What's the Worst That Could Happen? - Awareness Story

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟐

     

     "Get off those crates, you're only making yourselves look foolish!" a man yelled, now standing in front of the activists. 

Seems like they had managed to attract an audience, just not the audience they wanted. They ignored him however, and kept on shouting their slogans and trying to give out some leaflets (the men in the group). The man watching them got even more enraged by that, and he went up to them and grabbed the leaflets, scattering them all over the floor.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" the guy who was giving out the leaflets exclaimed, looking at the man pissed.

"Wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with you!" the man huffed, "You're standing in the middle of the sidewalk harassing a passerby and disrupting the place with your yelling, and you have the audacity to ask what's wrong with me?!"

Esme involuntarily rolled her eyes at that.

"They're just trying to raise awareness." she spoke up, the words coming out of her mouth almost against her will.

The man was surprised to see her, and he opened his mouth to reply before one of the two women in the group got to it first.

"Exactly! And it's about time ignorant people like you started to LISTEN instead of plugging your goddamn ears!" she said, pointing to her ears exaggeratedly.

"Watch your attitude when you talk to me first of all." the man grunted, "And what am I supposed to start 'listening' to? Huh? Your stupid little climate change protests? I have more important things to care about!"

"Oh yeah? Let's see how important those things are going to be when you have no planet to live on!" The second guy in the group chimed in, raising his sign saying 'There is No Planet B' higher up, trying to prove his point. Esme quietly agreed with him.

The man scoffed, before he started laughing, clearly ironically.

"What's so funny?" the other woman spat out. "You're nothing but an arrogant, selfish, blind moron who clearly doesn't understand the bigger picture, the dimensions of the problem we're facing."

"Which are huge, by the way." the first woman added.

As they argued, more people started coming around the activists, only now paying attention to the signs and the drawing on the floor, or so it seemed. Only when 'drama' had started. Naturally.

"What are you calling him out for?" one young man, probably around Esme's age, spoke up. He gestured to the man who had started arguing with the activists. "He hasn't done anything wrong."

"Other than being an ignorant loser," the last man in the group started, "He just started yelling at us and taking our leaflets out of nowhere. We weren't looking for trouble."

"You were bothering the passerby." the young man retorted, shrugging.

"We were not...-" one of the women spoke, but then trailed off, just sighing. "Listen, all of you." she glanced around the people that had circled them now. "If we don't start acting up to save our planet now, things will keep getting worse and worse and there will come a point where we won't be able to fix it anymore. Climate change IS REAL. We are the only ones who can change it."

"Start acting up to do what? Save the polar bears and some sea turtles?" someone in the crowd scoffed, making some people laugh and some others frown.

"Seriously?" The second woman looked at them all in disbelief. "If you took 10 minutes of your time to research the slightest bit about climate change, or just read our leaflets, you would realise how stupid what you just said is. That is not the only problem. Climate change is not just ice melting, it's rising temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, altered food and water, increase of human health issues, economic impact, migration, and those are only the crucial effects! Do you understand that our planet is getting worse and worse day by day? And we're doing nothing about it? It's time to wake up! If you want a better future for yourselves, for your children, for your grandchildren, if you even want a future at all, start acting up. This is our only chance, and the ignorance out here is disheartening. Just take a moment to look around you and appreciate nature, see what you are going to lose if things stay the same."

"How are humans even responsible for this?!"

"I already do what I'm supposed to do, leave me out of this."

"Things are not like that, you guys are just making this a bigger deal than it is for attention!"

"Just pack up and go home, you aren't achieving anything with your lies!"

Those were some of the replies the group got. At this point everyone was just arguing with everyone. Esme glanced down at the drawing of the earth made out of chalk, noticing how now, the small part that was previously blue and vibrant, was gray as well, due to all the people stepping on it. She watched the fight, hesitating on joining in or staying out of this. She ended up backing out, figuring her voice would only get swallowed by all the other voices that were talking over each other. She started walking away, now focusing on going back to her house again.