Post #4
Effects of Climate Change on Society
While some people still refuse to believe it, climate change is real, and it is happening. The only thing that should be up for discussion now is how we are going to fix the problem. These actions could be something as simple as requiring carpooling at all times to help ensure we are using less fuel. This may be hard at first and require adjusting, but it is at least one step in the right direction. Things that could be done immediately are conserving electricity, water, and car rides, for example. Many things could be done right now that people do not think of because we are so concerned about what is happening with our day-to-day lives and less about the lives of the generation below us that are going to be affected way more than us.
Current action in the world is starting to increase to that of which it used to be. Unfortunately, a lot more could be done, but private interest cause lots of people with capital to not help fund the issue. However, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, just recently donated 10 billion dollars to help researchers and scientists figure out a solution to this worldwide problem (Visit NYTimes.com!). This can be seen as an improvement, and hopefully, this money will help us stop the progression of climate change, but we will still have to live with what we have already done.
Even though we may be able to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases, the air still contains all those that we have done in the past, meaning they will continue to cause climate change until the Earth recycles it back into the ground. A short article released by NASA states that the damage we have already done will last for decades or maybe even centuries because it takes the Earth so long to recycle the greenhouse gases (Visit climate.NASA.gov!). Those greenhouse gases will continue to progress climate change until they are out of the air. This tells us we need to find a solution to get them out of the air as quickly as possible to stop the progression.
Chile’s principal environmental problems are deforestation. The pollution of its air, water, and land are also significant problems that are reaching the urban/industrial regions due to the populations doubling in the last 30 years. This, in turn, is also causing soil erosion, which is hard for infrastructure and growing crops. Untreated sewage is also another threat to Chile’s non-urban communities, with only 51% of its rural dwellers having clean drinking water. It was also reported that over 250 plants and 30 animal species are either endangered or threatened with extinction (Visit nationencyclopedia.com!). These are just a few of the problems that climate change is currently causing the people of Chile, and conditions will only worsen if no effects continue to be made.
Indigenous people that live in these lands are also being affected by climate change. While climate change does affect us all, it has a much more significant impact on most indigenous people because they have a sense of agency with their lands. What I mean by this is they have a connection with the land and see it more like an ancestor rather than just grass and dirt. In other words, the land is a part of them, and they are a part of the land. Larsen, an instructor at Mizzou that did multiple reports on the people of his time with the Cheslatta people in North America, would most likely agree with this philosophy (Meet Dr. Soren Larsen!). His reports talked about how the Cheslatta were getting their lands taken from them by industry. They had lived there for decades, and many generations had lived and been buried there. So even though it might not have been climate change, industrialization was the causation, which is also the cause of climate change. So even though they are not the same, they can be correlated. With that being said, we must fuel the efforts to stop climate change in order to help us and indigenous people like these that are being affected all around the world.
South America 