Max Banach
IDS 2935
10th January 2022
Reading Response Week 1
1. In the readings, you learned about people’s experiences and responses to climate change
in a variety of times and places. Which case study do you find most relevant to today and in
your own life, and why?
2. What societal responses to climate change happening right now do you think will be of
interest to people in the future 100 years from now? 1000 years from now? What lessons
will people draw from these histories?
I find the actions of the Mayan civilization to be most like what we are experiencing for a
variety of reasons. The first of which being the Mayan’s preeminence at their time of existence –
maintaining a system of city-states for centuries – similar to western civilization’s dominant
global stature in today’s day. Moreover, we can note the crash of specific Mayan cities such as
Copán and Tikal to be similar to other urban collapses like in coastal Fiji towns (due to rising sea
levels) and in cities like Detroit (due to population migration out of urban centers similar to what
happened in the Chaco Canyon). The biggest parallel to note is the existence of Mayan society
after its “Classical Collapse,” something the reader can predict to occur later in today’s society if
we do not take action now. If humans are not to self-correct for the actions that place us in the
rising temperatures we face today, the Earth will do it for us with rising temperatures negatively
impacting growth yield rates and down-stream negatively impacting population numbers – as
population eventually decreases, emissions are corrected for.
I believe the largest societal response that people will reflect on decades down the line
will be the current prevalence of division when it comes to climate change. It is difficult to
predict a scenario in the future where unity is not at least partially reached, where world powers
don’t come to their senses and collaborate on climate. Even the most stubborn of leaders will
realize the impacts to their local economy far outweigh not taking any action at all. Thus, people
in the future will find it interesting that we have not taken large, sweeping action yet in the
present day – with much climate action being taken on a private level (and bastioned by just a
few governments across the globe – such as China on Solar and France on Nuclear). This
division will be something written in future History textbooks, something to remark on as a blip
in the past – a lapse in judgement that our future selves will laugh upon as a mistake taken by
those in power in the past. We will learn to work on wide-spanning issues, not just climate, with
a collaborative, united front to increase efficiency and reduce the overall cost required to solve
them.