Preaching to the choir to talk about climate change, I know, so I just wanna share some millennial perspective for folks who'd be too young or too urban to have witnessed these kinds of ecological changes. I'm 31 now, in 2024, and I'm from the southern post oak savannahs in Texas.
Growing up, spring was characterized by the lovebugs swarming to mate. Gas stations would be especially packed by them, attracted to the smell of their own smeared bodies being wiped off of everyone's windshields. My grandmother saw maybe one this year.
Growing up, summer was characterized by droves of cicadas, junebugs, grasshoppers and the black-and-yellow argiope, a web spider that grows big enough to eat them. This had been one of the quietest summers I can ever recall. I didn't hear the wee-oo-wee-oo of scissorgrinder cicadas at all this year. I saw grasshoppers but only a few small argiopes near the edge of town. I don't remember seeing any junebugs.
Growing up, autumn got frost in the mornings. I would have to wait for the windshield to defrost to go to school. Texas was always warm in the summer, but it was still normal to get cooler-than-tropical weather during the cold months. The last time I can recall morning frost was at least ten years ago.
Growing up, winter still didn't usually give us more than one day of snow toward February, but we did get ice and sleet. It was normal to see my breath outside. The polar vortices were unusual, but warm winters are also unusual even in Texas. They're a very recent occurrence.
A lot of users on this platform were born after these changes already passed, or else grew up in the city. If climate change were reversed tomorrow, it would be a shock to the system how much more fuller the air would be with wings and songs during the warm months, and how much icier the cold months would be. I don't know how to express to anyone younger than me how much emptier, quieter, the trees and grasses are compared to however old I'd have been when they were born.
What's happened has already happened, but. I dunno. It's still important to remember what else is different or missing, especially in order to better envision what recovery will look like.