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.
I notice that the snow days I once treated as a frequent occurrence no longer occur so frequently anymore.
I am sensing climate change through the environment and weather conditions around me.
I feel very worried about the children, women and girls, all peoples are victims of the climate crisis.
Through “clean” energy developments. See the recording for my full story!
I felt climate change when Hurricane Sandy stormed through my city in 2012.
I am sensing climate change through the increase in extreme weather.
In my hometown of Beaver, PA, coal and steel production was historically extremely important sectors of employment.
They make me feel sad and upset that local leaders are so glib about impending threat.
It was depressing to experience a beautiful park for the first time and see how fragile the ecosystem is.
While there, I learned about how these farmers who had lived there for their entire lives were having to adapt their food growth to an increasingly arid climate.
My family huddled up in one room with air conditioning and even with it, it was still 80 degrees in there.
They make me feel sad and worried for my mama’s home, and my family’s home, and if future generations are going to have the same Earth we want them to have.
I feel that the rapid urbanization in a country like India has led to many such deforestation activities.
From what I researched, aloe is in a grave of danger, and you guessed it: yes, it’s because of climate change.
There was no more forest but spans of dried up trees. Ailing, sad, brown – the place I had once loved and known to be full of birdsong and butterflies now ceased to exist. The birds had all left – Delhi was simply too hot for them.
Some people had to swim out of their second story windows in the middle of night, while others went on rescue missions in the boats they kept in their garages.
As subway stations swelled with water and cars floated down the streets, the hustle and bustle of the fast-paced roads quieted to an eerie silence; it felt as if the gray clouds of the regularly scheduled rainy season had come back on their own accord.
However, last year when I returned home for Winter Break from Penn and walked outside of Union Station, the first thing I noticed was how warm it was outside. It felt like spring and I was very concerned right away because I thought about how hot it was the past summer.
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.
As I drove around my hometown, I noticed many stores closed for repairs and tons of damaged cars resulting from tornadoes that struck this area during the storm.
For what seemed like forever, the skies became orange and hazy and it became normal to see smoke somewhere. The smell of burning wood and building materials permeated the air.
My nostrils burned a little more with each inhale as I realized that there must be a wildfire somewhere close by.
The game was no longer trying to play your best so you wouldn’t get subbed out, but to conserve your energy under the hot sun so that you wouldn’t pass out from the heat.
With the heat rising, the sun would beat down against the pavement and fry us.
The forest was no longer as loud; I used to be able to hear more birds chirping.
I get frustrated because I know that the weather is not like how it used to be.
Those families that can barely afford bad quality food but still want to keep their families healthy have to suffer and choose what they should prioritize more: health or supporting their family financially.
This increasing climate crisis has robbed me of my mother for most of my childhood.
I couldn’t ignore the dark spots in the sand from the refinery’s pollution or the amount of plastic and other debris that littered the sand and the water. I had never realized how polluted the beach was because it was all I knew, it was normalized it in my mind.
The mountains are part of spiritual life [across the Indian subcontinent], but mine is a story of when spiritual life is muddled by climate-driven geopolitics. In 2018, between high school and college, my parents decided I should make a pilgrimage to the holiest of mountains, Mount Kailash, which is also sometimes famously called “Mount Meru”.
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.
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.
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.
There was nothing left alive in the Schuylkill river. Nothing except us.
Listen to attached audio file for my story.
As the weather becomes more extreme I worry for my family who live so far away.
Most of the beaches on the entire south stretch of the island were full of foul-smelling and unsightly sargassum seaweed.
Listen to the companion audio
I’ve seen the hunger crisis, drought, floods, and gender inequality due to climate change.
As these problems remain unresolved, the impact will grow exponentially.
Some paths along the water, usually 10 or so feet from the shore, were being threatened by the encroaching waves.
Mainly, the sounds of animals have diminished
People are uniquely aware of the effects of climate change yet at the same time strangely resistant to change.
Through my health and home.
Holding infant-me, my parents huddled on the kitchen floor in order to avoid the windows. Because of the raging hurricanes in the summer of 2004…
When I awoke on the morning of September 9, 2020. I was extremely confused. My bedroom was almost completely dark, which was, of course, very unusual…
I was born in France but barely ever lived there. However every winter I go back there to celebrate Christmas…