So I called my mom today to have a discussion on climate change and to listen to her thoughts and feelings on the issue. It feels like both my parents have been aware of the major changes in the climate over the years and have always encouraged me and my brothers to be mindful of our waste and always do our best to reduce our carbon footprint. So I called her and asked her simply, “What do you think about climate change?” She responded in a very lengthy explanation that she believed that not enough people realized the issue and found it ironic that such a major dilemma is ignored by people. She also commented on the materialism aspect in our society today and how this definitely affected people’s capacity to accept change as well as change their lifestyle to prevent the damaging effects. There was especially one quote that stuck in my mind, “People always believe that the earth is ours for the taking, to supply us, bend to our will, but in reality it’s the opposite way around, in a manner of speaking.” After our discussion, she told me that she had to go because her and my dad, as well as their friends, were going skiing in the Swiss Alps in a few minutes.

We said our goodbyes, and for a while I sat there thinking how odd it was that we had just had this serious discussion on melting ice and materialism, and here were my parents going skiing in a country notoriously known for it’s beautiful winter sport weather. In a way, it’s almost like they’re enjoying the snow while they can. It suddenly dawned on me that usually when most people thinking about climate change and melting ice the location is almost always Antartica or areas mostly made up of glaciers and ice. While this is still true, I had the impulse to look up climate change in the Swiss Alps. What I found was a very interesting article on how the changing climates in the Alps weren’t just going to affect the great skiing, but possibly destroying the towns that rest directly below it. In 2006 there was a massive collapse of ice off a glacier known as Grindelwald Glacier. The town known as Grindelwald, has been experiencing rising temperatures as early as the 1980’s and has experienced serious flooding and damages as a result. The article goes into good depth on how they manage with the melting glaciers and even use the side effects to show tourists the seriousness of the rising temperatures.

As naive as this sounds, this article really made me realize how climate change is truly affecting the entire world, not just areas more vulnerable to it rising temperatures. It gave me really good insight into how climate change is global and made me question how many glaciers will need to melt before people actually start to notice?

Link to the article: “As Glaciers Melt, Alpine Mountains Lose Their Glue, Threatening Swiss Village” -New York Times

Last term, I was fortunate enough to take an environmental science class. Although the class was a part of the FIG I was in and had no interest in majoring in the field, the class provided a much needed dose of reality for me. While I was aware of most of the global crises occurring in our world today, the class covered almost every problem in just a few weeks. As you can imagine it was very overwhelming and for the first time I realized the serious danger humans were putting themselves in. Especially with global warming, people are very blind to what they don’t want to hear, but the facts are real and global warming doesn’t seem to be a concern to anyone.

I relate the class very much to the story “Diary of An Interesting Year”, by Helen Simpson. For most of the class, we focused a lot on only the facts of what was happening and did very little on thinking of possible solutions. The students even addressed this issue to the teacher because it was depressing everyone. My teacher responded with saying that yes we were focusing on only the problem, but felt that focusing more on the problem would give us a greater insight into the significance of finding the solutions later. Much like in the “Diary of an Interesting Year” the whole story is mostly pessimistic. There are unhygienic conditions, society has pretty much collapsed, and many people die in the story. However, in the end the narrator does eventually escape her boyfriend’s murderer and becomes free.

She also wraps her journal in six plastic bags even though she doesn’t think anyone will ever read it. I believe that that ending contained a glimmer of hope in it, not just from the narrator but for the readers as well. The narrator takes extra care into Contine reading →