Growing up in Hawaii, I never felt a particular attachment to any world issues. More than 2,000 miles of ocean separate us from the closest continental landmass.
With perhaps the exception of North Korean nukes, problems of international security never threatened to affect our idyllic way of life or take away the natural beauty of our island paradise home.
Yet, this past summer, for the first time in recorded history, Hawaii witnessed three Category 4 hurricanes lined up in the central and eastern Pacific. Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases in the recent dengue fever outbreak on Hawaii island has reached at least 176. And reports from the National Climate Assessment and University of Hawaii Sea Grant program suggest both phenomena are tied to what President Barack Obama has called the “greatest threat to our future”: climate change.
These reports tell us we need to aggressively confront climate change.
Thankfully, Hawaii has already begun. Just this year, the state government set ambitious standards to have a 100 percent renewable energy portfolio by 2045. It also created the first carbon tax in the United States. And renewable energy usage, especially rooftop solar, has dramatically increased in recent years.
Hawaii is taking action.
However, Hawaii alone will not be able to protect itself from climate change. A problem of this magnitude will require global action.
Recently in Paris, at COP21, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, representatives of countries, businesses and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from around the world worked toward an agreement that facilitates international action on climate change.
With our futures at stake, we, the youth of Hawaii — as members of the demographic with the most to lose from climate change — should be vigorously involved and engaged.
Gov. David Ige recently made the bold statement that Hawaii would welcome Syrian refugees. Today, we are privileged enough to be in a position where we may decide to open our doors to the displaced. In the coming decades, we may find ourselves on the other side of the door.
If adequate action against climate change is not taken by the entire world, we will be forced to watch our coral reefs lose their vibrant colors, the diverse flora and fauna of our ecosystems fade away, and the rising seas consume our beautiful beaches.
The youth of Hawaii today might join the countless people in the future who will be forced to leave their homes because of climate change.
It is time for all of us, the youth of Hawaii, to take responsibility for our own future. Youth are 1 of 9 constituencies especially affected by climate change recognized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The world demands to hear our voices.
If we allow our peaceful way of life and the beauty of our home to distract us into complacency, then we may lose them both. By educating ourselves and each other, taking individual and collective action to reduce consumption and emissions, and holding governments and businesses accountable to action, we fight for our right to the future we want.
Climate change is not a freight train arriving from the distant horizon. It already has arrived and it will be here for the foreseeable future. When we hear of the next great storm, flood or heat wave, of dwindling food supplies from affected agriculture, of indigenous communities forced to migrate and forsake their ways of life, of rising sea levels threatening entire islands, or of any other catastrophe or phenomenon induced by climate change somewhere across the far reaches of the world, we need not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for us.
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ON VACATION:
Columnist Richard Borreca is off for the holidays.
