Gabriella Grimes Entry #9

It's been Spring for over a month yet it hasn't been Spring for over a month. I keep asking myself if Spring has always been this cold in the beginning, but it definitely hasn't. Around this time of the year, I'm already usually walking around without a jacket and just a small sweater will do the trick. The weather is insane lately, with nearly 70° temperatures one day and then 40° the next. The older I get, the colder Winter and Spring seem, yet the more brutally hot Summer seems, and that weather seems to carry into Fall. During the Fall semester, I was pretty much coming to classes without a jacket for a while, but then all of a sudden, it was too cold to step outside my apartment without a coat on. It's such an issue that everyone sees our environment changing in terms of temperature, but so many of us still want to believe it isn't a problem. I have to wonder if it's worse to admit there's a problem and do nothing about it, or just completely deny that the problem exists to begin with. I try to remain aware of my surroundings in the natural world--I don't litter, I recycle, and I try not to keep the water running or the lights on; but if I'm not actively doing something to raise awareness of the issue does that make me as bad as those who try their hardest to remain ignorant? The truth is that the majority of people who know and understand fully that there has to be drastic changes in our environment are entirely passive about it. What I understand to be some of the perspectives of people in my generation is that the older generations have set us up for this--it's as if they dug up a ditch and decided to throw us in there and then have the audacity to ask why we're not doing anything to get out of the ditch. The people who dug this ditch are the same people who still have the most influence in our world today: 60 year-old CEOs of major companies with large carbon footprints and 65 year-old political officials under the impression that it's still the 1970s and the internet doesn't exist. Our awareness of the atrocities going on in the environment could have possibly increased over the past decade, yet we do nothing to stop it. One percent of the population trying to actively make a difference will not make a difference, and if we see that person isn't achieving anything we assume we can't achieve anything ourselves; however at the same time, if we see our neighbor not making any effort, we may do the exact same. I hate to say I'm one of those people. Obviously if a large percentage of the population is not foaming at the mouth over the issue, it can't be that big of a deal, right? Ignorance is complete bliss, and I realize this every time I tell myself that this crazy weather will only happen this year. "It's a one time thing," I'll say passively for the next sixty years.