Lead Ed

Graphic by Sarah Lin

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CLIMATE DENIAL

Last year, Shell Global- a company that hid climate change for decades and is responsible for 2% of world emissions- asked Twitter users a simple question: what are you willing to change to help reduce emissions?

Gaslighting usually isn’t so literal.

Climate change is often framed as a battle we all play a part in. One of the most famous measures of climate change is a person’s carbon footprint, or the total greenhouse gas a person creates daily. Over the past 20 years, hundreds of quizzes, studies, and activist movements have made it their mission to help people reduce their individual footprints and be more environmentally conscious. If we all live green, we can save the planet.

It’s not enough. rough a long campaign of deception and advertisements, the true culprits of climate change- the 100 companies responsible for 71% of all emissions, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project- have found a nifty loophole: companies don’t need to change when their consumers are convinced they themselves are the problem. And while living an environmentally conscious life is undoubtedly good, activism based on advertisement doesn’t work. You aren’t causing climate change. You alone can’t stop it.

Carbon footprint fi rst entered the general consciousness not through climate scientists, but an oil company. In 2004, BP (formerly British Petroleum) introduced a calculator to help individuals determine their respective carbon impacts. e campaign was hugely popular with over 278,000 people using it in 2004 alone, and it matched with BP’s rebranding to Beyond Petroleum. In reality, the company wasn’t changing anything. As Mashable reports, in 2018 BP spent just 2.3% of its budget on renewable energy while still shipping almost 3.8 million barrels a day.

But the conversation wasn’t about BP anymore. Just like how Exxon emphasized “consumer demand” while internally driving up emissions, or how plastic companies have spent millions on anti-littering ads, companies want to turnwz a political issue into one of individual responsibility. It’s common sense that if you drive to school then you hate the planet, after all.

However, it’s almost impossible to fully disengage from climate change- a study by MIT researchers found that even a homeless person will contribute over 8.5 tonnes of carbon annually. Last year, when millions of people restricted their travel and greatly reduced their carbon footprints, Nature Magazine found that global emissions only fell about 6.4%. ere is no “green” life under fossil fuels, and our consumer choices are for moral complacency more than anything else.

Moral complacency is political complacency. It’s leads to half-measures like planting forests as the main method against climate change, a policy the Republican party- which watchdog group OpenSecrets reports received 96% of the 2020 political contributions from the coal mining industry- introduced in congress last year. If we restrict ourselves to individual action against climate change, we miss the burning forest for the synthetic trees. It’s helpful, sure. But so is not destroying the planet.

If we truly want to take action against fossil fuels, it cannot be done within a system built on them. ere’s only one thing that every single citizen can do that will actually lead to change: voting.

“My fear with the U.S.A. is the same as many topics that are based in science,” AP Enviro teacher Emily Massey-Burmesiter said. “It is and will continue to be politicized to the point where our overarching governments governmental structure will be deadlocked and not be able to make any real change.” e only way to skip this deadlock is to vote for and support policies which would promise radical change towards fossil fuels. Businesses have exploited the idea of American individualism, so the most important step is to work together.

Joining organizations like the Sunrise Movement and Just Transition, which campaign for policies like the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and Green New Deal, are real ways to actually gain power over climate change. Individual action can also have a real benefi t if used with others. Numerous studies have shown that by installing solar panels and sharing their benefi ts, your neighbors are more likely to install them as well.

“Younger generations are going to be more impacted by large scale shifts in the environment,” Massey-Burmeister said. “It would be my hope that they would start almost a revolution in terms of change.

So remember: only you can save the planet. You just can’t do it alone.

e lead editorial expresses the opinion of the Trinity Voice editorial staff . Please send comments to voice@ trinityprep.org.

PUBLIC HEALTH OVER POLITICS

Masks should be mandated in all schools

Article by Ella Norman Photos by Anna Miliotes

The decision of whether or not to wear masks has become a hot-button political issue when, in reality, it should be nothing more than a public health issue. With the polio vaccine, people didn’t bat an eye at getting vaccinated, so what’s the difference with COVID-19? The problem is that it’s becoming politicized, as people fear that their freedoms are being taken away. Those that are making it political claim that it is a personal liberty, but our liberties only last until our choices put others at risk. Public health is the top priority and with countless evidence of masks effectiveness, it just makes sense to mandate them in schools.

We can see the effectiveness of masks by our own example; we mandate masks at Trinity Prep and our case numbers are significantly lower than those of public schools. Whether or not masks are mandated in public schools should still matter to us as students and as citizens of Florida. Our community is putting children and their families at risk by not mandating masks. There are many ways we can make a difference in the fight for mask mandates. We need to find ways to appeal to our local government, like through petitions, as well as to the people in our community through word of mouth and activism on social media. It’s important to stop the spread of misinformation and emphasize just how unsafe it is to go without a mask.

Masks are still necessary in many situations. As shown in studies done by the CDC, masks prevent your respiratory droplets from reaching others, which is one of the main ways that COVID-19 spreads. Mass outbreaks of COVID-19 are still occurring. Because of these reasons, we still need masks in school, as we spend a lot of time indoors and are less than six feet away from others.

“The new variants are far more infectious, particularly to young people, so masks are absolutely essential in a school setting,” science teacher Scottie Smith said. “The children are too close together to avoid mass outbreaks of COVID.”

Despite the scientific evidence, this argument has become politicized because people want to argue that they have liberties that protect their choice to wear a mask. We have many other restrictions on our personal liberties for the sake of others. It’s the same reason that we can’t yell “fire” in a theatre; we would be putting others at risk. If we can do something to make others around us safer, why wouldn’t we? The government is not trying to strip us of our freedoms, they are trying to protect us.

Florida is a major hot spot for this debate because rising case numbers are being met with incompetence from our political representatives. Governor DeSantis issued an executive order in late July “ensuring parents’ freedom to choose” between whether or not their children wear a mask.

Liberties under the Constitution do not include the right of individuals to make decisions that can endanger others. Facilitating the transmission of a highly contagious and lethal virus is an act of harm we are consciously taking against others. For this reason, parents shouldn’t be deciding whether or not to have their children wear masks. Parents are required by Florida to vaccinate their children against things such as Hepatitis B and tetanus. The choice of whether or not to mandate masks should be up to the federal government because it makes sense to mandate things for the greater good of the population.

“While many people refuse to wear masks on a basis of liberty, what they fail, I think, to conceptualize is that gratifying their own liberty in that regard is actually putting the freedoms of others at risk,” social science teacher Brandon Burmeister said. “When you refuse to wear a mask, you’re limiting the options of other people to do what they want to do, live how they want to live, and to have the types of freedoms that they want to have.”

WORD ON CAMPUS Are mask mandates a violation of personal liberties?

“No, because personal liberty, as defined by our modern community standards, appears to accept masks as a social safeguard.” “I don’t believe so.

It is really a matter of trying to protect yourself and other people.” “No, they are not because people should wear their masks to keep others around them safe.”