Eleanor Babcock
9/9/15
Climate and Society

For my second blog post I would like to focus part of my attention to chapter two in Climate Cultures which discussed the history of climate change debates based out of specified geographical regions. I will then go on to reflect on the documentary we watched in class on Tuesday Sun Come Up which focused on the environmental injustice the Carteret Islanders faced because of rising seal levels.

Chapter two encompassed a wide variety of information including a review of the four regions contextualizing historical climate issues (Mountains, Arctic, islands and deserts). For this post, I will explain my interpretation of one region, the islands because it ties in with the theme from Sun Come Up. I find enjoyment in geography and history and reading about historical colonizations, and reading about them in context of climate change was interesting to me. Low lying islands were claimed by larger civilizations in the past for their use for farming, travel and trade, and military purposes. They were valued because they were a source of income and publicity for larger nations at the time. However, because of their geographical (in terms of location) limitations to the larger nation, smaller island communities, not associated with larger nations, developed. Scientists and travelers, such as Charles Darwin (as mentioned in the chapter) began to make trips to these islands to study coral reefs and cultures. These low-lying islands slowly became of lesser importance to major countries and some became independent nations and some forgotten cultures. The problem which resides in terms of climate change with these small islands is the loss of shorelines as a result of climate change. Today, not many major nations have direct ties with these islands, causing more potential for apathy to change habits relating to climate change (such as burning fossil fuels) which negatively affect low-lying islands. It is the lack of political and international relations with these small island commmunities which cause the problems seen in Sun Come Up I will now discuss.

The Carteret islanders face major life and culture changes as a result of the changing climate. The rising sea level took away much of their valued shoreline of the reef and destroyed the fields for their crops with salt water. In desprit need of land, some of the islanders went to the mainland to ask other communities for  space. In the end, they were successful and were able to relocate some of their people. This relocation brings up an environmental injustice issue. The small low-lying island community is forced to bear the consequences of climate change caused by larger nations. These island communities contribute very little to the changing climate because their developments do not emit much carbon into the atmosphere, however, they still have to pay the price. The problem is that larger govenrmnets fail to see how to help these communities. First of all, there is lack of awareness for the problems these communities face (a reason these documentaries were made). Second of all, the solutions are limited. For example, in the documentary, the government sent emergency rice to feed the Carteret people but did nothing to fully understand and mitigate the effects of climate change to the community.

There is an interesting connection between international relations and environmental justice issues which I hoped my blog post helped make clearer my understanding of the relationship based off of the readings and the documentary we watched in class.