Why We Should Take Action Now for a Sustainable Future?

What do babies and sustainability have in common? Besides their strong association with the future, some believe that both sustainability and babies are other peoples’ responsibilities. This way of thinking might remind you of that certain person who’s always like Not my problem until it affects me. Sadly, such attitude sometimes comes from heads of governments and political leaders. (Here’s a misuse of the term leader). Those are the same people, who metaphorically would stay calm on a sinking boat because the hole is not at their end. But how long can those people act indifferent towards major global issues? Maybe until their blood tests show the presence of microplastics?

Speaking of microplastics, the news that made the headlines on the occasion of World Health Day, April 7th was that microplastic particles the size of sesame seeds have been now found deep in the lungs of living humans.
This means that besides all sorts of air pollutants we have been inhaling microplastics too.

Will such news serve as a wake-up call and encourage people to take action or is it going to increase eco-anxiety? Eco-anxiety loops back to the initial question in this article.
The health of children and young people and the health of the world are correlated. The climate crisis fear is taking a toll on the mental health of young people and children. Younger generations see their future as closely related to that of the planet. On the other hand, they feel betrayed, by those who are supposed to take action and reverse the consequences of the climate crisis.
Moreover, the rate of young people who fear having children due to climate crises is growing too. This was confirmed by a survey conducted by Bath University in collaboration with five universities in 2021 with 10,000 young people aged between 16 and 25 from ten different countries around the world. Based on the findings, four out of 10 are hesitant to have children.

Moreover, the authors said that the levels of anxiety appeared to be greatest in governments where government climate policies were considered weakest.

On its part, UNICEF confirmed in 2021 that 1 billion children – nearly half the world's 2.2 billion children – live in one of the 33 countries classified as “extremely high-risk” due to the climate crisis. They face a deadly combination of exposure to multiple climate and environmental shocks with a high vulnerability due to inadequate essential services, such as water and sanitation, healthcare, and education. At the same time, the UNICEFs report confirmed a divide between the areas where most greenhouse gas emissions are generated and the areas where children are facing the most climate-driven impacts. All the 33 countries together account only for nine percent of total CO2 emissions.

Children in these countries are exposed to floods, both coastal and riverine, cyclones, vector-borne diseases, lead pollution, water scarcity, high levels of air pollution, displacement, etc.

What to do

Different from humans, nature has no agenda. It just exists. While humans, on the other hand, have self-interests and desires. According to the philosophy of climate crisis indifference, the above mentioned are traits that make some humans unable to empathize with nature. Thus, to them, the world gets reduced down to just a resource used for business profit.

At this point, the planet can be considered a business that is running out of financial resources. While a business can search for a temporary solution in loans and bank credits, the Earth has nowhere where to borrow resources. All the planets in our solar system are alleged dead. Even if there would be some valuable resources in them, it would be way cheaper to save this planet, than to mine resources from March.

This has been said out loud by the younger people joining the climate protests. There is no Planet B that was commonly displayed in their banners. The quote comes from the same name book by Mike Berners-Lee. The book covers all sectors that both have an impact and are impacted by climate change, such as energy generation, food, and agriculture systems, mobility, money, metrics, etc. Lee discusses the current economic models, wealth inequality, and greed. Among others, he highlights the need for universal access to quality education.

If you agree with what’s said above and want to start taking action, we suggest you start with entrepreneurship education. Don’t believe those who say that only a certain category of people can become an entrepreneur or that you need to pursue education programs that last for years. The Earth doesn’t have the luxury of waiting that long. Action is needed now and anyone can try the entrepreneurial path to make a change.

If you don’t know where to start and how to convey your vision, the online training at the Entrepreneurship Campus will help you to build an entrepreneurial mindset.

“Successful entrepreneurial designs are often innovative without inventing anything new. The innovation lies in re-combination,” Professor Gunter Faltin highlights in one of the lessons.

The Entrepreneurship Campus's goal is to provide exposure to entrepreneurship to everyone that thinks about taking this path, especially young people living in developing countries.
Everyone who has an idea deserves to have a chance to develop it into a reality.
The Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition is your chance to get started as a young entrepreneur and to help empower your peers. You can join with an idea or project that contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals and gives hope for a better world for future generations.