Put aside all those problems of poverty, governmental transparency, and increasing population for a while. Climate change is one global problem that, perhaps, may be mentioned everyday by some news outlet. Although such issue has been called to the table too often that people have grown largely numb to the issue of climate change, it is imperative that people understand the rapidly deprecating nature of our environment.

According to Greenpeace and possibly thousands of environmental science textbooks, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists would agree on one idea: the rising global temperature all boils down to human activities. As humans burn up the planet’s coal, oil, and gas supplies, they’re essentially destroying vast green areas of forests and even peat lands. This would ultimately cause the greenhouse gases to pour into the atmosphere, disrupting the subtle balance of gases that impressively sustains life on our planet.

It has been years since impacts caused by aforementioned causes have been made. Sea levels are rising. Coral reefs and marine animals are steered to the edge of death everyday. Glaciers, permafrost and sea ice are melting. Extreme weather conditions and season changings are taking delights in their spontaneous presences. All of these impacts of climate change are already responsible for countless deaths and The Scientific American predicts that anything more than 2ºC rise in global temperature will put people on the road to potentially catastrophic events.

As cliché as it may sound, environmental problems need gradual, step-by-step efforts. The crux of the solution is to promote low carbon economy with minimal use of fossil fuels. In fact, Business Insider claims that current research proves that we already have the potential to produce what we need. Only righteous political actions and investment is needed to progress toward our future with clean energy. Such political and legal movements would include, for example, redesigning of our transport system by not only increasing the use of public transport and stopping airport expansion but also massively replacing petrol driven vehicles with hybrids or electric vehicles.

Despite the growing voices that climate change is not true at all, that it is a scientific misconception, people must understand that they are culpable of all the environmental risks that the future holds. As long as we want to simply live in a clean, protected world in the coming years, we must fix our world, perhaps in five minutes or less.