Deveena’s Story #2
Everything is happening all around, and now it is too late to stop the ruin of our world with climate change.
Everything is happening all around, and now it is too late to stop the ruin of our world with climate change.
But little did I know, I would come to find out that my entire home state Kerala was flooded, and the flood didn’t only ruin my childhood home, but had also taken the lives of my friends and family friends back home.
I am sensing climate change through the environment and weather conditions around me.
I try to gather a sense of climate change through memory.
I am sensing climate change through the increase in extreme weather.
In my audio recording, I speak about my experience growing up competitively skiing.
It is often towns like my own –the low income, Indigenous, and sidelined areas– that see the brunt of the pollution and the brunt of detrimental climate disasters.
This situation makes me really concerned and fearful for older people who do not have loved ones to help them stay safe or rebuild after a natural disaster like this.
I fell witness to the slow destruction of my neighborhood, watching stray animals die, houses and trees collapse, and cars on the road crash all because of Hurricane Ike.
When I was the same age as Daniel, I remember blizzards that would cancel school for a week, snow so high that my dad and I would make igloos out of them, snow so heavy I could sink waist deep. Core memories that don’t just pale in comparison, they hurt.
With the heat rising, the sun would beat down against the pavement and fry us.
Or we can use our mistakes and clean the air of its smoky waste. We have little time as humans, but our world has more.
In the early month of June, however, England was facing record-high heat.
My relatives … in Chengdu … used to dry their clothes from the outside air, but because of the smog and increasing humidity, they keep the windows closed as often as possible, and leave the clothes to hang indoors.
Instead of waiting for the snow, I’ve come to dread the inch of snow that becomes thin ice, not even enough for a snow day.
I love when the snow actually sticks to the ground and piles up to six inches–I would make bunny rabbits with footprints, or draw things in the snow that was piled on ledges. Sadly, I don’t remember doing any of those things in the last two or three years–not because I don’t have the time to do so, but because there was never that much snow to begin with.
I wonder where the birds had flown off to–if they’d been able to adapt to the changes. Do they feel any sadness for their previous stepping-ground? Sometimes I think to myself, if we had only listened hard enough and cared hard enough, maybe we too would understand their story.
As the years ticked by, snow has made less and less frequent appearances. Maybe this is just a side effect of childhood nostalgia—the feeling that every weather event, holiday, and outing was just a bit more dramatic and exciting when I was younger—but part of me tells me it isn’t.
I’ve read so much about how climate change affects places like the Arctic and Alaska, but it was different seeing the glaciers in person.
The first time I ever climbed that tree, I had two impressions. But the second one is the one that stands out the most in my mind. Trash.
Something is missing. It’s hard to place. But then I see it: one lonely floating light. Where are all your friends, little firefly?
Listen to attached audio file for my story.
As the weather becomes more extreme I worry for my family who live so far away.
It’s place in me will always exist and I hope that I will have places I can go to with it for years to come.
It is nostalgic to think about some of the sounds I heard as a child but it is mainly worrying and disappointing to see the changes that are happening due to climate change, and the way the situation is being ignored
Listen to the companion audio
As these problems remain unresolved, the impact will grow exponentially.