Week Seven: Inequality and Development

In our discussions about the Jessica Barnes chapter about water issues in Egypt, the ideas of scales and agency really made sense. The farmer who doesn’t have enough water to grow his crops today or next year may be less worried about climate change because it doesn’t seem to be effecting his day to day existence (even if in some way it is). He is more worried about just plain survival rather than the longer term health of our planet. It made me think about Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs – basically that humans are motivated to achieve certain needs and that lower level basic needs, such as biological and physiological needs like air, sleep, food, and safety needs, need to be fulfilled before one is able to move on to higher level growth needs, such as love, esteem, and self-actualization. We often talk about this in educating young people – if they are coming to school hungry or not knowing where they will sleep that night, it is difficult for us to ask them to learn things like math or science. The idea of thinking about climate change along different scales and then the resulting agency or ability to act upon issues, is a very similar scenario. It is perhaps unfair of us to ask those who are living a day to day existence to step back and think about how their actions are contributing to climate change.