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WE COULD BE HEROES

The Week Junior Science+Nature UK

February 2025

Meet the young people just like you who are doing amazing things to help save the world.

The world is in crisis - planet Earth is heating up and wildlife is vulnerable to extinction. Climate change is causing more extreme weather, and melting glaciers and polar ice caps, leading to difficulty growing crops, rising sea levels and damage to ecosystems. Climate change is long-term changes in the world's weather patterns, including rising temperatures, caused by human activities such as cutting down trees and burning coal, oil and gas. What the world needs is superheroes - eco warriors like you who know what needs to be done to fix our planet, and are prepared to do it.

We wanted to know what YOU – our readers – thought about climate change, so in the November 2024 issue of Science+Nature we asked you to explain what climate change means to you and tell us your stories about what you are doing to protect the environment and help nature.

A huge 93% of people who responded to our “Planet Protectors” survey said that they understood what climate change is and 65% of you said you are extremely concerned about it (see panel overleaf).

There is no time to lose, but all over the world young people like you are taking small actions that are leading to BIG changes. Let’s go on a journey to meet some of these young, passionate and resourceful Earth heroes...

Protecting animals

Meet Aneeshwar Kunchala, aged nine, from Warrington, England. You may remember him from Britain’s Got Talent in 2022, where he was called a “mini Sir David Attenborough”. When Aneeshwar’s teacher showed him a picture of a whale that had died because of pollution, he knew that he had to do something to help all wildlife. Aneeshwar started making videos on YouTube about his favourite creatures. They were so successful that he's gone on to present TV shows about wildlife.