Grappling with irreversible climate change

BY KALI PROUD staff writer

Climate change could become irreversible as soon as 2030. The United Nations (UN) estimates that drought alone could displace 700 million people by then. In order to avoid permanent climate effects, countries will have to decrease global emissions by 43 percent before 2030.

But few countries have taken significant enough steps towards reaching this goal, despite pledges for action. Even if more countries delivered their pledges in full, it still wouldn’t be enough to bring global warming down anywhere near the UN’s goal. Without any realistic solutions to avoid extreme climate distress, it’s time to have the long avoided discussion: how can we cope in a world where the effects of climate change are permanent?

After climate change becomes irreversible, it will be too late to protest. People will need to find other ways to carry on. An important thing to remember is that humans are always adapting. Our need to survive will help us find permanent solutions to things like extreme temperature changes, flooding, and air quality.

In the United States, and all over the world, it’s reasonable to expect to see populations in certain cities shift as people move to wherever they think climate change will have the least effects. For example, to avoid rising sea levels, many may choose to move inland. It’s important to have faith in our ability to move forward.

Some may argue that it’s too soon to lose hope in the fight against climate change, and that activism should still be the top priority. What this argument ignores is how dire the situation already is.

If we were to stop all greenhouse gas emissions at this very moment, global temperatures would flatten out, but they wouldn’t go down. It would still take decades to reverse climate change induced by human activities, and that’s only in the best case scenario. In reality, changes would need to be made on a much larger scale: changes that can only be made by corporations and governments. The disturbing reality is that we are not on track to reach a point where we will be able to considerably reverse climate change within our lifetime.

Despite how negative all of that may feel, it is critical to stay positive and hopeful.

It’s natural to feel anxious or dejected about climate change, but it makes more sense to focus on having hope. Considering this, having space to understand and cope with those feelings is extremely necessary moving forward.

Just like with any other mental health conditions, being able to talk about and process it is hugely important.

Berkeley High School offers counselors and countless other tools to help students with similar issues, so there is no reason why these resources shouldn’t extend to helping students with climate anxiety.

Supporting one another is key in this process.

The roads were bumpy, potholes deep enough to inhabit a small ecosystem: frogs, grasshoppers, grass, and all. Seeing the roads around the lake being freshly paved, I felt as though we were the crumbs at the bottom of an unsatisfying bag of dry pretzels. The neglected corner we lived on was always busy; in the span of me living at that house there were at least 15 big scandals of the neighborhood that happened in front of our gates, two of them even hitting our gate. The least I can say is that my environment added to my character.

When I moved from my elementary school to my middle school and entered sixth grade, I thought that I’d fled from my reality before. I finally felt privileged. It wasn’t until I heard an offhand comment by a classmate about this new school that I felt graciously saved by that I realized I was in the same situation, just in a different part of Oakland. They said something along the lines of “this school is so trashy and poor” and it stuck with me. In my eyes, the new environment was ten times better than what I was in before, but to find out that I was in a school that wasn’t seen as a great school to others was engrossing. Going from thinking highly of the new school to considering it “the worst of the best” will always make a person feel as though you are separated from the majority — lesser than them.

Along with having a fresh start, it was hard to become friends with people. They always had their own pre-established group of friends and didn’t need any more. Finding people that stick, especially those that have gone through and understand the things you’ve been through, is difficult. And because of the trust issues that I have developed over the years, it was hard to actually find genuine people. The feeling of being an outsider always stuck. Being added to group chats with basically the whole grade and only knowing the person who added me, people making references to things I can't begin to fathom to understand. When we went into lockdown and missed the rest of the year and the whole of our seventh-grade year, it leveled the playing field to an extent. We all didn't know what was happening and were just as confused. Finally, by eighth-grade, I had an established friend group I could rely on. It felt good to be in the loop.

Entering high school in a new district a year later was hard. Leaving the community I had just built was difficult. Once again, I was out of the know.

In response to protests following the death of George Floyd, organizations like General Motors, Salesforce, and Citi pledged to diversify their spaces and support underrepresented employees. Berkeley Unified School District is no different, publishing a resolution in June 2020. The resolution states a commitment “not only to address the symbols of institutional racism and white supremacy, but also to proactively identify and address biases, practices, policies, and institutional barriers that perpetuate injustice and inequality in our schools and our community.”

In order to properly maintain their commitment to antiracism, BUSD and professional organizations nationally must recognize that "professionalism" is rooted in whiteness. Many efforts made by organizations in recent years to diversify their staff have been ineffective. In an article by the Harvard Business Review, Victor Ray wrote, “such organizational policies … fail to address the racial hierarchies

Editor-in-Chief

Managing Editors

Layout Chief

Layout Editors

Outreach Director

News Editors

Opinion Editors

Features Editors

Entertainment Editors historically built into American organizations.”

The root of diversity issues in professional spaces is our understanding of what "professionalism" even is. Characteristics of our culture institutionalize whiteness as the standard, and Western ideals as subtly superior to other ethnic, racial, and regional identities.

Organizations often mandate dress and grooming rules rooted in European beauty standards, and explicitly or subtly target dreadlocks or natural hair as "messy."

Additionally, workplaces excessively scrutinize timeliness.

A 2017 survey from Career Builder found that 41 percent of all United States employees are fired due to continual lateness to work. Professionalism in the U.S. is based on a "monochronic" culture: time commitments, accomplishing tasks in a linear fashion, and productivity are valued over people. Many Black and immigrant communities have a "polychronic" culture: tasks are completed, but socialization and familial connections are valued over economic labor.

White superiority is also deeply rooted in U.S. workplaces is through hiring practices. A 2003 study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback, while those with African American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback.

If professionalism is only interpreted in one way, it becomes systematically harder for people of color to succeed professionally, taking a personal toll. People of color must constantly code switch, and censor themselves in order to be

Berkeley High

Mimia Ousilas

Lianna Leung

Naomi Rosen

Rebecca Birenbaum

Anja NevaehBallEscario

Zoe Fung

Stephanie Jersey

Kaiya Jordan

Kira Rao-Poola

Ella Creane

Ellora AmodtMookherjee-

Amelia Wiley Moreira

Lauren Huang

Marina Howard

Ruby Freedman

Norah Lee

Podcast Executive Producers

Investigative Editor

Copy Chiefs

Copy Editors

Photo Editors

Illustration Editors

Business Chiefs

Business Managers

Web Editor

Sports Editors Web Team

Luisa Bertolli

Writers

Sofia MiriamRodriguezReichenberg

Erin Bartholomew

Sarinah Reichle

Talia Brand

Sophie TomassoHorvathAbramson-

Ward

Aynaz Faruqui

Joshua Swift-Rawal

Daisy Howerton

Fiona IsabellaFirepine Tasso

Gabriella Busansky

J Horsley

Ada Rauber

Lola Brownlow

Drew Henderson

Katelyn Liao

Sidney Walsh

Eliot Hertenstein

Bodie Feinberg

Maya Cobb