The end of Combating Climate Change (just the column!)

Dear Readers, 

For the final time, I am writing for my column. I’ll be graduating this month and have been working on this column for the last four years. I started writing for The News-Letter’s  Science and Technology section in my freshman year. My first-ever article covered an event centered around sustainability. That event was what made me think more about our planet and, more specifically, climate change. I reached out to my then-editors and asked to write a column; thus, Combating Climate Change was born. 

Rereading the first article makes me remember a specific moment. I was sitting in my freshman-year dorm in October 2019, feeling slightly sad. The fall semester of freshman year had been rough, and I was far away from home. But I remember when that night, I got dinner, sat on my bed and started typing. It was one of the first things that I had felt happy about in a while. This column became a way for me to express my passion for climate change reform. I also was able to connect with climate change events all over the world, from Pakistan’s floods to Texas’ snowstorms.

As I mentioned in my article “On being an imperfect environmentalist," thinking about climate change can be scary — daunting, even. It is an issue with multiple dimensions, and it can seem like there is no one solution. However, that’s also reassuring: There is no one solution, but, maybe as we implement more solutions, the magnitude of reform and reversal can get us to a better place. Every small action does help.

We can accumulate any contributions made to help relieve climate change. That being said, we must hold corporations responsible for their large-scale contributions to climate change. Along with that, the government must assume responsibility for aiding and creating climate change efforts. 

I am very optimistic that we can continue to make change and progress. We must be optimistic in order for change to happen. I would like to think that writing this column was one way I contributed, as I hope to educate people in an understandable way.

It was an honor to have a space to write about climate change. I appreciate every single reader. I also thank all my editors through these four years — Trisha Parayil, Laura Wadsten, William Blair, Ellie Rose Mattoon and Zachary Bahar — who have taken the time to meet with me to talk about my ideas and help fine-tune the articles that you read. Thank you. 

Sincerely, 

Tanvi Narvekar