University:
University of Wyoming
Course:
POLS4475 | Politics of Natural Resources in Latin America
Academic year:

2023
Views:

6

Pages:

2
Author:

Allison B.

“Where will we go? Let’s talk about how climate change is driving human migration” was a Webinar that was sponsored by ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize Center, and the New York Times Magazine. The webinar features many different prominent researchers and reporters that have examined climate change and its impacts on human migration not only in Latin America, but globally. Notably, Stephen Engelberg is featured as the moderator from past readings in our class, who spoke on indigenous population growth in the Lowland Neotropics. He begins the webinar with an interesting point that the First Presidential Debate (possibly the online now) was to take place that night and out of nine different topics climate change was not to be touched on, and even by the debate committee (not just a/the candidates) it was not considered a topic worthy of the debate time or “important enough” for the ninety minute slot. I believe that this in itself really is an example of how some of the world, especially (some) of the United States, still cannot fully grapple with the severity and climate crisis that is only going to worsen future severe weather patterns, human migration, and pandemics. Some of the discussion focused on the work of Liz Weil, who conducts research on wildfires in California, which is currently a massive climate issue and contributes to human migration. She discussed a legislative move that California is considering making instead of the costs of wildfire management and fighting being distributed amongst taxpayers in the state, that instead these taxes would be increased on individuals living in the zones that are more likely to be impacted by wildfires. Often, people chose to live in those areas due to their affordability and location, however, with this potential state-wide change, those properties would become exponentially more difficult to afford to live in. This directly relates to our course theme of human-environment relations. People sought out to live in some of those locations in California because of their affordability, but because of their relation to the wildfires, those areas could now become more expensive to live in and could be financially forced to relocate to another region (in or out of state), again showing how human-environment relations impact where and how people can live both due to physical environmental factors and human societal factors. A problem that already exists in many international rural regions and is only going to worsen as the climate crisis continues to increase in severity over the next decades.