When policymakers, financiers and scientists describe the world decades from now, in the throes of climatic changes that we now only model, they emphasize what might be lost.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the potential losses we may face due to climate change as projected by experts.
Tatiana Schlossberg emphasizes the urgent need to understand the long-term impacts of climate change, illustrating that when experts discuss future scenarios, they tend to focus on the negative consequences and losses our world may experience if current trends continue. This serves as a call to awareness about the importance of addressing climate issues now to mitigate these potential disasters.
In practice
In a speech about environmental policies, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of proactive measures.
As climate change moves from a model of the future to the reality of the present, health care systems across the country are facing a difficult set of questions. What are doctors supposed to do when wildfires, rising floodwater or other natural disasters threaten their ability to provide care for patients?
The features that have made plastic so important in the global market are the same ones that make it such a pervasive pollutant: durability and resistance to degradation.
A less icy Arctic is coming, and generally speaking, that's not a good thing. Climate change is warming this region twice as fast as the global average, threatening wildlife and indigenous communities.
Take one round-trip flight between New York and California, and you've generated about 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that your car emits over an entire year.
The fact that communities that are relatively powerless often are exposed to more dangerous pollution and the worst effects of climate change: a society like that is one that is less free and less equal for everybody.
As a black and as a woman, I didn't think that I would really want to live in any of the eras before this, because I would inevitably be worse off. I would have spent more time struggling just to prove I was human than doing my work.
Rwanda is not over needing aid, but we can survive with less aid than before.
In sum, the struggle for our future is . . . the struggle between those who cling to patterns of domination and those working for a more equitable partnership world.
Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you're changing, emotionally as well as physically?
It's time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin' black and white. You can see a black person. But now to get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - not the age, but the way of thinking. Old and new, actually... because there's so many even older people that took half their lives to reach a certain point that little kids understand now.
There is nothing wrong with changing a plan when the situation has changed.
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