Costa Rica is a beautiful country far removed from the stresses of my real life. No worries, happy life, pura vida. However, as our friend Rosa exclaimed “No! Not pura vida, we have problems!” Life does not stop because I am here. There are torrential rain storms causing flood damage along the coast and heat waves back at home. There are wars for fuel, and feuds over energy. Marginalized people are suffering globally due to policies and damages they did not enact. Indigenous people are losing their lands and culture. Species are becoming extinct right before our eyes. I am in Costa Rica but Mother Earth is sick. I am in Costa Rica but these problems still exist. I am in Costa Rica, but what can I possibly do?
I was shook by the sudden acknowledgment of the gravity of these worldly problems when we were hit by an unusually strong tropical storm during our last night at the hotel La Foresta. Like I said, while learning and touring in Costa Rica, I expected a pause to my ordinary life. I expected to learn about global health and planetary climate change so that I can take these lessons back home with me to enact meaningful change at a small scale that may turn into large scale change. I didn’t expect to be confronted head on with a freak climatic event.
We were eating dinner in the open hotel restaurant while the clouds emptied themselves all around us. The thunder and lightning intensified to frightening levels. The rain soon gained power to match the fury of those forces. We then became worried about the roof which was cracking and leaking water now. The professors told us to abandon our dinner and go to our rooms. We experienced a flash flood that night. The restaurant flooded and so did some of our rooms. The rain was still not letting up. It continued on through the night and into the morning. We woke up to flooded roads and pathways. Workers’ homes had been damaged yet they still showed up to work to serve us breakfast. Apparently it had been a serious tropical storm – the worst one they’ve ever experienced at La Foresta and in many years. It had started out normal but quickly turned into an abnormal event and something to be worried about. This experience opened my eyes to the way climate change is felt both by me and the people around me. It is obvious that some people will feel these effects more than others and it is a sad reality that those people are not usually the ones responsible for these changes. Those that contribute most to climate change most likely exist in a state where they can more easily sustain themselves and remain comfortable even with certain dramatic changes. Those that will be most impacted will be those who are marginalized, often in developing countries, and reap the consequences of developed countries who look down on the global south, tear their land up, and fail to offer reparatory support. Many local people here in Costa Rica do not have much compared to people in America. If they lose their jobs, livelihoods, families, belongings, or homes due to climate change at the hands of carbon-emitting, over-consuming Americans, they lose everything. It is not fair. It is not fair that the Costa Rican workers served us breakfast on our porches while their homes were flooded. It is not fair that we could pack up and leave La Foresta on a tour bus while they were left to clean up a mess. It is not fair that those who contribute to climate change the least will suffer the most.
I learned more about climate change while reading and discussing Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas. The author explains what is expected to happen to different parts of the earth with each 1 degree increase in average global temperature (Lynas 2007). 1 degree: we lose our biodiversity. We lose our forests. The golden toad disappears from our planet forever. We become the canaries in a coal mine – trapping ourselves in a world in which we cannot breathe in. 2 degrees: heat waves. We move toward the poles if we have to but there are some who cannot escape the wretched heat. The old, the poor, and the marginalized will be hurt the most. Our bodies will only be able to tolerate so much until the heat alters the proteins in our brains leading to heat stroke and eventual death. 3 degrees: wildfires, hurricanes, snow storms, droughts, heat waves, and floods (much worse than the one at La Foresta). Extreme climatic events happening at a much faster rate than history remembers. Fires and hurricanes that happen once every hundred years now happen every decade. Our coasts which hold a majority of the global population will start to disappear. Drought and floods will eliminate our resources. People will be displaced and forced to move. The ones that can escape these events will be forced into sympatry. Harsh climate along with depleted resources historically leads to desperation. Desperation leads to panic and upheaval, death and violence. Those who already had few resources or existed in unstable political, social, or economic states to begin with will be the first to hurt. Those who are comfortable enough to move away from such fighting will likely watch until the end of the world no longer discriminates. 4 degrees: we are past our tipping point. Our solutions are not strong enough to protect us against the new natural forces. Sea levels will rise and force migrations. Agriculture will shift north and suffer altogether. Nature will take back its power and remind us with no mercy that we cannot play God. We are not above the natural forces of the planet though we’ve tried so hard to ignore our natural limits. We will then see that Mother Nature is queen. 5 degrees: war. Zones of inhabitability increase across the world. War ensues on a planet whose oceans are burning due to a release of methane. Are humans a virus? Could we be the cure? Is it too late? 6 degrees: it’s too late. Humans are likely to die out and those that may survive will be left with cancer. These changes will occur on such a quick scale that evolution and adaptation is not likely to occur. The world that is left after a 6 degree increase in global temperature will be unlike any world we have ever known.
This conversation scared us. It should scare us because it’s real and it’s happening. I have been conditioned to think that humans are a virus to the biological system that is earth. We invade and infect the living system at the expense of the planet, depleting the host cell of nutrients like a tumor. I think that can be true. However I also think humans can be a cure to the disease that is plaguing this earth. We are compassionate and innovative, curious and loving. We do not have to be cancerous. We can foster peace and power and beauty. The author of Six Degrees thinks we’ll be okay. I like to think that too. I like to think we’ll find solutions and future generations will be more caring to our Mother Earth. I hope we’ll be more loving and helpful. Just by learning from and getting to know my peers on this study abroad experience, who are now my friends, I believe in the healthy future of our world even more. I believe if people like us keep learning and asking questions to develop integrative solutions, our children and grandchildren will be okay.
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