Global Warming Action in La Campa

Yesterday I went to a little meeting where a guy from Chile gave a presentation about global warming and what can be done about it. It was a great presentation, it even had some technical/chemical explaination. The community leaders present were really excited and really thoughtful about what they could do to combat the situation, namely not chop down their forests. The whole time I was sitting there I felt guilty about how I had just recently on my flights to Honduras burned more fossil fuels than they ever will in their whole lives. And yet I´m the one who knew about global warming and had the background to understand at least some of the presentation.


These people already live locally. Most of them grow their own food, use very little electricity and they don´t travel. It seems like anything that they can do to change their lifestyle will only reduce their already small carbon footprint to zero. They´ll probably be taking net carbon out of the atmosphere if they reforest. Nonetheless, it seems that my role in CASM is going to attempt to deal with this by way of appropriate technologies. Among other things, I want to work on introducing ´biodigesters´that capture natural gas for cooking produced by the decomposition of plant and animal matter. These systems would help to make the ´integral farms´(farms with diversified production aimed at supplying all a family´s food needs) that CASM promotes be less reliant on industry and fossil fuels.


Consequences of global warming include plenty of natural disasters. Hurricanes and torrential rains are some of them that occasionally pass through La Campa. Yesterday we went to San Manuel, a nearby town, and were shown the effect of recent mudslides. The guy who showed us around was showing us houses that had been abandonded when people came home and saw that the wall had shifted 10 cm (4 in). He said over a short time last year, a road had sunk a meter (3 ft) and had blocked off a few communities. He then told about one time about a month ago when he had heard a slide and ran to check it out. He said it took out a house and killed a little boy on the way. On our way back into town, he said, ¨These days, life is complicated.¨ The whole experience hit me pretty hard.


I was frustrated by the fact that the tropical countries (third world) are going to be the ones that try the hardest to deal with global warming. It makes sense that they would because when a mudslide kills people you know, you´re motivated to act. The third world has been exploited for so long for so many of its resources, and now it is being asked to deal with the sins of consumption of the first world. The sick part is that while asking the third world to change, I doubt consumerism will change that much in the US. People will probably keep going on huge road trips in monstrous vehicles, eating food thats been flown in from as far away as Chile, and building huge houses that use energy produced by burning coal. Its my hypocracy too, and now I´m going to be asking these people to deal with it.