The Weight of the World on Gen Z's Shoulders
Since the time of elementary school, parents, teachers, presidents, and any of the other role models of a ten-year-old have emphasized the same message over and over again to my generation: the future is in your hands . This message, meant to be one of inspiration and motivation, encouraged us to take charge of our lives. It stressed that we were the ones who could shape our destiny. We were the ones who could create the life of our dreams for ourselves. Nothing and no one else could determine our path. But in a world where environmental problems have worsened to a point where even the possibility of a future is uncertain, this saying becomes less and less true every day. Issues like climate change and pollution have been around for decades, but recently, these issues have blown up due to the rapid growth of the human population. Every year in the last decade, thousands of species were declared extinct, 14 million tons of plastic were thrown away, two billion tons of waste were ge