Earth is constantly changing, so it’s no surprise that the world’s climate is subject to change as well. Climate change is a natural process—from the Ice Age to Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. But if Earth has gone through increased temperature and come out unscathed, why is the age of climate change we live in concerning?

The term climate change is associated with global warming and weather. According to NASA, climate change is in a nutshell, a change in long-term weather patterns. It is sometimes used interchangeably with “global warming,” which is usually described as the gradual heating of the Earth’s surface post-industrialization due to an increased use of greenhouse gases.

Activists and governments who refer to climate change or global warming are talking about the modern era of such shifts, which started after the Industrial Revolution. Uncoincidentally, this was an era in which the standard of living rose and the population began to increase exponentially. An increasing population means increased usage of resources, major examples including deforestation and burning of fossil fuels, which increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Climate change means change in living conditions for all living things, not just humans. All life on earth is experiencing habitat loss as well as changes in weather patterns over time. An overused but still important warning is the melting Antarctic ice. This drives polar bears out of their natural habitats and further south, where they will cross paths with the grizzlies moving up north also due to habitat destruction. This has led to the creation of commonly nicknamed “pizzly bears,” a hybrid between polar bears and grizzly bears.

It is unlikely that polar bears will ever regain their natural habitats, which further begs the question of if polar bears will go extinct altogether. Seeing how one animal has been affected by climate change, we can only imagine the scale of this process throughout the world. This is further emphasized by the mass extinction we are going through right now, as the rate of extinction for all species has been at an all-time high. As humans, it is our responsibility to prevent contribution to climate change and species loss for their ecosystem services, but also because it would be unfortunate to leave our future generations a world with only a fraction of the species we have left behind.

At the rate at which we are using the Earth beyond its natural replenishing capacity (known as ecological overshoot), the statistics are not looking too good. Earth Overshoot Day happens annually, and it marks the day when humanity has reached ecological overshoot. The dates have been rapidly approaching the earlier months, signaling our overconsumption and imbalance between human demand and nature’s supply, especially through our overconsumption of meat, fossil fuels, seafood, metal ores, and non-metallic minerals. This fuels environmental damage through mining, which can contaminate waterways and contribute to air pollution, and a huge amount of energy use with meat production, especially since transport of such goods can increase greenhouse gas emissions.


Amanda Montañez; Source: “Intergenerational Inequities in Exposure to Climate Extremes,” by Wim Thiery et al., in Science, Vol. 374; October 8, 2021 (data)

Additionally, estimates by climate experts suggest that we only have a little less than three years to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a threshold that should not be exceeded unless we were to face the more extreme consequences of climate change. Currently, effects include unpredictable and more violent natural disasters, loss of wildlife populations due to urbanization, increasing sea levels, and potential health risks to humans through low air and water quality or contamination. A common example is heavier rainfall, which also increases the likelihood of flooding.

With problems, there are always (hopefully) effective solutions. As of right now, the government cutting research funding does make finding easy-to-implement solutions difficult. However, solutions that don’t require research grants (but most do need some sort of funding/government approval) are few and far between. Nonetheless, some actions really do make a difference—for example, you can change the way you get around the city, ramp up political pressure, be conscious of energy use, make just a few, tiny changes to your diet, support local and sustainable businesses, reduce food waste, and invest in climate-friendly clothing and businesses.

Technological innovations include genetic engineering (which we are seeing with GMOs), plastic-eating enzymes, satellites to investigate methane leaks, or pumps to cool down coral reefs. One of the most interesting technologies is the use of AI. They can help create sustainable plans, do climate modeling, use satellites to determine biodiversity and whatnot. Blockchain—or using a decentralized ledger system to track energy usage and similar data—is also helpful in keeping information transparent and allowing companies to see what they can do better without manipulating results.

Beyond these solutions, how else can we mitigate the effects of climate change? Tiffany Deguzman, a fellow at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the 2025-2027 Shapiro Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, has an answer. Through her work on climate change and the economic disparities in resources it creates, the answer boils down to: “Regulation.”

Deguzman told me, “We’re not going to live in a world without the fossil fuel industry. …And so, at the very least, I think the way government could regulate corporations is [making] it expensive for [companies] to do bad things. …And we see this in the form of cap and trade programs…where you’re trying to say, okay well, you’re emitting a lot and you’re polluting a lot. So, we need to find a way to either make you pay for that or [encourage them not to do that as much].”

And through working on the humanitarian effects of climate change, Deguzman also points out that even though yes, the coal industry and whatnot do provide jobs for people, the government can still create jobs under clean energy, like the Green New Deal under the previous Biden administration. This is evidently something governments will struggle to accept, that clean energy and good jobs can still go together.

But have governments around the world actually made progress? The Paris Climate Agreement, adopted in 2015, has brought most countries together with the goal of limiting global warming to below 2°C, while aiming for 1.5°C. Under the agreement, countries set their own emissions targets following these guidelines. Some nations, such as Kenya, Costa Rica, and Nepal, have plans that are broadly aligned with a 1.5°C pathway. However, many major industrialized countries are still not on track to meet targets consistent with that goal, and current global commitments overall remain insufficient to keep warming within the most ambitious limits of the agreement.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has its own climate change policies set in place to combat climate change. Some recent legislative action includes the 2007 Supreme Court Case Massachusetts v. EPA in which the Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency can control greenhouse gas emissions by motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. Of course, this doesn’t mean immediate victory for the EPA—most of the laws they implement have been overlooked.

Let’s take a closer look at climate action throughout recent years: in 1989, the Climate Action Council was founded and is currently coordinating 1,900 civil-society organizations across 130 countries. In 1995, the UN Convention on Climate Change held COP1, the first Conference of Parties, in Berlin. Just two years later, the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Japan, limiting the greenhouse gas emissions of industrialized countries. This was not all the way successful as developing countries were not part of the agreement. The U.S. also did not support this protocol.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, until the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 demanding all countries to adhere to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, climate action consisted not of policy-making but through the actions of protestors and media like An Inconvenient Truth, drawing attention to policies and demanding change (for example—university students putting pressure on fossil fuel companies). In 2022, COP27 led to the Loss and Damage Fund which compensated at-risk nations for the damage caused by climate change. COP28 marked the first time countries came together and explicitly stated and worked towards the goal to move away from fossil fuels.

So what’s currently stopping a lot of people from enforcing new laws and policies for climate regulation? One of the main reasons could be explained by the palm oil industry in South and Southeast Asia. In this part of the world, many farmers tear down forests in order to plant palm oil, which is mostly traded to China and India to be used for cooking.

However, many are losing their livelihoods through this palm oil plantation takeover, and fires that spread more quickly due to the removal of wetlands are also affecting populations. Knowing this, many consumers choose not to make a conscious choice to switch to more sustainable alternatives because palm oil is just that affordable.

On the topic of regulation, it is something that state governments have been working on, but haven’t been quite successful. Deguezman describes how states have been suing companies like Chevron and Shell, or the Big Oil Lawsuits in the face of the federal government backing down. “Essentially, [the states are] trying to hold corporations accountable for lying. [They’ve] found evidence that corporations knew that their activities were causing harm to the environment and to the people, [but they denied it when asked]. …They haven’t been that successful, and part of the reason why is because of the way our laws were written, even the best ones. People in Congress, people in positions of power, are aligned with the interests of corporations, partially because of the way our country regulates or doesn’t regulate.”

Tying this back to working on innovative solutions for climate change, the limited funds and cuts in research grants under the current administration also severely limits any technological progress. In light of government uninvolvement, it becomes frustrating because “[a]t the end of the day, you know, regardless of who is in office, what party is in office, it is important that the leader of the United States not only admits that climate change is real, but openly acknowledges the urgency of it because I think that is one of the scariest parts about thinking about climate change is the fact that a lot of people aren’t aware of you urgent it is.”

Additionally, some countries may falsify data in order to “look good,” so as to speak, to their people and other governments. Even if there is no hard data to examine, it’s difficult not to take note of the everyday effects of climate change—and clearly, something must be going on for people to take notice of it. Climate Tracker is one solution for such problems. After coming out just last year, it gathers data through the use of satellites and can provide up-to-date information that doesn’t take several years to release, in which it becomes useless.

And although reality may seem grim, the increasing population that was the major turning point in defining modern climate change may soon tell a different story. In fact, the human population, while globally increasing, has fallen in many developed nations and is expected to drop globally within the century, showing that perhaps we have reached our carrying capacity, the point at which the Earth cannot sustain us any longer.

This is to say that maybe all is not lost, but that shouldn’t mean we should stop fighting for slowing climate change altogether. And this goes beyond the physical world; the children of today’s world have to choose between starvation or migration (due to the damage caused by climate change—notably, floods and droughts). Increased temperatures also leads to increased poverty and weakened immune systems in children whose immune systems have just begun developing.

Deguzman points out, “Mother Nature doesn’t discriminate, natural disasters happen everywhere. But the resources that we send after a natural disaster is a clear way to explain how climate change affects people differently. …We had Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina in October of [2024] and then a few months later, we had the Palisades in California.” Even though both were devastating, communities in more rural areas (i.e. North Carolina) didn’t receive as much resources or aid from the government. Much of this is due to distrust of the government and local reliance on other locals. And although not explicitly mentioned, resources also vary based on “socioeconomic and racial lines.”

Much of this highlights the disparity climate change can create, especially in areas already prone to extreme weather events such as flooding. They may take longer to recover from long-term impacts like disease caused by contamination, property loss or damage to already struggling communities, and damage done to healthcare facilities due to flooding or power outages making help less accessible. The Office of Environmental Justice has promised to work with identified Disadvantaged Communities (DACs) to close this gap in humanitarian aid, especially when these communities are more likely to be hit harder by environmental issues like flooding.

Going back to our original question, it doesn’t matter if the climate has changed before, the issue lies in human causation at a rapid pace that is likely going to harm the planet for centuries to come. All of this reinforces the obvious notion that climate change needs to be dealt with, but if governments and humanity as a whole keeps putting off this call to action, the Earth will become increasingly unihabitable—or at least severely damaged— for future generations of humans and beyond. And is that the Earth we want to leave behind as our legacy?