Climate Change And Racism

Going into this class, I had no prior knowledge other than what I’d seen on tv, like climate change and racism. However, I learned more about the world in just six weeks than I’ve ever did in high school or any other class. Global issues focuses on the problems we have, and if there are any solutions to it. We discuss human rights, who deserves it, and what’s considered our human rights. We talk about our own race, identity, and genders.

We even learned about the seriousness of climate change, and how it affects our environment. Global issues can be prevented, but it’s up to us to take care of our globe. Global studies is different from other fields because it asks you to look at the world from different points of view. In order for us to understand the world, we need to consider history, culture, economy, and resources. There are multiple definitions of globalization mentioned in the textbook.

According to Manfred B. Steger, “Globalization refers to a multidimensional set of social processes that create, multiply, stretch, and intensify worldwide social interdependencies and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing awareness of deepening connections between the local and the distant.”

Globalization is, in my eyes, a good thing. It allows us to spread ideas across the world, giving us opportunities to connect with other cultures, people and countries. According to our powerpoint chapter 1, globalization isn’t new. It “can be traced back as far as one is willing to follow the migratory flows and technological inventions that have played a role in enhancing, multiplying, and extending social connections and compressing space and time.

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” Global citizenship differs from regular citizenship by allowing people to to understand complex issues, like poverty, and expand their knowledge. As stated in the textbook, global citizenship is more inclusive in just being a human being.

The term nation-state is used to describe a type of state that provides sovereign territory for a particular culture, or ethinic group (Sorrells, 2016, 32). It can be used interchangeably with state and country. States are sovereign, internationally recognized, and geographically defined territories within a population and government. For example, California is a state within the United States. A nation refers to a cultural and ethnic identity, rather than a legally recognized geographic territory, like American. Some of the factors that contributed to the development of the nation-state system in Europe were the decline of the Catholic Church, spread of the bubonic plague, and the expansion of literacy.

Intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations are both international organizations. However, intergovernmental organizations, IGOs, are created by nation-states, whereas non-governmental organizations, NGOs, are created by individuals. They provide aid for developments of countries in two ways: By humanitarian aid like medical relief, or development aid like eliminating poverty. The United Nations were created because they wanted to prevent more wars from happening, and promote peace between countries and nations. Human rights, to me, are rights that people are born with regardless of who they are, and are more than what the law provides.

They can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher, who believed that all humans had natural liberty and were all equal, and John Locke, an European philosopher, who believed that all humans had natural rights for life, health and liberty. Humans, in my opinion, can also be formed based on an individual’s morality, and what their sense of right or wrong is. Some of the issues that can prevent agreement on what constitutes human rights is the government. For example, in America, if you’re a citizen then you get the rights listed in the constitution. This includes the right to bear arms, freedom of speech, and etc. However, if you’re an immigrant, you can be seen as less. Some people would argue that those people don’t have rights because they didn’t gain them legally. Human rights are both universal and culturally specific. They’re universal in the way that they’re based off of morality, and our sense of wrong and right. Human rights can be culturally specific by race.

For example, white privilege is a common topic. A person of color born in America may not be treated the same as a white person born somewhere else. Human rights are monitored by giving limitations. For example, as mentioned earlier about the constitution, one of the rights we have is the freedom of speech. However, there are still boundaries to prevent us from hurting anyone. According to the Global Change website, a large leading factor to global climate change are human activities. As an example, deforestation is the clearing of trees in one area. By reducing the amount of natural processes that can remove carbon dioxide, humans are encouraging an increase in surface temperatures. Deforestation is the act of clearing a large wide area of trees, typically forests. These areas are then converted to make room for buildings/apartments, schools, or roads, as mentioned on the IUCN website.

Deforestation only happens when the trees lose their ability to provide to people and nature (for example, wildfires) Deforestation impacts the climate by increasing the risk of survival for species, and can lead to higher surface temperatures. For individuals, deforestation removes our food safety net. Trees provide us food security during natural disasters like climate shocks, and can be used to prevent coastal flooding. , one of the suggestions given was to adopt a carbon tax. By creating a carbon tax, we can encourage the emission of carbon into our environment. This can ensure a more efficient long term investment, and a better protection of our economy. Based on the same article, one of the actions I would engage in is the prevention of waste in food and materials used for it (wrappers, plastic, etc). Large amounts of waste can lead to overfilling our landfills, and increase the amount of emission released.

Human population growth is seen as a new development, because of how inconsistent growth used to be in prior centuries. Although there were moments where growth suddenly increased, because of wars and disease outbreaks, death rates would rise instead. However, after WWII, there was a period where growth increased. This period lasted from 1946 until 1964, and is referred to as the baby boom. One of the contributing factors was better health care, allowing families to give birth safely and provide the proper medicines and equipment.

One of the impacts that growth has on developed and developing worlds is poverty. For example, the Bay Area is known for technology and being home to developers like Facebook, Google, etc. Because the Bay Area provides many opportunities for advancement and good salary jobs, more people would want to move here, leading towards an increase in rent. According to an article by NBC Bay Area, around 4,000 students attending San Jose State University sleep in their car because of how difficult it is to pay rent. This caused the university to take action by providing a $3 million grant for students, and create a plan to create housing for those students for their faculty, staff members, and students.

The movements of large numbers of people, in my opinion, will worsen the problems posed by human population growth. For example, one of the problems we currently face is housing. Because families are growing and the population is increasing, cities have to provide more housing. Their options are to either build up, or build out. This leads to issues like deforestation, where companies clear out forests or large areas of land in order to replace it with buildings, roads, or other means of construction. It can also cause a decrease in natural resources, increase in food waste and trash, and climate change.