With the Paris Climate Change Conference finishing after a week of deliberation, the leaders of the world have arrived at a general consensus – immediate action is necessary to combat the impending impacts of climate change. According to The Washington Post, many lead scientists of the world insist that action be taken now to avoid the disastrous effects of climate change. That leaves us with the ever so popular question: What should be done about climate change?

First are the facts. Global warming is most definitely real. For anyone who doubts this, take this into consideration. An in-depth analysis released by John Cook, a climate scientist, compiled a large sample of global climate change literature released over a 20 year period. After thorough analysis, Cook found 99.7 percent of agreement among climatologists that climate change is most definitely real and has been caused by humans. Even if you don’t accept Cook’s evidence, do a simple search on Google. The evidence is irrefutable – In the past 200 years, the world has been warming at an alarming rate and the time to act is now.

The impacts are also extremely concerning. Many sources including The Guardian, The Week, TIMES and Al Jazeera conclude that global warming will induce disastrous consequences. It starts with the melting of the polar ice caps which then triggers a significant rise in the ocean level. The rise in the ocean level would be detrimental, as it would completely inundate coastal cities. This, in turn, causes mass migrations, panic, death and not to mention absolute destruction of ecosystems. It also just so happens that the world economic trading hubs are right on the edges of most countries, meaning that they too would be flooded. This then has the capacity to completely cripple the world economy. So far the impacts don’t seem lovely – and I’m not even half way through the effects. What’s even more worrying is that these effects could be seen as soon as 5 years.

Thankfully there are two main solutions to global warming. First is self-accountability. There are little things that each and everyone of us can do every day to help alleviate the stress that is put on the environment. Carpooling, recycling, turning off lights – you know the drill. If you think there is a barrier to doing these simple tasks, ask yourself a couple questions. “Am I truly not able to do this or am I just being lazy?” and “Is suffering through the impacts of global warming worth not doing this now?”. The answer should be enough to garner you the right decision. Remember that the survival and the safety of the public takes precedence over personal apathy.

Of course, individual action alone is not going to stop global warming. This means that the second course of action is to urge congress to pass climate change legislation. Bills and resolutions that ought to be passed would be those pertaining to carbon reduction through taxing and pricing, oil fracking and oil restrictions, incentives and subsidies for renewable energy, etc. Since America is the global hegemon, one of the most influential world leaders, this action will spill over to other countries and can aid in trying to reach effective climate reform. Ultimately, global warming is incontestably real and the effects are frankly horrifying, but, there are routes that can be taken to prevent the impacts from ever happening.