Tanner Cook | Contributing Writer

In recent years, Climate Change has been an issue of contention for political leaders as well as regular people. These disagreements have not escaped the Storm Lake Community or even this campus.

It is no secret among my friends and people who know me that I am a huge proponent of Climate Change and I am willing to dedicate my life trying to fix the damages humans have caused to the environment. This may seem like a useless, waste of time for many of you who think Climate Change is hoax or a political move. This is just fine. Do I agree with you? Heck no, but you’re entitled to your opinion.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but this article is not intended to persuade you to the “dark side” if you are a non-believer. I am writing to you today to talk about the lack of responsibility we have taken with our actions.

Regardless if you believe in Climate Change or not, you know it is wrong to dump oil down drains and into streams. You should also know that it is wrong to litter. This is now common sense. There are common sense things that we continually ignore, however. For example, people choose not to recycle even though the receptacle is right next to the trash. Why don’t people do something that the school has made so mind-blowingly easy for us? The answer is it takes more work than throwing it away. It’s easy to just throw away that bottle instead of rinsing it. Other times people are resistant because they didn’t recycle at home and they’re not used to it. That’s great. When our kids ask why our oceans are full of plastic? Why the landfills are so big? Why we don’t have as many trees as those pictures had? We can say with pride that we didn’t do what was right because it was too hard and we just weren’t used to it. We will boast about the large expanses of timber that we were able to visit and hike, but be pleased when we show them those no longer exist, that we cut down those trees for paper and wood even though we could have recycled and reused most of it.

When our kids see beautiful, vivid pictures of the oceans we can look them in the eye and see the delight when they actually see it, filled with plastic and slime. We can proudly pass on that Earth and grin as we tell our kids that this is theirs now.