At the beginning of 2020 fires rampaged across Australia and now they are working their way through the American West. Climate change is something that most people have heard of, but still not enough people are taking action.

Why do so many people know the phrase “climate change” but still don’t do anything against it? Part of this comes from people not understanding exactly how climate change affects us and what it is. 

“A lot of people when they hear global warming they think that everything has to get hotter. They don’t understand that climate change is actually just a drastic difference in the temperature, whether hot or cold,” Mrs. Julie Shupryt, Science, said.

In a report from Indiana’s Past and Future Climate, they said that Indiana would continue to get hotter and wetter. There usually was one day with a temperature higher than 95 degrees, but by 2050 it is projected to have 31 days over 95 degrees.

“Some places will get colder and some places will get hotter. When I was a kid I would stand in a foot of snow at the bus stop all the time. We don’t get a lot of big snowstorms any more,” Shupryt said.

There are some people who are trying to change the impact of climate change. These people are part of the Northwest Indiana Region Resilience. They decided to take it in their hands to petition the local governments in our region to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

“With an inventory, communities know how much greenhouse gases they contribute and what sources contribute the most. With that they could make changes that would be cost-effective, help public health and mitigate climate change,” Connie Wachala, a member of the group, said.

NWI Region Resilience is made up of several smaller groups throughout the Northwest Indiana region who are committed to getting the local government involved. 

“We wanted people to learn about actions they could take locally. We need to be talking and having discussions with our local elected officials to make them aware of these resources and also to tell them that we are very concerned about these issues,” Wachala said.

Not everyone wants to get involved politically, which is fine. Government action is only one part of the equation for fighting climate change. There are lots of things people can do in their daily lives.

“There are small things you can do,like carpooling or putting solar panels on our roof. Eating less meat would help. Especially eating less cow. It takes a lot of energy to raise them, and they produce a lot of methane. You could start by doing meatless Mondays or something like that,” Shupryt said.