The message the author was trying to drive home was supported by a number of key statistics and comparisons that surprised me. It was almost scary learning how quickly and drastically the environmental problems we have caused snowballed, cited by statistics such as the global mean surface temperature increasing “ten times faster than what has been the average rate of natural sustained global temperature change from the end of the last ice age to the present interglacial.” This part of the essay emphasized and answered the question of why does the change in the environment matter, which I noticed was asked many times throughout all our class discussions.
The part of the article that outlines how people keep looking for short-term solutions such as building seawalls really bothered me. Clearly, these are not solutions at all: they lead to beach erosion, so they pump sand, which is also just a temporary solution. I don’t understand that if it is known that these solutions don’t work, why they keep pursuing them. People are too stubborn and care too much about their own personal desires to give them up and pursue long-term solutions. It just doesn’t make sense to me that people keep running around in circles, chasing solutions they already know are not effective. They don’t solve the solutions, but just push them off to a future time. Then they implement the short-term solution all over again, which costs more money and time. It especially makes no sense to me that people would compromise their safety, wellbeing and shelter in order to have a pretty place to live. Things like this make me angry and confused at the human race.
