Thousands of people across the world came out on Friday to protest world governments failing to act quickly enough in response to climate change.

According to Associated Press, “Scientists have warned that global warming will subject Earth to rising seas and more heat waves, droughts, powerful storms, flooding and other problems, and that some have already started manifesting themselves.”

Satellites have revealed that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and that snow is melting earlier, in a report by the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center. This is one of many compelling pieces of evidence that climate change is real. It will and has already caused changes to rising temperatures, precipitation changes, heat waves, extended droughts — all linked to an increase in wildfires.

Of course, Utah will not be immune from feeling the effects.

Despite cold and wet weather, from Orem to Ogden, local protests were held where hundreds gathered advocating for the future of the Earth in climate strikes.

Signs like “I want you to act like the house is on fire because it is” and “There is no Planet B” were carried by youth and adults alike.

“The science shows it’s real and if we keep living the lives we’re living, we are going to ruin the Earth,” said Skylar Hansen, a senior at Utah Valley University.

While the solutions to addressing climate change are not in the sole hands of the U.S. or Utahns, we as communities can lead by example to the rest of the world in doing our part of taking care of this beautiful home we have been given. These youth in our communities should be listened to by legislators and lawmakers, after all it is their own future they are fighting for and they deserved to be heard.

Hopefully global leaders at the U.N. Climate Action Summit today will heed the concerns of worldwide youth and the adults that support them, as demonstrated Friday. Efforts to safeguard our world are required by every country, and this will take no small amount of educating as this change proceeds. If not, our children and grandchildren will have far more damning problems than the ones like growth and legalization of marijuana that we debate today.