Nature Journal 6

I found Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary “Before the Flood” to be incredibly engaging. His educational journey to learn more about the issues related to climate change is similar to my own. I was first confronted with the reality of our world’s consumption habits when I was living in southern China in the summer of 2018. I took a ferry from Guangzhou to Hong Kong and saw countless shipping craters, ready to take all of the world’s stuff to the ends of the earth. I had my eyes glued to the window for the entire four-hour journey because I had never conceptualized what it means to be the world’s producer. I saw the waste and pollution that comes with it, as the Chinese government tries to keep up waste management policies in a booming city with 13 million people.

Fast forward a year and a half, I’m talking with farmers in rural mountain regions of India and Nepal. Their crops are irrigated by waters that melt from the glaciers in the Himalayas. They attribute many of their problems with crop yields and pests to global warming and climate change. We were instructed to take their testimonies with a grain of salt; many of them blame climate change because it is an easy scapegoat. Regardless of the scale of climate change effects, it is real, and it is having an adverse effect on some of the most vulnerable populations in the world. This is what stuck with me. I can choose to ignore these issues because my life in the U.S. is easy; I’m not confronted with the consequences of my habits.

After my semester in Nepal, I spent the summer in Europe. I spent a few days with my German friend at her home in Coburg, a small city in northern Bavaria. We got to chat about environmental policies in her country and what actions her and her family are taking to reduce their footprint. They are growing almost all of their produce in their garden and are considering buying livestock for meat. My friend said that this isn’t an isolated movement within her family, that many people in the countryside are moving towards this kind of lifestyle.

my Indian homestay family's livestock

planting corn behind a team of oxen in Nepali village