The Planetary Ecological Crisis by Frederick Engels

What are some evidence that climate change is affecting us dramatically?

Over the years climate change changed drastically and even if we don’t see the affects on daily  basis scientist have been tracking data and now how these might change our climate and environment. In 2007 the sea ice was 40 % less than in 1970s. The rise in sea level has been about 1.7 millimeters per year ever since 1875 and has been estimated to increase even more throughout the years. When the ice melts it will flow into the ocean making sea levels rise. The countries that are close to the sea would disappear. Due to the warming of the climates the mountain glaciers are melting which can contribute to flooding and water scarcity.  The Ocean water has been warming up dramatically and affecting the productivity of the creatures like zooplankton that live at the bottom of the ocean. In some parts droughts have ben expanding in different regions. Different season temperatures have changes also and thus changing those region ecosystems.

I was beyond shocked when reading this article seeing how we are affecting the planet every day and getting ourselves and other creatures close to extinction  as well as poisoning ourselves every day with different pesticides in our food and water. People need to be more aware of these issues and do something about it.

A new way to look at nature is what we get out of it and that we should preserve those resources so we don’t run out of them. Different approaches has be used to preserve nature; look in terms of human rights or nature rights. However just because these rights exist does not mean that the problem is solved and that everything ideal since it is established on a paper and people will follow it. There is a lot of flaws especially looking from human rights perspective since it is a pretty selfish view.

What are human rights that Burdon describes and also what are the critiques of it?

The term human rights has been used as a broad term for different injustices and now it has been extended to the environment. One of the arguments is that human rights don’t explain the exploitation of resources and can’t be used as a model to explain the causes. It only has a view point from humans and not as much of the environment. The author states that the social concept of human rights is concerned only for our benefit instead of intrinsic values of nature.  The second critique of this concept that it does not get rid of social ranking and dominance just changes the framework of the concepts. There is little hope that it can change the view of capitalist’s growth economics and factors associated with it.