Years of Living Dangerously

I watched season 1 episode 8 and 9 of the Years of Living Dangerously on April 1st. In this series, Matt Damon, Michael Hall, and Tomas Friedman investigate the impact of extreme heat on human health and mortality in several places. 

Matt Damon wanted to show people the significance of climate change, so he traveled to Bangladesh. He found out that in Bangladesh, climate change "is a matter of life and death." It was very different from where he came from because not a lot of people cared or even believed in climate change.

Many scientists in L.A. are concerned about heat waves because it could affect human health and even kill people. The health issues of what heat waves could lead to were misunderstood earlier, because heat deaths is similar to other health issues such as heart attacks and respiratory problems.

I think it's pretty sad that it usually takes someone's life to attract people's attention and realize the severity of an issue. The summer of L.A killed 170 people, including an athlete who died on the field. People started taking the issues of global warming seriously as more and more people die from heat from all over the world.

Matt Damon visited Dr. Atiq Rahman, a climate scientist. He wanted to understand why climate change has such a huge impact on Bangladesh. Since Bangladesh is located at a very low level, “a quarter of the land here is less than 7 feet above sea level." Moreover, Bangladesh already has many rain precipitation, sea level rising that's caused by global warming could inundate Bangladesh. According to Dr. Atiq Rahman, 17% of the land and population will be seriously affected and inundated by global warming. The only way out of this disaster is migration. According to a political science professor, Dr. Tasneem Siddiqi, 75% of the migrants had moved out of Bangladesh because of the rising trend of global warming. The living environment for people was terrible since it's overpopulated and crowded. Many incidents such as building collapses had killed thousands of workers. Moreover, with many lands and building covered by water, diseases come to the picture easily with insanitation. Infections and diseases added more bodies to the pile of the dead.

In the interview about climate change with President Obama, Obama claimed to reduce the use of fossil fuels gradually and establish policies to protect the environment, such as the Clean Air Act and Carbon taxation. The difficulty about fully dedicating to these policies is that Democrats are not in full support because they rely financially on heavy industries. Supporting these policies would decrease their profit, which I think is a ridiculous reason when we're talking about life and death involving billions of people in the future generation.

Global warming is an issue that doesn't show its severity immediately, but it's like the theory with putting a frog in warm water. Slowly and gradually, the water, or in our case, the Earth, warms up and get hotter and hotter, until we realize we're being cooked and it's too late to stop it. People don't see the danger because it's not obvious yet. But when it is, it's too late. Unfortunately, there are places in the world that are greatly influenced by climate change, and global warming is a deathly weapon to the people, such as those in Bangladesh. People are suffering from a series of consequences of global warming a lot more than we are. Even if a lot of us don't see the power of global warming, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. To preserve this planet and continue species' survival, we all have to work together and take actions without hesitation.