving climate change is the need of the hour and now more than ever it has become indispensable to give back to mother nature instead of the other way around.
The Brand Called You has looked into several ways in which one can achieve that with our guest Anshuman Bapna, Founder and CEO of Terra.do, an organization that educates people about solving the climate crisis. An alumnus of IIT Bombay and Stanford, Anshuman has worked with many big corporations like Google, Deloitte, and Makemytrip, until he found his true calling. Now the Founder & CEO of Terra.do, his vision is to get 100 million people to work for climate change by 2030!
“Climate change is not some distant future problem, climate change is already here.” Anshuman Bapna
About Terra.do
Terra.do is an action-oriented global education platform that is committed to solving climate change. It teaches individuals about solving climate change with a team of change-makers from around the world. The learners become efficient in all aspects of climate change with this course, from being able to do part-time activism to full-time jobs or starting their own organizations. Anshuman shares the journey of the conception of Terra.do with The Brand Called You.
Challenges in Solving Climate Change
Yes, climate change is important. But how do we fix it? Anshuman informs us about the challenges we face while tackling this crisis and their possible solutions:
Our economy is fundamentally built on top of burning fossil fuels and gases, one of the major reasons for carbon emissions. Moving away from that and shifting to renewable energy sources is one solution for that. “The realization that we are so far gone, that simply stopping to emit carbon is not going to be enough, we will have to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and the oceans.” Planting trees to absorb the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is another way. Thirdly, Anshuman points out that we have to live our personal lives sustainably, businesses and large corporations which are the biggest exploiters of our planet should rethink their ways. He encourages conscious and sustainable resource extraction from the planet.
“India’s GDP is already one-third lower than what it would have been had climate change not happened in the past 30 years.”
How much time do we have to make things right?
“We have a certain amount of carbon budget which is the amount of carbon dioxide that we can still emit without having catastrophic changes to the planet and the big caveat is that even if we avoid, even if we stay within our budget a lot of our bad climate impact effects are already backed in and sea-level rise is definitely one of them where it seems like it’s very hard to turn the tide. So to speak on that, even now, even if you were to stop today, so that’s kind of the pessimistic message…”
On an optimistic note, Anshuman informs us that we have to question the way we run society right now to be able to solve climate change. Instead of using technological fixes, we have to work towards solving this crisis by altering our lives in such a way that we do not become a problem for our planet on an individual level. “We need to transform how we do energy, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, so many sectors of the economy and not just in one part of the world but in every part of the world.”
Is there any good news?
“Just doing our part is not enough!”
Now that we are familiar with the catastrophe that is climate change, let’s talk about what we can do to make a difference. If you are thinking that you’re done with your environmental consciousness after shifting from a plastic bottle to a reusable one, the time for doing the bare minimum is up. Anshuman talks about ways in which we can reduce our personal carbon footprints: if you have a meat-eating lifestyle, eat less meat, if you have to travel extensively, do it only if it is very important. Getting involved in politics and getting involved in the action is the way forward! How can we do that? Anshuman answers,
“So the way you get involved in the action is by recognizing that you have skills that you’ve acquired through all your life. You might be in sales, in marketing, in software… every single one of those skills is required for solving the climate problem. This is how vast this is, so consider using your skills to solve a specific climate problem. Second is to get politically involved. That could be by taking up a local issue that has a clear environmental impact and playing a role in that and using that to catalyze a lot of action within your local community and in your local politics.”
Ever since covid-19 economies are bouncing back after suffering for a whole year. But all of this is happening at the cost of our dear planet. When things turned ugly, we ran back to our old ways and used the cheapest sources available instead of using renewables. 2021 recorded the second-highest percentage of carbon emissions in the history of humankind. We are on the path of destroying our planet and all our neighbor species. The earth has a capacity to heal itself, let us do our best with what we have and solve this crisis.
Watch the episode here: https://youtu.be/cKOMjXqqQVk
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