Remember the '10 year challenge?', a harmless meme which became a highly popular trend on social media last year. This time another meme has started to take over Twitter in which people are sharing side-by-side photos of themselves in two different stages in life, with the caption, 'How it started vs how it's going.'
As many netizens share pictures of how much their lives have changed, and what they have achieved, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an international non-governmental organization, took this opportunity to show the world the reality of climate change.
'How It Started vs How It's Going'
Climate change is one of those facts which political lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry, media moguls, and many other people continue to cast their doubts on and they call it a hoax. As reported earlier, the world's five largest publicly owned oil and gas companies spend almost $200 million per year on lobbying to control, delay and even block binding climate policy.
But thanks to the climate crisis protests, governments declaring climate emergencies, and the increased number of environmental safety-related events, the way people used to think about the global warming and environmental crisis is now changing as the awareness is spreading all across the globe.
But still, it seems the world is not on the right track and there are places to make lots of changes. So, when this new trend, 'how it started vs how it's going' started, WWF, the organization that works in the field of wilderness protection and the reduction of human impact on nature, jumped into it to shed light on the climate change issue.
The Picture Is a Message
WWF's Twitter posts showed the drastic effect of changing climate on the inhabitants of the Earth. In the first tweet, the photos show 'how it started vs how it's going' on melting ice sheets in the North Pole. While the left side image showed once-thriving ice caps, the right one showed a polar bear standing on a melting ice sheet and that is not a hoax, it is the reality of this world.
Recently, a team of scientists, who participated in the world's biggest expedition to the North Pole returned with a devastating climate warning. The researchers noticed that the region is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world, no doubt in that the Arctic is considered as "the epicenter of climate change."
Even a team of Russian scientists, who have been studying the consequences of methane emissions from underwater permafrost in the Arctic Ocean, recently stated that they have discovered an unusually powerful release of methane on the surface of the water in the area of the East Siberian Sea.
As per a study, scientists also predicted that climate change effects will kill the polar bears by 2100. If that happens, next time when WWF will share "then and now" images, maybe we won't see a polar bear on the right side of the photo.
Wildfire Is Taking Their Homes
In the second tweet, WWF shared wildfire affected region that caused koala bears to lose their homes. While the first image showed a green forest, the second one showed a koala bear, holding a tree in a completely burned forest.
The wildlife population has been dropping dramatically and not only the environmentalists but also the global organizations like the UN have pointed it out in recent times, mostly due to climate change, overconsumption, population growth, and unregulated farming.
The latest bushfire in Australia and the ongoing habitat destruction on the east coast of the country have aggravated the threat status of koalas and other animals. As per the New South Wales parliament, the bushfire from September 2019 to March 2020 has killed a minimum of 5,000 koalas in that region alone.
However, after posting those images WWF urged people to join a movement, Voice for the Planet, and to make small changes in their daily routine to energy consumption. It also encouraged people to sign a petition against plastic pollution, while seeking support from people for a global 'Plastic Pollution Treaty.'
