“One Planet, One Chance” Response

The line that I will respond to from the video,”One Planet, One Chance,” is “Climate change is a silent war that has already begun.” This line stood out to me because it was a chilling realization to see that climate change is not just a series of irrelevant findings from crazed scientists. It’s a war. But the scary part of it all, is asking yourself, who is fighting for the surviving side? Who are our warriors? Which battles have we overcome, if any at all?

This line introduced the video and could not be any clearer. It was just white print in a black background, almost as if to symbolize a bleak spirit of hope in our dire situation. It also describes the war as “silent,” which I found important because its poison is so subtle, many may not realize that we are all on the road to death. It’s like a disease, festering in the body of our earth, dormant, and awaiting its resurrection.

Another part of this line that stood out to me was that the war on climate change has “already begun.” It doesn’t occur to most people that this is a war that we should be fighting right now, while we still have the upper hand of preventive maintenance. So many of us have used the phrase “before it’s too late” when describing when, exactly, change needs to occur. But when, specifically, is “too late”? Will the planet just explode one day? Or will it forever be a chain of small, barely noticeable changes in our ecosystems? Will we wake up one day, finding that the bees have died off, cutting off a large supply of our food supply? Will we, at that point, decide enough is enough? Or will we keep brushing matters to the side, awaiting the day when it’s “too late.” Because I’m sure there are places in the world, as shown in the video, that will come to the conclusion that today is the day when enough is enough. Maybe it’s already too late.

As for the video as a whole, I really was very inspired by it. I think it did an excellent job in showing the audience the emergency state we are in, even at this moment. It also showed global warming as almost a human rights issue because it intrudes on the human being’s right to live in a healthy environment. Our selfish deeds here may actually be killing people in more targeted places, so it’s not just a matter of the Earth, but also a matter of preserving human life. Concerns become much grander when we transition from acknowledging ourselves as CO2 emitters, to being actual murderers. But in the end, isn’t it just that? We are not only killing others indirectly, but also ourselves and our future generations. I think this urgency to change now was reflected very well in the video, and I think its message should continue to spread to people not only in America, but to people across the world.