- On page 31, the author includes the following quote by Francis Bacon: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." What do you make of this quote? Is it a statement that resonates with you or do you completely disagree? Explain.
- Sea level rise is often perceived as a problem of the future, but in the case of Bangladesh, many residents are already feeling some of its effects. Besides flooding, what are some of the problems rising sea level has imposed on the people of this village?
- From pages 41-42, the author describes a conversation he had with a Bangladesh high school student concerning climate change. After much discussion, the student expressed his concern about rising sea levels with the following question: "How do we solve this problem?" How would you respond to this question? In other words, what solutions or methods would you propose in order to solve the rising sea level issue in Bangladesh?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Chapter 2: Three Feet of Water
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1. It's noblesse oblige in regard to nature. Treat it well and enjoy the rewards, abuse it and you'll be thrown out of power like royalty or political office.
ReplyDelete2. What about the rising sea levels and the blocked river flows from upstream dams increasing salt levels in fertile deltas and reducing rice yields?
3. How frustrating for students in Bangladesh! They are trying to deal with life altering events in their country when we can't get people in our country to cut back on the amount of energy they use or even something as simple like stop using disposable plastic cups. Americans use 25-30% of the world's energy and represent only 5% of the world's population.
1. I agree with the quote and Mr. Furnari. Nature is a beautiful resource that can provide humanity with all of its needs, but you must use caution with regards to nature. It cannot be abused. Mother Nature has shown us with her powerful storms that she is a force to be reckoned with.
ReplyDelete2. Like Mr. Furnari said, the rising sea levels are causing increased salt content in the water in the villages of southern Bangladesh. This salt is leading to decreased yield for crops, which is contributing to poverty and malnutrition issues.
3. I felt so bad for the poor student in Bangladesh. It is so hard to feel like you are trying to solve a problem that is completely out of your control. I think this situation shows us that we cannot be a society that relies on adaptation, but that we must lead with mitigation. We must take action against climate change rather than wait and have to think of ways to deal with the horrible effects.
1. I believe we as a species have adjusted nature too much to simplify it down to this statement. There are some real gains to the technology and artificial things we have done. Although I think we need to scale back, I believe the solutions will be a combination of obeying nature and bending it a bit.
ReplyDelete2. What I saw in Bangladesh was the destruction of rice fields in order to create shrimp and fish farms (most of your frozen shrimp comes from Bangladesh). This hurt on a few levels. It created brackish water and affected aquifers. It also left the area much more vulnerable to erosion. When typhoons did hit Bangladesh, the destruction was worse - much like the destruction of the bayou in Louisiana increased destruction from Hurricane Katrina.
3. As stated before, the solution will probably involve a compromise. We can't ask everyone to move from Bangladesh (the most crowded country on the planet) and let nature take over. There is no environmental justice to that. We can, however, let some of the land be inundated, and naturally go back to mangroves, while shoring up other parts and protecting them with dikes.
1. In essence, this quote is clearly implying that in order to get the very best out of Mother Nature, we as a species must be willing in both mentality and practice to respect our environment. To be honest, I find it very hypocritical that our society puts great emphasis on the value of respect for others when clearly we have no respect for our own planet. We humans have been blessed with the both the Earth and its abundant resources, and yet, we are clearly taking advantage of the two. Not only are we exhausting the planet’s resources, but we additionally are poisoning it with our pollution. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that tampering with Mother Nature can result in detrimental disasters, as we’ve seen in the case of Hurricane Katrina, in which over a thousand people lost their lives and $200 billion worth of economic damages were sustained. For the sake of both the planet and our survival, I certainly do hope that people wake up and realize that Mother Nature, as delicate and as beautiful as she is, will not hesitate to unleash her force and demand the respect she rightfully deserves.
ReplyDelete2. As problematic as flooding is, sea level rise in Bangladesh poses an even greater dilemma: An increase in the soil’s salinity. With more and more salt in the soil, fields that once supported 2 crops a year can now only support 1, and as a result, Bangladesh is suffering from a significant decrease in crops. In fact, 41% of children in Bangladesh unfortunately suffer from malnutrition. Besides its effects on crops, the salinity in soil is contaminating the very few freshwater sources available to Bangladeshi citizens. Consequently, freshwater is becoming scarcer and scarcer, leaving multiple people both thirsty and at risk of diseases such as dysentery and jaundice. Furthermore, an increase in the soil’s salinity is threatening Bangladesh’s mangrove forests, as more and more mangrove trees are dying as a result of saltier waters at their roots. In fact, the author does mention that, “thirty-one square miles of the Sundarbans [the largest mangrove forest on earth] had disappeared over the past thirty years,” (p. 41). To be honest, the fact that the Sundarbans are disappearing at such a fast rate is very concerning to me, especially since mangrove forests can help absorb the impact of storms approaching the Bangladesh coast. The endangerment and possibly even the extinction of the mangrove forests will leave Bangladesh very vulnerable to future storms, which is very unfortunate given the impoverished state the people are in.
3. I agree with Mr. Furnari and Marykate in the sense that it is both frustrating and unfortunate that the people of Bangladesh are burdened with the effects of climate change when they themselves have done little to cause it. Dealing with rising sea levels will not be an easy task for Bangladesh, particularly due to the nation’s financial situation. Similar to what Mrs. Dedieu said, Bangladesh’s future course of action will be somewhat of a balancing act, as the country should try to control as much of the sea level rise as they can with dikes, while also accepting the fact that there will be losses and not all the land can be saved. Because land will be lost, relocation on many Bangladeshis parts is ultimately inevitable.
As a gardener, this quote does resonate with me. Trying to raise your own food is a form of "commanding nature," but if you don't respect mother nature and pay attention to weather patterns, etc, the crops will fail and you will go hungry. What is going to happen when the summer highs get so high that the plants literally cook in the fields (we watched our squash plants wilt from heat stress when the ground was still wet during the heat waves in July and early August)? What will happen when the rain falls so hard and fast that it runs off before it has a chance to soak into the ground (1 inch rain/hour as happened a few times this summer) and then it doesn't rain again for almost two weeks? The only thing to be done is to respect mother nature: collect the water when it does fall and store it, and hopefully mitigate climate change so that the summer highs don't get too bad.
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