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.
