Title
Maria’s Climate Story
Name
Maria Villarreal
Place
Tampico, Mexico 89330
How are you sensing climate change?
Even though I’m from a small city on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Tampico, and spent a lot of time on the beach growing up, my climate story happened when I was 16. From a very young age, my experiences with nature instilled a love for wildlife and conservation. However, all I knew was the beach back home and it wasn’t until I visited La Palma, Spain, that I realized the striking differences between the ecosystems in La Palma and back home. During my trip, I snorkeled in the ocean, hiked a crater, and witnessed a night sky without light pollution. The overwhelming sense of joy that I felt upon being able to experience these wondrous marvels of nature was paralleled by fury when I reflected on the many human activities that wreck so many ecosystems worldwide, including the beach back home. When I returned home, 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.
How do these changes make you feel?
Even though it’s infuriating how human activity is wrecking the place I call home, I feel a sense of hope knowing that it is possible to achieve a clean beach because I’ve experienced it in La Palma, Spain.
Tampico, Mexico 89330
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