Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing today’s society. It doesn’t matter where you live or how old you are; climate change affects your life and will continue to do so unless action is taken. Everyone has a part to play in mitigating climate change, youths included.
Mayokun Iyaomolere is the founder of Plogging Nigeria Club. In this exclusive interview, he spoke to African Leadership’s Chekwube Ukoh on Building a Climate Conscious Generation.
The new report from the International Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, calls for an immediate and complete transformation of every sector of society. Only then will it be possible to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. This begins with individuals. How can people’s behaviour make a difference?
Let’s take Nigeria, for example. We have a population of over 200 million persons. Let’s create a scene where a person drops a nylon bag into the drainage. That might seem insignificant because it’s just nylon and doesn’t clog the drainage. Let’s imagine again 200 million people, each dropping that into that drainage. It will amount to a lot of waste that would cost a lot of environmental problems.
Now, imagine 7.8 billion people in the world being careless with waste. That shows the power in numbers. Just one person looks insignificant, but when we count all the ones in different places, it becomes tangible and significantly affects the environment. In the same light, imagine 7.8 billion people being conscious and taking one action per day with everyone being aware of the type of food they eat, how they use energy, how they discard their waste and their carbon footprint.
Individual behaviour can make a huge difference. if every individual is conscious of the need for environmental sustainability, and the need to maintain balance with global temperatures, it will have an impact on their lifestyle and invariable, amount to massive benefit for the planet. The bottom line here is that every action counts in the fight against climate change, each person’s behaviour and effort to combat climate change and reduce global warming counts. This also means that for those already fighting to combat climate change, the conversation must continue.
Click HERE TO ACCESS THE FULL INTERVIEW on pages 60 – 462 of the May 2022 edition of the African Leadership Magazine.
