Environmental Injustice

It seems that justice issues seem to follow you everywhere you go.

I'm in a biological conservation class. And it's pretty depressing. Oh, the dire straights that is our world today and that is the future we see ahead of us. My professor, Dr. Treves, tells us to hold onto the success stories of conservation instead of letting ourselves fall depressed to the things we're studying.

Let me tell ya, it's difficult.

In our Tuesday lecture, it got harder.

Actually, I almost started crying right there in White 4281 lecture hall. I had to choke back a scream and thank the Lord for the dim lights hiding my red face.

I'm embarrassed for us. It seem our injustice knows no bounds.

It's even environmental.

Ok. I'll explain. Sorry to make you wait.

I'm sure you've heard of the greenhouse effect. I'll let you read up on it (or not, your choice) - but the jist of it is that greenhouse gases (CO₂, methane, etc) keep in heat. Solar radiation comes to the earth and is converted to infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases let through solar radiation, but not infrared. So ↑ greenhouse gases ↑ infrared radiation remaining in our atmosphere ↑ heat. You get me?

This leads to climate change. Intense climate change like we're experiencing = not good. This doesn't just mean things are getting warmer, necessarily. Things are just ... changing. Some places are warmer, some are colder, some are dryer, some are wetter ... it's complex.

When it comes to injustice, it spans to the environmental, too.

A professor at in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies here at UW-Madison, Jonathan Patz, did a study on who's emitting the most greenhouse gases and who's suffering the consequences.

Get this. The places that are emitting the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (let's be honest - it's the US) aren't reaping the consequences. Actually, it's an inverse relationship. People in the nations using the fewest carbon compounds are experiencing the most climate-change-related deaths.

These images ruined my life.

This is a map showing who emits how much CO₂ greenhouse gas. The redder the color, the more CO₂ we give off. This isn't something you'd put on your fridge.

And this one is estimated climate-change-related deaths in the same year. Again, the redder the color, the more deaths. Yup. The opposite.

Unfortunately, I must admit that I don't really know what a climate-change-related death looks like. I don't know what that means. This is where my post falls short. But I am sooooo interested in this topic and it freaking breaks my heart. I'm gonna have to pay a visit to good ol' Dr. Patz to pick his brain. So I'll get back to you on this incredibly incomplete post.