Superficial awareness will not save us from climate collapse

In recent years, climate awareness has become something of a buzzword in Pakistan. Flashy seminars, one-off campaigns, and dramatic social media posts have taken center stage. Yet the environmental crisis deepens. Karachi reels under heatwaves, Lahore suffocates in smog, and rivers across the country dry up or flood with little warning. If this is what “awareness” gets us, perhaps it is time we admit the truth: superficial climate awareness is not only ineffective, but also dangerously misleading. Heatwaves offer a stark case study. A five-day extreme heat event in Karachi can cause economic losses equivalent to a full day’s shutdown, over ten billion rupees in productivity lost. Yes, authorities occasionally set up heatwave relief camps or issue warnings. However, most of our efforts remain reactive, focused solely on supply-side responses. What about demand-side adaptation? Why don’t more people know how to protect themselves and their livelihoods? The issue is not general ignorance; it is the absence of deep, sustained public education on climate risks and resilience. This gap between awareness and understanding is the result of decades of unstructured environmental messaging. The government continues to operate in silos, constrained by lack of transparency and true commitment. Where state responsibility ends, public responsibility begins. Yet how can the public step up when garbage collection often requires private arrangements, and basic infrastructure like recycling or composting is missing? Waste segregation, for instance, is futile if there is no facility to process it. Awareness cannot thrive in a vacuum; it must be in a functioning system. The public’s growing cynicism is understandable. Environmental messages, even when sincere, are dismissed frequently as tokenistic, especially when the very corporations responsible for pollution sponsor them. An environmental compliance seminar funded by an industrial polluter is less an act of accountability than it is a public relations stunt. Such contradictions erode trust, making it harder for genuine efforts to gain traction. The argument often made against more meaningful, grassroots education is that it is too expensive. However, that is a myth. The cost of hosting one lavish seminar could fund ten days of immersive training in a low-income community. Online awareness campaigns can be launched for a few thousand rupees; what matters is the message and its continuity, not the production value. So, what can be done? We must shift from symbolic gestures to structured, long-term public education on climate and environmental rights. This means integrating climate literacy into schools, empowering local community groups with tools and knowledge, and holding polluters and policymakers to account. We need people who understand not just that plastic is bad, but why it is bad. What alternatives exist, and who is responsible for change? Critically, this education must come from actors without vested interests—civil society groups, educators, and activists who are not beholden to sponsors or political patronage. A handful of well-trained individuals in a community can spark ripple effects that reach hundreds more. The spread may seem slow at first, but it builds a foundation for genuine, grassroots-driven environmental stewardship. The time has come to build a real, durable culture of climate responsibility. That can only happen when people know their rights, understand their roles, and are equipped with real solutions. If government agencies truly cared about outcomes, they would be funding long-term educational programs, not media-facing events. If corporations were sincere about their environmental commitments, they would be supporting community-based resilience training, not greenwashing dinners with photo ops. Pakistan is not powerless. Our environmental destiny is not yet sealed. But we must act now and act wisely. Superficial awareness is not awareness at all. It is, in fact, a dangerous substitute for the real work ahead.