Last week, I was involved with Zeta Phi Eta’s screening of Before The Flood. The documentary focuses on the issues climate change presents for the world, and follows Leonardo DiCaprio on his global journey to see the effects firsthand. What hit home for me is that I unintentionally did the same thing as him while I studied abroad as a part of Semester at Sea.
Semester at Sea involved taking classes on a ship and stopping off in different countries to explore. Although the program was a trip of a lifetime and everything I could’ve wanted in a traveling experience, I did learn some disheartening things that even articles from the New York Times couldn’t quite articulate. Climate change is affecting the world in severe, terrifying ways that our cozy American lives aren’t exposed to. Internationally, lower income areas and countries cannot bounce back from natural disasters like the United States can. Consider what our country would look like if we had three Hurricane Katrinas nationally and couldn’t quite catch up with the recovery process. This would be the reality of some developing countries if climate change causes Earth’s weather to become more and more extreme.
While speaking about my travel experiences at Before The Flood, I mentioned experiences in China that truly altered the way I view nature and how we treat it. The air pollution in Beijing, for instance, is so severe that its air pollution alone is speeding up the effects of climate change. After staying in Beijing for a few days, I became sick just based on what I was inhaling. Can you imagine what life must be like if this air was yours to breathe each day? It’s almost incomprehensible, but it’s a reality of life in Beijing.
Myanmar was one of the most unique countries I visited over the course of my travels and is most definitely my favorite. What troubles me about Myanmar is its inability to fund better environment approaches and repair damage caused by natural disasters. There’s an overflow of waste in Myanmar due to a lack of resources, and potentially a lack of education about caring for the environment. Before visiting Myanmar, I knew absolutely nothing about it. If even knowledge about the country itself is poor, imagine the lack of support the country has.
When thinking about the values of Zeta while traveling, I thought about what the United States needs to bring to the table. Unlike Myanmar, we do have the resources needed to slow down climate change and reverse the effects before its too late. We can reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use, reduce the amount of beef we consume, thus reducing the amount of gases we release into the atmosphere. If we set an example, other countries could potentially lead by example. Zetas are communicators by nature, and I think we could spread this message on a smaller level. Realistically, if we all share this message, it could create a chain of informed citizens, which is exactly what we need.
