As Ismailis, We Should all Care about Climate Change. | IsmailisRiseUp.
Our generation is faced with a daunting task: stop climate change. But how? Dr. Rashid, who has witnessed his home city of New York transition from a sub-temperate to a sub-tropical climate in his lifetime, explains that it is more than just individual responsibility. There are individual choices that we can make but ultimately when a handful of corporations are responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is hard to place responsibility on individuals. That does not mean, however, that we as individuals do not have power. Dr. Rashid says,
Those companies are all regulated by our governments. They are not governments in and of themselves and we can see the ways in which these companies are leveraging governments to not pay any taxes in the context of the United States, to have environmental regulations lifted for them, to get waivers for themselves. They don’t actually vote anybody in. They simply use the money we give them to then buy policies and politicians that create policies that are harmful to us. So essentially, we are paying for our own destruction. And so for me as an individual, I think about the individual things I can do to protect the environment, and I can make an individual decision as to where I am going to do my business.