The summer after my freshman year of high school, I was freaking out. 

The drought in Chennai, India was so severe that almost 11 million people completely ran out of water. Even though it was eight thousand miles from my New York City apartment, I stared down at the half-full (half-empty?) glass of water I’d been drinking, and imagined what my life would be like if it— and all the water in my house, my neighborhood, my city— disappeared. I shuddered. 

I kept reading and found out that these droughts are continually exacerbated by global warming— so much so that in four years, 1.8 billion people will be living in conditions of “absolute water scarcity,” and two-thirds of the global population will be under “stressed” water conditions. I couldn’t stop checking my news apps, I lost sleep, and I felt an overwhelming sense of despair. 

Later, I encountered a term for this feeling of hopelessness: “climate doomism.”

Nowadays, there’s been an increase in overall “climate doomism,” especially amongst younger people. This anxiety and stress is incredibly damaging. But most damaging of all is that doomism discourages action. If the end of life as we know it is inevitable, why should we try to stop it?

That same summer, I was first exposed to the world of publicly available data, from Kaggle to Twitter to the New York Times API. The breadth of this “open data” unlocks the sheer amount of information in our world: scientific research on the spread of COVID-19, political trends, a wide variety of news articles, and people’s reactions to them on social media. 

I didn’t think that addressing my climate doomism and the open data world were all that connected at first— but, as I later discovered, there are many initiatives working to make data on droughts, water usage, and food security available for public use. Open data isn’t just restricted to established scientific researchers or government officials: almost anyone can generate forecasts for crop growth or methods for efficient water distribution. 

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released AquaStat and FAOStat, two robust portals for anyone to access data on water consumption, irrigation usage, food production, and much more. The push for open data in the agriculture space also includes the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s public data portals, as well as the Open Government Partnership Conference’s Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative. 

The World Wildlife Fund also recently started Climate Crowd, a platform where individuals can report how their local communities are adapting to extreme weather and climatic events like the water shortage in Chennai. By doing something as simple as documenting and opening data from our own eyes, we can make generating new predictions and insights on our world easy. 

I learned about others’ techniques on coping with water shortages, and about new apps that allow farmers to analyze their crops and distribute limited water efficiently. I crafted my own research projects helping scientists (and motivated students) access vital data on weather patterns and food security to predict food crises before they happen. 

But most importantly, I learned that reshaping our world is not only the challenge of the 21st century. It’s also the opportunity of the 21st century. 

A beautiful world of possibility awaits if we have the courage to step up and act now. A world where the latest innovations mean hope for everyone. A world where families and children don’t have to dream of enough water, or enough food. A world full of life. 

Even though the record-breaking heat in the Pacific Northwest and the building collapse in Miami paint a bleak picture, the ultimate message we need to take from these disasters is that it’s time. 

It’s time to motivate the next generation to act. It’s time to connect middle and high school students, college students, researchers, and anyone who wants to lend a helping hand to the information and the support they need. It doesn’t matter who saves our planet– it matters that we work together for a healthy future. Today, tomorrow, and beyond. 

The open data world and the climate opportunity are converging– let’s make the most of it.