Seema Parmar | Want to motivate climate action? Share your climate story

The number 1.5 seems to be permanently etched in my brain.

As an environmental studies student, my professors often cite the internationally agreed upon climate target that global average temperatures must not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The average in 2023 was already 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1850-1900 baseline.

I know the accompanying impacts of rising global temperatures are familiar to many students studying outside my major as well. As global warming continues, I’m not alone in anticipating more frequent extreme weather events such as heat waves and heavy rainfall, increased coastal flooding, wider spread of vector-borne diseases, and intensified droughts.

But with the worst climate impacts still set to happen in the future, it can be easy to see climate change as an abstract, distant phenomena.

Yet it’s having very real impacts on the Penn community right now.

Since the start of 2024, I have been working as a My Climate Story (MCS) campus correspondent: part of a student internship funded by Penn’s Program in Environmental Humanities. In my role at the climate storytelling and sharing collective, I have been trained to conduct interviews on campus to surface and document how members of the Penn and Philadelphia communities are experiencing climate change locally. The interviews are being published on MCS’s social channels.

When I first reach out to people about the project, most responded that they would love to be interviewed, but they “aren’t sure they have a climate story.” They all do.

For College first year Sandro Mocciolo from Connecticut, climate change means watching the shells of crustaceans like shellfish, creatures vital to his hometown’s economy, weakening over time because of increasing ocean acidification.

For College first year Krishna Chemudupati from India, climate change means watching his family’s cherished mango trees produce less and less fruit since his childhood.

For College first year May Zhang from California, climate change means showing up to school in KN95 masks — not because of COVID-19 but because of the growing presence of wildfire-induced smoke in her community. On my part, thinking about climate change reminds me of last June, when Canadian wildfire smoke made its way down the Eastern part of the United States, forcing my friends and family indoors.

Climate storytelling helps transform global warming from an abstract concept to a present, tangible reality. For the people I interview, climate change is not only about ‘increasing ocean acidification,’ ‘a greater frequency of wildfires,’ or ‘decreased agricultural yields.’ It’s more personal. Sometimes, it’s actually tangible — about shells you can “naturally bend with your fingers.” It’s about feeling constantly tired and groggy, with a bad stomach ache. As Mocciolo told me, “[climate change is] a real and physical thing you can feel,” and College junior Thomas Li from California) agreed. It’s “really something that is happening now,” he pressed.

For the people I interview, thinking about the impacts of climate change on their lives can bring a host of negative emotions. I feel my own anxiety about the world’s rapidly increasing temperatures reflected in my interviewees’ concerns: Zhang’s sadness, Mocciolo’s alarm, Li’s worry.

I often leave the interviews feeling a sense of loss and concern for the future. But I also feel less alone. I know that I am surrounded by people who are thinking about how climate change is affecting our communities now and in the future. And because of that, I feel a renewed sense of vigor to take part in climate action.

That’s why I continue to collect video interviews. I want to show members of the Penn community that we aren’t alone in worrying about climate change, even though climate impacts us in distinct ways. I want the interviews to show that climate change is something we can talk about together — among friends, classmates, teammates, and colleagues.

By highlighting the presence of climate change impacts and the myriad concerns around us, sharing our climate stories also allows us to think of climate change as a phenomenon we can help to mitigate now at Penn. It brings a new importance to advocating for better climate education, promoting more aggressive university climate action plans, and supporting fossil fuel divestment campaigns on campus.

So let’s start now. What’s your climate story? Think about it. Share it with your friends.

Let’s turn our collective climate worry into collective climate action.

SEEMA PARMAR is a College first year studying mathematical economics and environmental studies from Basking Ridge, NJ. Her email address is [email protected].