I found it interesting how this portion of text focused on the affects that climate change will have on cities and how we will prepare and deal with these changes. I always thought of climate change affecting places in the same, general way. People living in these affected areas would have to adapt to the changes by adjusting their ways of living, infrastructure and transportation. In this text, I discovered that two of the main things that can help us determine how an area is going to be affected is by looking at its proximity to bodies of water and its population. Not every place will be affected in the same way and therefore different places will require different actions for sustainability. I also found it interesting that depending on how a city is laid out will help in determining the affect of climate change on the land. For example, the planned out part of a city vs its slums will determine the vulnerability of the poor compared to the non poor.
This reading taught me certain terms and definitions that are important to understand to accurately converse about climate change. For example, the difference between resilience and adaption being that resilience is how much a system can undergo without changing state whereas adaption is the ability to respond positively to the stresses of climate change.
A question that arose while I was reading this was “Are dense cities more susceptible to ‘sinking’ because they crush the earth in which they are built on?” For example, New York City is so heavily populated and, despite parks, the earth is suffocated with concrete and heavy buildings. Therefore isn’t the earth underneath the city weak and therefore could have many negative affects for the people living there on top of climate change? If this is true then I think certain earthly events are the result of human harm, however I don’t think we can blame ourselves for everything.
Why is climate change happening? This question came up a couple times while I was reading and it got me thinking. It’s proven that ozone is being destroyed and the common belief is that it’s human’s fault. However our world is strange. Our planet has experienced odd climate changes since its beginning. An example is the ice age. Therefore, we can’t say that all crazy weather changes are the human race’s fault. We weren’t even around when the ice age happened! If we blame ourself for the earths problems, then we think we can solve them with eco-friendly solutions. However the state of the earth might be out of our control now. Are we simply adapting more eco-friendly alternatives to seem like we can make a different when in reality we know the damage is done? This lead me to think about if the end of the world is even a thing as opposed to the end of the human race. I don’t think the human race will be wiped out because of the end of the world. I believe the world will live on as long as circumstances permit it, it’s whether we adapt to its changes that will determine how long we exist.
