When we meet strangers or acquaintances, we begin the conversation by discussing weather. We exchange how hot/ cold/ rainy it was/ could be. We like to talk about extreme weather stories. The stories we exchange about weather tells us a lot about a person- how observant a person is, how close to nature they are…and most importantly how do they talk about climate change.
Climate change is happening every day.
Seasons are becoming shorter or longer, depending upon where you live. The oceans are churning out more powerful hurricanes, which are causing enormous damage when they land on the shores. Here is a short video summarizing the effects of climate change from the perspective a teenager.
If we think for a minute that climate change does not affect us, think again. Summer 2016 was one of the hottest temperatures recorded in India. Can you guess how hot it got?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCHMAfmYxJg
The roads melted and asphalt flowed.
Think for a moment- what will happen if it gets so hot that we cannot get out of our homes in summer at all?
No swimming in summer. No Picnic in summer
No fruits in summer
No sports in summer!
Wait a minute, where will we play our summer Olympics then?
Researchers at the University of California, Berkley, led by Krik Smith, studied suitable locations to host summer Olympics in 2085. They predicted the conditions for athletes to run marathon due to two reasons. First, the marathon is the only event to be run on the road. Second, it takes a little more than 2 hours to complete the race. The summer marathon is one of the most grueling sport that requires plenty of stamina and endurance. Runners need to complete a distance of 42.195 kilometers (26 miles, 385 yards) and current world record is 2 hours and 2 minutes and 57 seconds by Dennis Kimetto.
The marathon itself has an interesting origin tracing back to the Greek history as narrated in this video:
Marathon has united people of all races and backgrounds. Running a marathon in summer is one of the popular feats in human endurance. It has united people from all around the world, just like the Boston Marathon.
Researchers found, in terms of climate, that only 25 cities would be suitable to run the marathon in 2085 summer Olympic Games. Only one of these locations is in Asia, Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. Increase in temperature means more stress to the runners. The marathon runners already experience extreme muscle function, breakdown of glucose source, loss of water, and excessive heart function. If a person runs at high temperature, we may have runners dying out of sheer exhaustion! That is how climate change is important for marathon runners. In turn this means, we cannot enjoy outdoors and the sun when summer comes again.
Can you identify one way climate change will affect you? We can, as group of committed citizens do a lot to slow down the effects of climate change. Let us do it!
