पर्यटन Challenges environmental
Between Despair and Defiance: How the Young are Redefining Environmental Hope
Since humans have taken “success is progress” as the standard, they have never stopped to think about the price of success, which is often the most overlooked point. Atomic splitting, successful cure of diseases, heart replacement surgery, and successfully pressing human footprints into lunar dust are all miracles and achievements created by humans through continuous efforts and research. However, behind these successes are Faustian deals. Although humans value social progress, their blind pursuit of goals has aroused the anger of nature. While conquering nature, humans have also planted the seeds of ecological crisis. Slowly, behind these successes, it has become the price of survival for the next generation.
Nowadays, the environment is reminding teenagers to be prepared at any time. For instance, the games canceled due to smog, every sudden disaster drill in school and the group chats where fire maps spread faster than emojis. Not only that, teenagers don’t look at horoscope charts, but check the air quality index, and also calculate carbon footprint when planning a self-driving tour. Overall, these situations have gradually become a habit for teenagers, environmental issues are no longer distant nouns, but real existences lurking in their lives. It seems to remind everyone that the abnormal has become the daily routine. These details gradually form the background of their growth and quietly change their emotions.
What’s more, teenager have become more sensitive because they have begun to pay close attention to every report of natural disasters in the news. For example, sometimes just a flood in the distance is enough to make them stare at the screen for a long time. This also proves that their anxiety does not erupt in an instant, but accumulates slowly in the daily interruptions. For instance, the originally worry-free rainy day has now become a reason to worry about water accumulation and road closures; the originally expected holiday trip may also be temporarily cancelled due to extreme weather.
Hence, this emotional transformation happens quietly in a seemingly peaceful life. Not only are teenagers starting to feel less relaxed and more hesitant, no longer full of expectations for the future, but also cautiously pre-setting various consequences. This is not a side effect of growing up, but a warning given to them by reality. They learn to react early in their emotions and find things they can do in the midst of powerlessness. Eventually, emotions are no longer the background of life, but gradually become a way for them to understand the world.
And now, teenagers are responding to their anxiety with action. They are not just being a “little environmentalist” in textbooks, but have truly turned environmental protection into a habit and choice in life. In school, they refuse to buy disposable beverage cups and insist on bringing their own water bottles; they join environmental protection clubs, organize old clothes recycling activities, and take action to fight the wave of fast fashion; they also begin to try to share low-carbon life experiences on social media, encouraging more peers to choose green consumption. Above all, they persuade their parents to reduce food waste and use environmentally friendly detergents even at home.
Teenagers have changed from being “children” to “influencers”. These behaviors are not helpless moves to passively adapt to the changes in the world, but the courage to actively participate and jointly shape the future. Because of this, they are also gradually establishing different values from their elders in this process. In other words, the word “growth” is no longer just a competition for test scores for them, but a responsibility to care about the world and respond to the times. At the same time, they redefine “success”, not just how high you stand, but whether you can make the world less painful and greener. All in all, this hope is not to wait for miracles to come, yet to repair while walking. Even though it cannot be done in one step, but we must make every moment better than yesterday.
In conclusion, young people should strive to lead people to change a better world, rather than passively change with the world. When faced with seemingly huge and unsolvable issues such as climate change and ecological collapse, the younger generation did not choose to retreat, but intervened in reality in their own way.
Fortunately, they are not obsessed with “perfect solutions”, but have begun to believe that as long as they take action, they may be able to rewrite the future. For example, some teenagers gives up the pursuit of fast fashion and support local sustainable brands; some teenagers participates in environmental protection organizations in their spare time and take to the streets to advocate plastic reduction policies; some teenagers chooses to major in environmental engineering and devote themselves to the research and development of renewable energy and carbon absorption technology.
Ultimately, they stand on this turbulent world with their feet and repair the cracks that are crumbling with their hands. Teenagers are not perfect, and sometimes they get confused and lost, and even doubt whether their efforts are insignificant. However, it is the will to “try” that makes them still shine in difficult situations because they are practitioners, repairers, and sowers of hope.
By: Hau Shunyie
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