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.
Over the past few years, I have been experiencing and noticing the appearance of climate change.
Today was notably filled with emotion and conversation, because of the historic rainfall from Hurricane Ida the night before.
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’m scared for where humans are leading this world, I’m worried about the future of our planet and our own future.
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!
Climate change makes me worried about our animals and species on earth and how long they have left.
I am sensing climate change through the increase in extreme weather.
In my audio recording, I speak about my experience growing up competitively skiing.
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.
From what I researched, aloe is in a grave of danger, and you guessed it: yes, it’s because of climate change.
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.
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.
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.
In class, we spent time gazing out the wide-paned windows to catch deer and bobcats stalk the barren mountains outside instead of study the math worksheets and history books in front of us.
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.
The day prior I strolled the streets in flip flops and shorts, then – like an emergency tsunami – a mere 24 hours later the streets are white and the Christmas songs have begun to top the charts once more.
My nostrils burned a little more with each inhale as I realized that there must be a wildfire somewhere close by.
I don’t know if I should dress warmly or wear something that won’t make me sweat all day.
Although not surprising, Jamaica makes such small contributions to the production of emissions, yet it reaps the consequences.
With the heat rising, the sun would beat down against the pavement and fry us.
Just knowing that something like this is possible is horrifying.
I get frustrated because I know that the weather is not like how it used to be.
This increasing climate crisis has robbed me of my mother for most of my childhood.
Growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, a megacity along the coast of the Arabian Sea, I always had a sense of ways in which nature shapes and molds the everyday texture of human life. […] In recent years, however, these rarer weather events have become alarmingly recurring and exponentially greater in their intensity and the destruction they cause to my city.
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.
In the early month of June, however, England was facing record-high heat.
As Christmas came closer and closer, I waited for the first bit of snow to arrive. I waited and waited, but not one flake of snow fell down from the sky that December.
The violent winds lifted me up into the air. It would’ve succeeded if it wasn’t for my dad anchoring me down. “Let go of the umbrella”, he screamed. I watched as my umbrella flew away.
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.
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.
The young campers between ages six and eight complained about not feeling well and nearly fainted as some had in the previous summers due to these heat waves.
During the summer of 2022, the temperature was so high, there were a lot of days where the temperature had reached over 100℉.
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 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.
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