Below is a journal entry I wrote when I was home over the long MLK weekend back in January. I had just read the article on the Syrian refugee crisis. These were my thoughts…
Sunday, January 16, 2016
Tonight I sit on my couch in Salt Lake City, where I reside for a long holiday weekend of skiing and snowshoeing high in the Rockies. Here it is easy to enjoy life far from its troubles, yet I know this is only a nice fantasy. While I ski, go out to fancy restaurants, and hike high in the alpine bliss, others are not so fortunate. Tonight I have been reflecting on the collection of readings we had for the week, mainly the article about how climate change has hastened Syria’s civil war. While I myself have seen the signs of climate change primarily in small ways—hotter summers, a downward trend in snowfall and increased winter temperatures on the slopes, translating into less powder skiing for myself—places like Syria have seen devastating drought. For a place like Syria, the consequences of the Anthropocene are much more real. People are fighting for control over a precious diminishing resource, and that only enflames other pre-existing and long-term historical conflicts that have already nearly torn the region apart. It’s not just people talking about what to do if it gets worse one day, or sadly, still wasting time trying to negate the evidence that anything is in fact even happening to our planets climate at all. Here it is people who have everything to lose if climate change continues at the current pace. Europe is already almost saturated with its fair share of refugees from the region, but the solution to problems like these can’t be short sighted. Every time there is a crisis somewhere, the solution is not just to send all the refugees somewhere else until a crisis occurs there too. Until we as a planet are united and develop a real, long-term policy towards taking care of our planet and it’s resources, soon the refugees will be arriving here too, and then who knows, maybe we will be the refugees.