I’m fourteen years old and I just saw hundreds of homes in my community burn from a fire that drew much of its strength from climate change.

On December 30th, in my hometown of Boulder, the Marshall Fire devastated everyone in the area, whether they lost their home, saw damage to their yard, or were safe themselves but knew friends and family who were not. Before the fire, the amount of precipitation was unusually low, even for a dry state like Colorado. The total amount of snowfall in December was 5.1 inches, less than half the average of 12.3 inches. How regularly the lack of snow was mentioned in the days before the fire struck me as a red flag, and I now regret thinking nothing more of it.

The grasses were abnormally dry for this time of year, and had there been any recent snow, the fire would not have been able to burn fields and houses so quickly. With the combination of winds reaching 105 miles per hour and the lack of precipitation, many experts have said this disaster stemmed from climate change.

As a teenager finding a substantial amount of my happiness from nature, the earth has always been a concern of mine. But in the past few years, it has changed from a concern for future generations and the less privileged, to a fear for the current time period and for my hometown.

Smoky summer days are becoming increasingly common globally. When the air was so thick last summer that it was dangerous to go outside, I began to wake up to the effects climate change was already having on my life. Around that same time, floods in Germany killed a distant relative of mine and washed out houses that my dad had visited just days ago. The thought that if those floods had occurred a week earlier, my dad would have been in them, terrified me. My anger towards adults for not taking action to save my future transitioned to fear for me and my loved one's present.

When the Marshall Fire began, it was the most disastrous natural event I had seen. If the previous occurrences hadn’t already woken me up to the urgency of climate change, this event certainly did.

Much of environmental education presents climate change as a risk to polar bears and a risk to humanity only after a certain rise in global temperatures. We need to get past this mindset. I continually hear from people in my community who understand climate change is an important issue but believe it will only harm those in poorer communities or those living in years far beyond this generation.

Yet, nearly one thousand homes were lost due to a fire that would not have happened if climate change were not so severe.

This, if anything, proves that even in an area as privileged as Boulder County, we are not exempted from the effects of our earth’s warming. The belief that wealthy, more fortunate people are safeguarded from the effects of climate change is an extreme misunderstanding.

The climate crisis is not just an issue for youth concerned about their futures, or vegans eager to stop animal cruelty. It is a crisis that is occurring right now, and since it has impacts on the environment worldwide, it is affecting, or will be affecting everyone. So although I wish this disastrous issue was something we could push off until the next generation, the time period where that was acceptable has long since passed. This isn’t about another continent. This isn’t about your grandchildren. This is about your home. This is about you.