Week of 12/7 - 12/11 Post #3

As the UNFCC cop 21 meetings in Paris are drawing to an end, I am excited as, while doing some further research I have found some additional aspects and things that will be taken into account in the final treaty draft and meetings. Government officials have endorsed the idea that forests are key climate solutions. I have found that there is a decent amount of account taken for nature, especially in terms of forests. I found that the UNFCC secretariat has launched a "forest info hub" in which talks about how forests play a crucial role in the climate change regime. This hub talks a good amount and focuses on emissions from deforestation as deforestation (the mass tree removal in an area to be short) accounts for very high amounts of emissions and greenhouse gas emissions that contributes to climate change. This has a large impact on animals as it directly impacts their habitat availability as well as the emissions that come from deforestation contribute to climate change which further puts a strain on animals such as habitat degradation and melting in the polar regions. Along with this, it was discussed that a need to work toward a system of incentivizing the reductions in emissions from deforestation is needed. An additional report was that the tackling of methane and black carbon could reduce the artic warming by 0.5 degrees Celsius and this would be huge in terms of helping animal populations in these areas. These statements made by world leaders and scientists leave me very optimistic that something of worth will be achieved and a legally binding treaty will be reached at the Paris meetings and we as a world will be coming together to fight this pressing and growing problem of climate change and global warming.

Week of 12/7 - 12/11 Post #2

I found a report that I would like to discuss in today's blog that I believe a big step in eventually reaching a worldwide legally binding treaty in regards to climate change and total emissions, which is something that I have always thought would be a huge step in limiting the effects of climate change and global warming. The article that I found talked about how not all parties are not ready to place there final positions on the matters of climate change while a large number of parties are willing to work towards an agreement of limiting a 1.5 degree Celsius increase as the maximum level. I am not surprised that there are parties who are hesitant to agree to certain circumstances and I am remaining hopeful that, while I believe this may cause some delays in the progress being made towards a legally binding treaty, that it does not end with a final impact resulting in a legally binding treaty being achieved. I believe that a legally binding treaty would have a tremendous impact on limiting the effects of climate change. This would be huge in terms of the relation to my research on the effects of climate change impacts on animals as it would greatly lower the risks that animal populations are put at by only allowing climate change to occur to a certain point; a point that would be potentially much higher if an agreement is not reach. I remain optimistic that some type of legal treaty will be reached and this will be of much benefit to animal populations as they will face much less stress that what could have been potentially seen in the future if a legal treaty is not formed.

Week of 12/7 - 12/11 Post #1

I found an example of how it has been established that it was noted how that by the end of the year our worlds climate will most likely be 1 degree Celsius above that average global temperature in the pre industrial area. It is huge that this becomes widely understood that this is truthful and accurate before the world leaders can move forward and fully address the problems at hand regarding climate changing and global warming. An increase in temperature by 1 degree Celsius ( an amount that sound like not very high initially ) can have huge impacts on the worlds climate, especially in the polar and cooler areas of our world. With an increase in temperatures, it becomes more likely that crucial habitat such as the ice regions and ice caps will melt and destroy crucial habitat for certain animal groups. Along with this, other regions climate will be greatly altered as well. Elements such as crucial plants and food sources may no longer be able to grow, which provide crucial elements to the survival of animal populations whether by providing crucial habitat or nourishment to these animals. The full spectrum and possibilities need to be analyzed to fully understand what the potential impacts of climate change are and to be able to fully calculate what must be done to prevent. In this next week I really look forward to seeing what is done to address these enormous problems that our world will be facing in the near future if some serious changes are not made in our highly consumptive lifestyles that we are all currently living with. If some big changes are made, I believe that animal populations may benefit the most from such changes and I feel that animals need to be thought of in these negotiations as they have an intrinsic value as well that is often overlooked in these types of issues.

Week of 11/302-12/4 Post #3

I found an interesting article that I found was one that was related to countries with large amounts of forests. Countries are arguing that their trees and forests in their country needs to be preserved and conserved. It was discussed that 12 percent of CO2 emissions is attributable to deforestation. This process is a terrible one and needs to be stopped. This topic is very closely related to my topic of animal populations as obviously many groups of animals reside in the forest and if deforestation continues to occur, it will have a very negative impact on various amounts of animal populations as they will have less areas that are available for them to live. A lot of attention was given to the idea of how forests play a very large role in the overall health of the planet. Trees have the ability to absorbs large amounts of carbon and this process is very important to overall well being of our planet as we release a very large amount of carbon that is very detrimental to our environment and plays a significant role in the process of climate change and global warming. The more trees available to absorb the excess amounts of carbon that we emit into the atmosphere the better and the lesser amounts of climate change that potentially occurs. We as  a world cannot continue to cut down a large amounts of trees and allow deforestation to occur or the effects of climate change and global warming will be experienced at a greater strength down the road.

Week of 11/30-12/4 Post #2

For my second blog post this week, I would like to discuss an agreement that was made that I believe is a great idea and will be extremely beneficial in the future both to human populations as well as in relation to my topic, animal populations. There was a an agreement made that aimed to implement a program throughout the world that is focused on "risk reduction" and potential ways to prevent natural disasters before they happen. The focus of the program is to install a system that gives people, especially in lesser developed countries more of a "heads up" in relation to natural disasters. This idea is a great one and to help this be achieved, 80 million dollars was given to this program with the hopes of many lives being saved in the future and it impacting more than 1 billion people worldwide. Along with this, insurance agencies in the lesser developed countries is being looked at with the hopes of these systems being expanded to protect more people and particularly the more vulnerable people in our world. I believe that it is great that this system is being expanded and installed as it will potentially save a large amounts of lives in the future by being able to alert the people in danger sooner and this will help by giving these people more time to go to safety. I also believe that this may help us to understand these deadly storms better and potentially lead to us to lower the odds that they occur in the future and this will be of benefit to animal populations if we change our negative consumption lifestyles for the better.

Week of 11/30 - 12/4. Post #1

To this point it sounds there has been slow developments that have frustrated some that more has not been achieved to this point. Barack Obama among other world leaders have pledged and proposed the idea that they are willing to give money to the least developed country's fund (the ldc fund). It was described that by pledging money to the ldc fund would help to reduce the risks involved by climate change in lesser developed countries as well as "help vulnerable populations rebuild stronger after climate related disasters". Something that I enjoyed learning that Obama among others suggested that needed to be done in regards to climate change is "regularly updated targets" in regards to emissions and overall goals towards climate change emissions, while also providing the necessary aid and helping lesser developed countries to be able to report their emissions which may not otherwise be able to do so. An fact that was brought up that I found interesting was that the countries that have the largest solar energy potential, are currently using the lowest amounts of solar energy. This should be the complete opposite. There are numerous other issues that were brought up as goals to be achieved at COP21 and many of these ideas are closely related to my topic of "how climate change impacts animal populations" as climate change makes surviving for many populations much more difficult rather due to habitat loss, the ability to no longer survive in an area due to climatic changes etc. and as many of these goals would potentially help to limit climate change, it would also greatly aid in the survival of all animal populations.

Week 13

This week of class we only had class on Tuesday due to the thanksgiving holiday. For class on Tuesday we began by going over the logistics for the remaining time that we have in the semester. I am excited for the people in my class who are going to Paris next week as I think that they will have a great experience and how lucky they are for having the opportunity to attend such an important meetings that is related to such an important issue. I look forward to checking in with my classmates while they are over there and learning second hand through them what is being said by whom at these meetings as well as simply discuss with my classmates how their experience is going overall. During class we discussed what everyone's paper topics were for the White papers that we submitted earlier in the day and I was greatly impressed with everyone's paper topics as I feel that based on the examples of summaries and explanations that everyone presented in class I would say that we as a class covered a vary wide variety of issues related to the concepts of climate change and they sounded like they all were very well researched as well. I personally choose to write my paper on how climate change impacts and was able to find a bunch of information related to the topic. We as a world need to come together and find a way to limit our emissions so that animal populations are not severely deteriorated or forced into extinction overall. I argue that due to the fact that humans have caused the vast majority the problems that are affecting animal populations, we have a moral obligation to help these animals so that they do not become extinct. I look forward to following this idea as the meetings continue to occur in Paris in the coming weeks.

Week 12

This week we had a couple of speakers come and speak with our class: Jeff Anderson and Matt Lindstrom and they had great information to share with our class. I found it especially interesting what Matt Lindstrom discussed with our class. The focus of Matt's speech was on the tragedy of the commons which I found to be very interesting points and ideas in which I had never thought of in such detail. He talked about problems with no technology solutions and discussed how some problems cant be solve by merely using science along, and how there are often times other factors that need to be considered to solve certain problems that could potentially affect groups of people. He defined the idea of the "traditional commons" as common land available to all for grazing animals, gathering wood etc and several other topics of commons in general were discussed which I really enjoyed learning about. He also made it clear that freedom must limited to three things. He said that freedom must be limited to regulation - top down regulations, bottom up regulations, and federalism. He also included that freedom must be limed by privatization and hybrid: cap and trade which can serve as climate markers. Finally to get a hands on approach Matt divided the class into groups in which each group was given a topic in which in theory we created all forms of regulation related to the topic and we were assigned the task of implementing a from of policies and regulations related to the issue which I found to be a great way to grasp the new concepts that we were learning about.

Week 11

We had a busy week of class this week with our resource guides being due on Thursday of this week. I am researching how the impacts of climate change impact animal populations. It is an interesting topic to me and I am curious to studying the idea of how with a changing climate and environment, how this impacts habitat and the landscape of areas throughout the world, and thus how these changes impact wildlife populations how are closely dependent on these areas and wild places as habitat to survive. We also had Troy Knight join us for class once again and he talked about some very interesting information regarding climate change. I found it very interesting to learn about topics regarding climate change from an expert such as Troy. He talked a great deal about geoengineering and I had not learned a lot about this in the past so I was interested to hear what Troy had to say about it. Troy talked about how there are two main components of geoengineering: CO2 removal and solar radiation management.  In terms of solar radiation there were several ways that Troy listed regarding how solar radiation management can be done. They are: reflectors in space, which Troy said were very hard to do, very expensive, and if the wrong amount of reflectors are installed, are very hard and expensive to remove. Also other solar radiation management methods include: stratospheric aerosols, increased cloud albedo and surface albedo: grasslands, deserts, cities, and cropland. Troy also talked about how to store carbon potentially in land sinks: forests, bio-chair, and Bio-energy, as well as ocean sink: solubility pump, ocean alkalinity, and biological pump. Troy's discussion was a great informative lecture about many issues about climate change and specifically how to limit the harm that that the sun and increased carbon in the air is causing to our environment.

RESOURCE GUIDE

Ben Rosburg

Annotated Bibliography

11/12/2015

 

@defenders. "Impacts of Climate Change." Last modified 2012-03-21, 2012. http://www.defenders.org/climate-change/impacts-climate-change.

-          This article gives very good information of climate change overall. Understanding climate change impacts is at the roots of understanding how climate change can and will impact animals so this will be of benefit on my paper.

 

@nwf. "Effects on Wildlife and Habitat - National Wildlife Federation." (2015).

-          This article from the national wildlife federation lists off several impacts on how climate change disrupts wildlife and especially how it disrupts their habitat. With a decreasing amount of habitat remaining, this puts a great deal of stress on animal populations.

 

"Arctic Climate Change: 5. How Will Animals Be Affected by Arctic Warming?". 2015. http://www.greenfacts.org/en/arctic-climate-change/l-2/5-arctic-animals.htm.

-          This website looks specifically at how animals in the artic are being affected by climate change. It has a series of links that will be of great benefit to my paper as it covers a wide array of information regarding how the artic is changing for the negative and this puts stresses on animal populations.

 

"Climate Change Effect on Animals." 2015. http://kanat.jsc.vsc.edu/student/swift/mainpage.htm.

-          This is another great link that looks at how climate change effects animal populations. This is a case study that goes in depth and looks at many different angles and factors on climate change and its impact on animals. I should study this article thoroughly and use in my paper significantly.

 

 

"Climate Change: The Effects on Ocean Animals." 2015. http://www.neaq.org/conservation_and_research/climate_change/effects_on_ocean_animals.php.

-          This is a unique article as it looks at how climate change effects animals in aquatic environments such as the oceans. It talks about how with rising temperatures globally, the water temperatures are also increasing and this once again adds stress to animal populations. Will be of value for my paper to show multiple areas of animal populations effected.

 

DeGregorio, Brett A., James D. Westervelt, Patrick J. Weatherhead, and Jinelle H. Sperry. "Indirect Effect of Climate Change: Shifts in Ratsnake Behavior Alter Intensity and Timing of Avian Nest Predation." Ecological Modelling 312 (2015): 239-46.

-          This article shows a unique perspective on climate change and its impacts on animals by looking at ratsnake behavior. This will be a way to multiple different ways that climate change impacts animals that might not be initially thought of.

 

"Effects of Climate Change | Threats | Wwf." 2015. http://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/effects-of-climate-change.

-          This article goes very in-depth on the topic of climate change and animal impacts from the world wildlife foundation. It gives a large amount of quality information on a wide variety of climate change issues related to animals. This will be a very valuable article to my paper.

 

Firn, Jennifer, Ramona Maggini, Iadine Chadès, Sam Nicol, Belinda Walters, Andy Reeson, Tara G. Martin, et al. "Priority Threat Management of Invasive Animals to Protect Biodiversity under Climate Change." Global Change Biology 21, no. 11 (2015): 3917-30.

-          This is a study that looks at a large amount of unique perspectives of climate change and invasive animals. Invasive animals may often times be an afterthought in terms of being harmed in climate change and this study address that issue.

 

Shafer, Craig L. "From Non-Static Vignettes to Unprecedented Change: The U.S. National Park System, Climate Impacts and Animal Dispersal." Environmental Science & Policy 40 (2014): 26-35.

-          In this article the US nat’l park system looks at the effects of climate change and dispersal of animal populations. It is important to look at how climate change impacts the ability of animals to live and thrive in certain areas and this article address how climate change may limit this.

 

"Species Threatened by Climate Change." 2015. http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/problems/impacts/species/.

-          This article gives a list of species that are being impacted by climate change. In my paper it will be important to be able to give examples of animals that are being effected by climate change and this article will be of great aid for this.

 

Swim, Janet K., and Brittany Bloodhart. "Portraying the Perils to Polar Bears: The Role of Empathic and Objective Perspective-Taking toward Animals in Climate Change Communication." Environmental Communication 9, no. 4 (2015): 446-68.

-          This article looks at the classic example of the polar bear being effected by showing how climate change can make what were once perfectly able to live in an area, much more difficult to survive. This may be because it is too warm for certain animals to live in certain areas or because the climate change alters the landscape past points that can be suitable for certain animals to live.

 

US EPA, OAR, Climate Change Division. "Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems." http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/impacts/effects/ecosystems.html

-          This article is of value because it adds plants to the equation on how climate change can effect ecosystems. I want to be able to give a wide variety of information on how climate change impacts ecosystems and this article will help greatly. Climate change may limit the ability of a plant to grow that previously was a food source for a species and if a plant is no longer able to grow in an area, animals may no longer be able to survive in the area as a result.

Week 10

This week we talked a lot about challenges in climate change and what should be done to discourage climate change. We watched a very interesting video regarding climate change as well. In this movie there were several important and interesting facts and ideas about climate that were presented within this movie. An important fact that I knew occurred but was unfamiliar with the exact percentage was that tress absorb about 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions. This is crucial because without these trees, the effects and impacts of climate seen in our world would have the potential to be much worse and at much higher levels. Something that this fact advocates in my opinion is the idea  of how crucial it is to preserve our worlds forests and work extremely hard to eliminate or at least decrease the frequency and significance of clear cutting and deforestation. These processes remove a large amount of trees from a specific area in a short amount of time. A negative impact that this has is the fact that these trees are then no longer available to absorb the excess amount of carbon and other greenhouse gasses that are emitted into the area. These greenhouse gasses now are allowed to go into the atmosphere and this is a huge problem. Another interesting idea from the movie was the idea of pumping large amounts of fertilizers into the oceans in order to promote algal blooms and thus absorb large amounts of carbon. I believe that this is a very bad idea because eutrophication is a very serious problem in bodies of water and I don't believe that we should be intentionally eutrophicating lakes. It can disrupt many natural processes in bodies of water, decrease oxygen available in water, making it harder for fish to survive and many other negative processes. I believe the main and number one thing that we should do is to work towards reducing our overall consumption levels and working to lower these rates. I believe that this is the only way to successfully mitigate climate change is to first change ourselves before we can move forward to other ideas.

Week Nine

This week we had the pleasure of representatives from the sustainability office join us for our class time. I personally found it to be very interesting to hear both what is being done on campus as well as what is being attempted to be done on campus in relation to being a more "green" and sustainable community. I found it refreshing to hear about all the efforts that people are going towards being a more sustainable community. Something that I found of personal interest and something that I was unaware of was that many of the link busses are powered by propane. This is a much more sustainable option to use compared to other gasoline. My assumption was that all of the link busses would simply just be powered by diesel but this was not the case. Another interesting thing I learned about from our guest speakers was the explanation of why their are no trays at the CSB cafeteria. I had many times wondered why there would be trays at SJU but not as CSB and I found it interesting for the reason to an attempt to have us consume less. If you can only take a plate or two of food, rather than being able to pile on the food on top of a tray, in theory less food will be wasted because less food will be taken from the line in the first place. I think this is a great way to limit waste. Something else that I was unaware of that I found to be really cool was that all of the food waste that we do not eat and dispose of where we put our dirty plates goes to feed local hog populations on farms. I think that this is a brilliant idea along with several other ways that our two campus' are working to minimalize our waste products.

Week Eight

This week we spent our focus on discussing the important topic of climates and climate change and policies relating to climate change. We read two interesting articles written by our professor as well as Mahony. Both articles discussed very valuable information relating to climate change and climate change related policies. Something that I found enjoyable to discuss was the idea of how we need to listen to and take the information that well educated scientists present to us and use this information in order formulate important environmental policies relating to climate change. This makes a lot of sense in my mind. Why wouldn't we listen to the people who know the most about climates and changing environments when government and legislators are making policies? I think that it is a no brainer that scientists who actively are studying the issues first had should have more input into the decisions regarding environmental policies that will effect us all as opposed to a government official making the decisions on their own when they may have no prior knowledge or experience with studying the processes and effects of climate change. The IPPC should take as much information as possible from scientists when discussing environmental policies in my opinion. If this is done, I believe that the best overall outcome for everyone will be achieved. I don't believe that we should allow our capitalist society and focus on expansion as well as development be taken into account before the effects that these expansions are having on our climate are taken into heavy consideration. We need to make stricter environmental policies in an attempt to lower total emissions on our climate. We only have one planet earth to live on, and if we screw our environment up too much we will not be able to reverse these effects and will be forced to live with the consequences of our actions.

Week Seven

This week we discussed a lot about inequality and development in terms of climate change. We also had to pick our topics for our white paper. I choose to write on the issue of how climate change impacts animal populations and the ecosystems around them, making it harder for animal populations to survive. I have always had a passion for animals so I found that this topic would be a very interesting one for myself to research and I look forward to doing so. We need to look at how our emissions not only effects us as people, but also how it affects the things around us such as our ecosystems and the plants and animals that need these ecosystems to be functioning properly and at certain stages in order for them to be successful and be able to live and thrive. We also had a couple of interesting readings in which we learned about REDD+ and policies regulating emissions. Something that I found was interesting was the idea of land tenure. The concept of having the right to use the land but not physically owning the land or having the land as private property was strange to me. I was a little confused about what this meant specifically in regards to whether or not other people are allowed onto the land since the land is not private property and so on. We also talked about land development and what should be done in regards to this issue and how this should be handled. I believe that when it comes to land development we should not get greedy in terms of what we develop and always be sure to not take more than we need. We as a world need to make sure that we don't overstep our boundaries as caretakers for the land and ensure that we always make sure that we leave a large area of undeveloped land for the plants and animals that need such areas to live and survive.

Week Six

This week we discussed a lot about computer models and the "politics" of climate change . We talked about the IPCC which stands for the Inter government Panel on Climate Change. We discussed what this is and what it stands for. It was interesting to learn more about the government and its take on climate change. I don't' personally believe that a priority should be given to making money or an type of economic gain over the negative effects or impacts that it may potentially have on climate change. We only have one planet in which we are capable of living on and this is our only option to live so this should be our number one central concept in our minds with every decision that we make, whether a personal decision or a large scale nation wide decision. We also read an article about climate change anthropology. This was an interesting article because it focused on the on humans and the effects that we have on our environment. We as people need to look at ourselves in terms of our wasteful, high emission cultures and work to limit the emissions that we have in our daily lives moving forward.

Guest Speak Jean Lavigne

This week we had the privilege of having Jean Lavigne come and speak both days to our class. Jean is very well versed in the topic of climate change among many other areas in relation to our climate or environment. A great deal of what we talked about was climate change, and more specifically as to why there are certain groups of people that will firmly deny that climate change is even a thing that we should be concerned about at all. We talked about how a lot of the people do not believe there is climate change nor do they want to believe that climate change is real at all. A very large reason that Jean gave us while she was speaking to us about why there are climate change deniers is that certain groups of people believe that climate change is a hoax or a scam. She told us about how there are large groups of people that believe that climate change is a made up concept in order to generate. While addressing this she elaborated on how some people believe that climate change is made up in order to raise large sums of money that will be put into the economy in attempt to better benefit our economy overall. Another large part of the climate change deniers philosophy was a belief that climate change is being made up by the scientists in order for them to generate large sums of money for themselves in order to be able to do further research. I personally believe that there is clearly shown evidence that essentially proves that climate change is not being "made up". We as a society need to convince all of the climate change happenings and dangers in order to show them that it is real, and alert them of the great dangers that lie ahead in our future if we do not change our harmful ways we act toward the environment. If we are able to do this, I believe that this will a great step in reducing our overall consumption and climate change causing actions because we all need to be on the same page when facing this very eminent problem.

Guest Speak Bernie Evans

This week yet another truly interesting and inspiring week. This week we had the privilege of having a guest speaker in Bernie Evans with us to discuss the Encyclical that has been written by Pope Francis. Bernie Evans thought us a wide background of information about Pope Francis, the Catholic Church and it's viewpoints on several moral and ethical views, as well as helped to break down and ensure that we all understood the Encyclical and what was meant by several other big points found within the Encyclical. I personally found it very interesting to hear about these issues presented in the Encyclical written by Pope Francis from the perspective of a person such as Bernie Evans who has spent the majority of his life studying the church and topics such as personal viewpoints of the church and the Catholic religion overall. I am a Catholic myself so I found these two days of class especially rewarding because I learned as well as was refreshed on several of the Catholic church's teachings and viewpoints. Bernie Evans inspired me to continue to live my life in accordance with the Catholic church and in the views of Pope Francis, and God overall. I also found this week interesting because this week was a sort of "alternate" perspective to look at the ideas and concepts of climate change. It was a unique perspective to look at the concepts of climate change through the catholic church's eyes and viewpoints and learn about what should be done on many of these moral issues in accordance to the catholic church and viewpoints to be in accordance with God. I have been truly enjoying having the opportunity to hear from these guest speakers and their knowledgeable positions in relation to climate change and I look forward to hearing from Jean as well.

Troy Knight Speaker Blog Post

This was a special week of class because we had the privilege of Troy Knight coming into class and speaking on the topic and facts of climate change. It was truly interesting to listen to someone speak who was clearly as knowledgeable on these important climate change issues as Troy is. I enjoyed when we went through the long history of Earth's timeline as I feel like that was valuable information to know and understand because it really gives you an idea of how truly short humans have been on this earth in perspective of the overall picture of Earth's timeline. We also discussed several of the basic ingredients for climate on Earth including Earth temp, sun, and atmosphere. We then discussed the most recent climate change and warming causes that Troy described to us as: sun, greenhouse effect, orbit, albedo, and global circulation. This was something that I enjoyed learning about because we as a society and a world need to take a deep look at what these causes are and do whatever we can to address this problem so that we can limit the effects of climate change that we as humans are causing. We also talked about these warming causes more specifically by breaking them down into each category. The first was sun: long term trend. Orbit: last 6000 years, 1 degree Celsius cooling in the last 6000 years. Albedo: volcanism. Global Circulation: El Nino. Greenhouse Effect: 33 degree Celsius warming of earth, critical to survival. Changes in Greenhouse Effect: Natural abundance of  greenhouse gases. This is all great information to know because in order for us to begin to try to combat climate change, we must first fully understand the great and growing problem that is at hand.

This weeks readings were rather thought provoking. They really got to the idea of "if we don't change our ways now, serious consequences will be the results." The "Collapse of Western Civilization" especially got at the point of what will be to come if we don't change our harmful and consumptive habits and lifestyles that we are currently living. It takes an interesting perspective of being in the future tense and talking as though not enough was done to combat climate change and the world is currently suffering the consequences. It talks about a variety of issues including: the amount of that takes place in regards to climate change in the fact that because it inconveniences people and climate change is not something that the people want to here about and think about, they write it off and deny that anything will happen to the world as predicted, which is not the case. Also it discusses how global climate change will affect the world economy and markets, local populations in terms of population size and animals that can survive in an area etc. It raises many good points about what to come if we as a world to change our harmful consumptive habits.

The Climate Cultures readings for this week take a more "scientific" approach while looking in depth at climate change itself. It talks about a wide variety of things involving climate change such as varying climates throughout the world and the climate change noted by different people across the world in different climates. It also takes a rather in depth look at the different attempts that have been legally made in order to limit these negative climate change occurrences such as the Stockholm and Rio Summits and so on.

Both readings were very informative and valuable reads that touched on a very wide variety of climate change issues.

Work Cited:
Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Barnes, Jessica, and Michael Dove. Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change. New Haven: Yale UP, 2015. Print.

This first weeks readings were very interesting and at the same time alarming. They made me realize that we as a society need to wake up. A big thing that I took away from this weeks reading was the terrible mindset of "I can't make a difference". Yes if a person was to only change their own personal habits, the overall change in the global climate problems regarding climate change seen would be extremely minimal. But I believe that we each must be held accountable for our own personal actions and should take pride in ourselves to do all that we can do to limit our own personal emissions and overall wastes that we continually all release into our environment on a daily basis. If the mindset of everyone goes from having the mindset that they cannot make a change, to if I do my part, and I trust that other people will do their part to limit their own personal emissions; then a change may be seen. I do however realize that this is unlikely to happen. Because of this I believe that there should be more strict regulations put into place that holds individuals accountable their own emissions. I believe that with strict regulations regarding emissions would eliminate the mindset of " why should I reduce my emissions if I get to see my friends continue their own more wasteful lifestyles that are more convenient while I am continually inconvenienced". I believe that we as a society need to realize that our harmful and wasteful lifestyles have gone on long enough and we need to make great changes before it is too late. This has been said time and time again yet we continually only say "we need to make changes" yet this thoughts and plan are never put into action in reality. It sounds good and looks good on paper but we need to take these great of ideas of change that we have been talking about and put them into action in order to essentially save the world as we know it that we live in.