Two Homes

In this section of Climate Changed, Squarzoni touched on two places I really care about: New York City and Bangladesh. He draws beautiful and iconic pictures of NYC and makes me wish to take out my bike and go for a ride on the Brooklyn Bridge. However, he also mentions Bangladesh. I’m a Bangladeshi. It hurts to think about the future of my country while I am far away from it, living leisurely compared to many others.

On page 238, Squarzoni writes “20% of Bangladesh could be flooded. 12% of Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia.” I’m pretty sure Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia already experience flooding. I experienced the floods first hand when I visited Bangladesh when I was eight in 2004. Thankfully, my family was prepared. Unfortunately, others were not.  Since it was my first time seeing this, I pleaded to tour the neighborhood. To my surprise, I really enjoyed the floods. I loved the rapid currents against my legs and I loved seeing random objects floating around. Crazy right? Don’t judge me, I was eight. Now I understand the rapid currents were tearing away people’s lives and belongings. As I grew older, I began to watch Bengali news with my parents. Chunks of land that were 10 ft high fell into the rapid hungry waters, slowly stealing land away from people. According to my parents, hundreds of miles of land broke off into the waters, displacing thousands of people. They lost their valuable lands, belongings, and even their lives.  However, the rich and more privileged Bangladeshis don’t worry about these floods because they think they are “safe”as my eight year old self thought. Idiotically, that is how the West thinks. We think we are safe from all the other problems. Yeah, we wish.

Recently I was really upset because of climate change and asked my parents why don’t people do anything?? There are so many facts pointing to climate change, but why don’t people (everyone in the world) do anything?! “Don’t you know Bangladesh and other countries are going to sink?!” My mom replied with something I that left me still. She said she has been hearing about countries sinking for the past 30 years. Apparently people were paranoid 30 years ago for a few weeks. Then everything went back to normal. Then she looked at me and said “well, even though there are changes, the countries haven’t sunk yet, hasn’t it?”

It all goes back to what Squarzoni is saying in this section. We need something BIG to happen for us to care. And when I say us, I mean the powerful, first world countries. I hate to be part of  this “us”. I don’t want to see lines of thousands of people as shown of page 239 to be waiting for hours for food and clean water. I am so angered that we can’t do much about climate change besides use less water when we shower. We, including me, probably will not think of the people at risk before succumbing to the pleasures of this leisurely life. Not at all.