When you drive past the busy streets
with the sound of foreigners speaking with strange accents, it makes me feel
great that they are here just for us children to secure our future.
At the Durban Convention Centre, you
walk inside to see all these items of technology, like solar cars
and
hydro-bikes. This gives me hope that working together, we can stop the effects
of climate change.
I
was privileged to interview Connie Hedegaard, who is the Commissioner for the
European Union. She says that she got into climate change when she was
appointed as Environmental Minister.
Someone
in the ministry asked her, “what do we do about the climate?” She responded by
saying, “the more knowledge you get about climate change the more you
understand how serious it is, and then it’s hard not to get interested in how
we can solve this difficult problem.”
Hedegaard
said that “Our efforts now make a huge difference, even what people do in their
daily lives.” Some people say “What does it help if I do anything because there
are 7 billion people on planet earth?” She added, “If everyone thinks like that
one thing is for sure, nothing happens.”
The
Commissioner is convinced that if all of us work together to see what we can do
that we can change things.
According
to NASA Science, if we don’t do something to stop pollution and the consumption
of fossil fuels, the average temperature will rise between 2 to 6 degrees by
the end of the 21st century.
We
need to save our planet starting now!
Article by Asher Pardey, one of the children participating in the Children and the Media programme in South Africa
