About 12 billion tons of water melted from ice sheets in Greenland on August 1. It was recorded as one of the largest amounts of ice sheets melted and the consequences are alarming: inevitably rising sea levels, endangering to coastal communities, etc.

Two months ago, Breakthrough National Centre For Climate Restoration reported that climate change is an existential threat to human civilization that could cause society to collapse by the year 2050.

Personally, I never want to be alive when the apocalypse happens. I genuinely thought I wouldn't live to see it in this lifetime, but the year 2050 is not far away. I live in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a coastal city, so if we do not do something about climate change soon, I am literally going to die.

In 2013, National Geographic released a story in their September issue that included a map that entertained the hypothetical concept of "What the World Would Look Like if All the Ice Melted." Florida and much of the beloved east coast was wiped off the map completely. To be quite frank, I am not a strong swimmer and will drown immediately once this all goes down - unless some change is made.

The brutal truth is, climate change will be the death of us unless a drastic change is made. On July 30, it was reported by the Norwegian Polar Institue that more than 200 reindeer were found dead in the artic. Reindeers typically eat vegetation that they must dig through the tundra for during the winter season. However, since the effects of climate change result in warmer weather, it brought excessive rainfall which led to the vegetation being unreachable for the reindeer from the ice locking the vegetation in.

This is how it starts, and we are next. The extreme weather events caused by climate change is not a force to ignore and let the next generation deal with. At this rate, there won't even be another "next generation."

Resources are becoming scarce and normal living conditions are becoming uninhabitable. You can't fight science. Facts are facts, especially when it's being reported by scientists who specialize in this field. It's hard to check social media when every day, you see an alarming post involving climate change.

We need to be more aware of the choices we're making and reducing our carbon footprint as much as we can. Whether it's adopting a plant-based diet, planting a garden to absorb carbon dioxide, or switching to renewable resources — anything, really — change needs to happen now.