Our Opinion: Ignore climate issues at the peril of our children

Within the annual worldwide celebrations of Earth Day every April 22, there’s always a bit of sadness and, maybe, even fear.

Earth Day came and went on Tuesday, and despite the recognition of all the great work so many environmentalists and politicians and, especially, average citizens concerned about the world we’ve inherited, there’s another realization that becomes more and more stark as the calendar changes.

The environment we have the responsibility to protect, despite the work of so many, is crumbling.

As the world wakes up the morning after the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, there is much to be concerned about when it comes to man’s persistent threat to the environment. Earth is coming off the hottest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with 2024 averaging 2.3-degree warmer temps than the 20th century average. It broke the record set in 2023; In fact, the 11 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2014.

It’s no wonder, then, that scientists predict grave consequences if humans don’t make significant strides in righting the planet’s ship. The oceans are heating and becoming more acidic. Polar ice caps are retreating; NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment found Greenland and Antarctica combined to lose 427 billion tons of ice between 1993 and 2019, per year. There has never been more carbon dioxide concentrated in our atmosphere than was found last year.

Climate change is real. It’s indisputable. And, it’s costing the world lives and money.

Humanitarian emergencies from crippling heat waves to property-consuming wildfires, damaging floods and deadly hurricanes are increasing in number, scale and severity, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO’s research also insists 3.6 billion people worldwide live in areas highly susceptible to climate change, and the cost of health issues stemming from it is estimated to be between $2 billion and $4 billion per year in half a decade.

These are inconvenient facts, facts that get in the way of comfort and ease and, all too often, profit. But they’re facts. They can be denied by those who refuse to believe them. But they exist. The proof that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate — and that humanity’s pursuits and past ignorance are the cause — is everywhere and, as NASA puts it, “unequivocal.”

Earth Day 2025 is over, but the need to protect the most precious resource we’ve been afforded — and the one we’ve taken for granted most since the dawn of time — doesn’t end with the celebration.

The road to climate correction promises to be a long one, riddled with sacrifices and difficult choices to be made not just at governmental levels, but on individual ones.

For sure, governments worldwide need to promote, and not just talk about, building an economy supplemented by the development of clean, renewable energy sources. But citizens, on their own, can encourage such innovation by making it a priority at the ballot box, by demanding accountability for leaving our future generations with a planet better than we found it.

As the late Pope Francis said, humanity has no right to be indifferent to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, that defending the “pillaging” of the land we all share as home is “a grave sin.”

In the wake of another Earth Day and well into another year that has a good shot at statistically extending a climate change crisis, may we all remember Francis’ eternal hope for what can cure the world of its environmental ills, that protecting and preserving the natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity, and the responsibility of everyone.