From the Global Goals initiative, the choice that instantly struck my mind was Climate Action. Here is why:

Ever since I read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, my mind had opened up to the nuances that lay quietly in the nature of this planet. The colour green had enveloped an all new meaning to my soul, emitting vigour and prosperity of life itself. At once everything in the nature had started to bear me a metaphorical meaning for all the existence of mankind — every sunrise being a new day, a new chance, the unbound wind telling me that life is not, and should not be, bound by barriers, the flow of a river standing as the meaning of life’s movement, which should always go on, the wild forests reminding us of the wilderness each one of us holds within our heart, and above all, the existence of all of these things hand in hand around us had become the gospel nature had written for us.

But when I walk into the world, a world of daily chores, my mind drifts away from the mesmerizing allegory of nature and becomes one with the discomfort awaiting me out there, all because of the trivial-appearing things such as pollution, traffic, heat, uneven rainfall and the unbearable rising temperatures of each passing summer. I was filled with dismay when the Pune city’s rainfall went completely out of track this year.

Climate change is not an event but a trigger to the impending consequences coming our way, and what is more horrifying is our indifference towards it. We just don’t seem to mind it as much as we should, and that saddens me more than anything. In the first 15 years of this new century, the warmest 14 years have already been recorded, which tells us grave news about the changing face of the planet’s temperatures.

Personally, a very fearsome consequence of the climate change would be the increased inequality between people. We already have enough differences in the financial corners of our lives, but this impending environmental doom will only elevate it to the next appalling levels around the world. When rainfall starts to deteriorate, which it is doing already, water ceases to be available in abundance. And with the decreased abundance of water resources, there comes the trouble with energy generation and agriculture. When energy is generated in lesser and lesser quantities, the electricity supply becomes a problem, and not everyone can afford the daily life alternatives such as the inverters, and thus will be destined to darkness and low living, and among them would be the children who can’t afford a good school, or food.

But there is something else that worries me even more. It is the loss of beauty in our lives, a beauty that intertwines us with nature and all of its wonders. We live in this world to experience them, too. But with the changing face of the planet those wonders are slowly fading away. Day by day we’re turning more artificial than ever before, moving ourselves away from the naturalness inherent within us. But the complacence nature can offer us is ever nobler than anything that is man-made. The comfort you feel inside an air conditioned room will simply amount to void when compared to the hearty bliss that evokes within yourself when you experience a day with the perfect weather.

The sense of nature’s presence that arouses inside me when I touch the leaves of plants makes me feel so connected to the billions of years of universe’s existence. There is absolutely nothing in the world that makes me feel this way, with the exception of a good story. To me, taking concern in these little things of life is what puts me closest to nature, and thus to the mankind, too — because at their core, nature and mankind are inseparable.

And when nature disrupts, so does mankind.

Thus, climate change is not just about the environment anymore but about ourselves, about the people that we are, and the people that our next generations will grow up to be. And now, more than ever before, the fate and future of Mother Nature is left within the hands of her children.

Let us not leave her to ruin, because that’s not what children do to their mother.