My name is Braylon; I’m currently 17 years old, and I am a part of Alaska Youth for Environmental Action, or AYEA, a group dedicated to making positive change for the environment in Alaska. You could say that I’ve had it easy when it comes to climate change, and you’d be right. I live in Anchorage, which is a northern mid-sized city, situated in the United States, which all adds up to a relatively minimal experience of climate change. But as a city person, while I don’t see most of the major outcomes, I still care about climate change. Why is that?
For starters, there are subtle changes that we often miss as city folk. Have you noticed how often we’ve been snowed in the past few years? This may seem counterintuitive, but those massive snowstorms are an outcome of climate change. We’ll continue to have storms like that, and it’ll only get worse if we don’t step up and do something. We need to declare a climate emergency.
How do we declare a climate emergency? While it may sound simple, it isn’t as easy as just saying it. A climate emergency is a legal status that has to be declared by either our legislators or our governor. We need to petition our government to declare a climate emergency, and AYEA is doing just that. What would declaring a climate emergency do? Well, it’d give us the funding and resources to start dealing with the effects of climate change, allowing us to start making positive changes statewide.
The best time to declare a climate emergency was years ago, but the second best time is right now.
— Braylon Joseph-Mosley
Anchorage
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