It seems the main, if not only thing, getting in the way of combating climate change is the economy and I am in no way an expert on economics. In fact, I know next to nothing on economics so chapter 2 "High Tides" was a little hard to get through, however very informative. Money controls everything and those who have money don't wish to spare it and risk losing some of it. After this chapter I was amazed by how much money went in to so many things: infrastructure, agriculture, nuclear energy, etc. And the prices for our new planet affected by climate change only costs more than the one we lived on just 10 years ago.
The one thing that really stuck out to me in "High Tides" I found on page 72. McKibben talks about Bangladesh and how it has hardly affected climate change, yet its people, ecology, and economy are drastically affected by it. The Himalayan glaciers melt and the rivers don't provide as much water, the Bay of Bengal is rising and displacing much of their agriculture, and the warm temperature is only making the problem of Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that causes denga fever, worse. It has been shown that climate change tends to negatively affect many native species, but invasive species are hardly affected due to their adaptive nature. This link, http://www.climate.org/topics/ecosystems/invasivespecies.html ,explains a lot about the relationship between invasive species and climate change and gives specific examples on the hottentot fig in Cabo da Luca in Portugal and the Asian tiger mosquito, which carries the West Nile virus. In this image the blue is where the Asian tiger mosquito is native and the green is where it has been introduced as an invasive species.
Clearly, as I've said before, the whole world has to realize the urgency of climate change before we can get anything done. The economy will have to change and make adjustments to allow renewable energy sources in to our daily lives.
I like your picture, and I think in Chapter two it was really nice to have examples. These examples let us see what climate change is doing to nations around the world. One of my other professors made a comment to me yesterday, it was that we have a moral obligation to do something. Our actions affect areas of the world that have not contributed to climate change. Wow! It is a very humbling notion that we have actually hurt others.
ReplyDeleteI like how you focused on the motion of our economy as it seems like it is in perpetual motion. I think that is a major issue as this motion has caused us to simply overlook many issues that have been developing for many years. We hear it from our politicians all the time that our economy needs to be fixed, our roads need to be patched, our healthcare system needs to be revamped. There's so much that we know it wrong with our country and, in one way or another, climate change is contributing to that.
ReplyDeleteIts quite sad that countries like Bangladesh, who have contributed almost nothing to climate change are those that are most affected. When it comes to money, I agree with you that everything is run in the eye of profit. These big companies don't want to spend the money that will contribute to change. A lot of businesses realize to make money, you have to spend money, so this idea of having to spend tons of money with no gain in revenue isn't so appealing to them. I hope they can realize that change has to be done, no exceptions.
ReplyDeleteI totally get how you feel when you said it was difficult to get through all the economic statistics. Everything cost so much, the numbers are beyond my understanding. I agree that as climate change starts to have more effects the prices of nearly everything will go up. It will take sacrifice by many people to fix this problem.
ReplyDeleteCeCe, your visual aids for this blog have a big impact and I almost used the same web link! I agree that economics, without doubt, is one of the driving causes of climate change. It's the mentality that "if I don't profit from it, someone else will."
ReplyDeleteWow, it is amazing the Asian Tiger mosquito can thrive in so many places with such a range of temperatures. It's crazy to think that we are not only responsible for the changes in climate that allow these invasive species to thrive, but are also responsible for bringing then here, even if it was inadvertently. I also agree that the amount of money spent on our infrastructure is outrageous, and to think that they are only going to go up in the years to come.
ReplyDeleteCeCe, I love your inclusion of the analogies and comparisons to a navigation system. To an individual who is not familiar with the effects of global warming, using methods like that to portray the dangers of things such as global warming may really help to get the message across. I enjoyed reading your information on the Asian Tiger mosquito, because many of us have touched on malaria and the anopheles mosquito, but we have not explored the effect of global warming on other diseases.
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