Week 1: Klein, McKibben, and Dove

What is clear, even without reading Klein or McKibben’s articles, is that people around the world would be foolish to trust leaders to make the right decisions necessary to offset anthropogenic climate change (ACC), left to his or her own devices. The fight to mitigate ACC must be a grassroots movement in which the public strongly pressures leaders and delegates to Paris (Klein), but institutions such as Ivy League universities can make a huge difference in divesting from recalcitrant oil and gas companies (McKibben) which are desperate to squeeze whatever profits they can from fossil fuels regardless of common sense and scientific evidence.

Another interesting concept brought forth in the articles was Klein’s “looking away” idea. That is, almost all of us look away from ACC. There are outright climate change deniers, but also those who acknowledge the problem but claim “too busy” when it comes to action. Even those who recognize the problem, but are convinced only individual action is worthwhile. The bottom line is, fossil fuel use is systematic, ACC is a systematic problem, and therefore these problems require systematic, not merely individual solutions. This is an important lesson for everyone: public policy matters, and combating the fossil fuel interests in the halls of power will not happen if nobody stands up to speak truth to power.

Dove’s article was also enlightening, his basic argument is that humans’ significant relationship with climate and the environment has changed over time, and this dialog matters in the current “debate” over ACC. Two fundamental ideas in his chapter were: 1.) history traditionally separated humans from the environment, something which is now changing as our impacts on the climate and environment become apparent (Climate Cultures, 27) and 2.) wild landscapes once represented danger, lack of civilization and its comforts but now are becoming appreciated as teachers or laboratories for understanding the world in a new way (Climate Cultures, 42). This “historic reversal in geographic pedagogy” was very valuable to my thinking on this issue.