The above video was a presentation created for ANTH 378: Sustainability, Resilience, and Society.
Climate Change is defined by NASA as “. . . a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates” (NASA). Although there is a vast amount of data analyzed by climatologists which detail the effects of Climate Change, as well as its mostly anthropogenic basis (Biello), many, particularly the political right in the United States, remain resistant in accepting Climate Change’s reality (Baldwin 109).
From the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea, middle-region areas such as the Caribbean, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, to Himalayan glaciers and the Valdivian rain forest, the effects of Climate Change promise to be far-reaching and irrevocable (Lerner et al. 200-208). And while population migration has been a fact of life for human populations for over 50,000 years, the effects of anthropogenic Climate Change will exacerbate already perilous migrations for the world’s most vulnerable populations (Baldwin et al.).
While carbon cycles and weather pattern variations do contribute to Climate Change, the consensus within the scientific community is that the primary catalyst is anthropogenic (Oreskes). However, a large portion of the American population remains skeptical of both the reality and consequences of Climate Change (Schmidt). Unfortunately, the disparity between the scientific consensus and this widely-held skepticism appears to be due to deliberate industry disinformation, abetted by many right-wing politicians and media outlets, in an attempt to maintain economic growth and to dismiss political opponents who advocate addressing Climate Change (Benegal and Scruggs) (Grynbaum and Hsu).
Climate Change has been responsible for mass extinctions in the past, does so currently, and will continue in the future. Sober scholarly assessments predict that “. . . most of these [climate] models indicate alarming consequences for biodiversity with worst-case scenarios leading to extinction rates that would qualify as the sixth mass extinction in the history of the earth” (Bellard et al. 375).
Finally, one must ask how to cope with the effects of Climate Change, as well as creating a lifestyle which is more amenable in alleviating the effects of Climate Change. Through the consciousness-expanding philosophy of Deep Ecology, a philosophical and ecological viewpoint that emphasizes a non-hierarchal view of humanity in nature, it may be possible to persuade much of humanity to see themselves as merely a part of nature – not its conqueror, nor as an outsider (Naess). This would engender a much-needed, more modest view of ourselves, but, as Arne Naess states, “. . . modesty is of little value if it is not a natural consequence of much deeper feelings and . . . a consequence of a way of understanding ourselves as part of nature in a wide sense of the term. This way is such that the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared with the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its greatness” (Naess 67). With an adoption of this fundamental change of attitude and lifestyle, perhaps something positive may be retrieved from Climate Change.
Bibliography:
Baldwin, Andrew, and Giovanni Bettini. Life Adrift: Climate Change, Migration, Critique. Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd., 2017
Bellard, Celine, and Cleo Bertelsmeier, Paul Leadley, Wilfried Thuiller, and Franck Courchamp. “Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversity” Ecology Letters, Volume 15, Issue 4, April 2012, pp 365-377.
Benegal, Salil D. and Lyle A. Scruggs. “Correcting Misinformation about Climate Change: The Impact of Partisanship in an Experimental Setting” Climatic Change, 2018. 148:61–80 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2192-4
Biello, David. “Final Report: Humans Caused Global Warming” Scientific American, February 2, 2007. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/final-report-humans-cause/
Grynbaum, Michael M. and Tiffany Hsu. “‘Nothing to Do With Climate Change’: Conservative Media and Trump Align on Fires” The New York Times, Sept. 15, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/business/media/wildfires-conservative-media.html
Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth., and Lerner, K. Lee. Climate Change: in Context. Gale, 2008.
Naess, Arne. Ecology of Wisdom, Penguin Modern Classics, 2008.
Olwig, Karen Fog, and Kirsten Hastrup. Climate Change and Human Mobility: Challenges to the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Oreskes, Naomi. “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” Science, Dec 3, 2004. Vol. 306, Issue 5702, pp. 1686. DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618
“Overview: Weather, Global Warming and Climate Change” NASA. November 13, 2020. https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming-vs-climate-change/
Schmidt, Charles W. “A closer look at climate change skepticism.” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 118, no. 12, 2010, p. A536+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A247037086/AONE?u=wash_main&sid=AONE&xid=8b6a5ce0. Accessed 14 Nov. 2020