Earth Should Be Taken Care of for Future Generations

The Fragility of Mother Earth

We have all wondered at least once in our life, “Will my grandchildren ever have the chance to see the same animals, trees, plants, lakes, and nature that I have seen growing up?” I have come to realize that if we do not seriously take a step forward, as citizens of Mother Earth, to protect our world by not taking our natural resources for granted, our grandchildren or maybe even our children will never get to see certain species of plants and animals that we have now. We have a fragile world that we could easily destroy and Patrick Curry in his book, “Ecological Ethics”, and the documentary film, Before the Flood, shows what the effects of climate change are and how we should take steps in regulating our use of fossil fuels. They show how difficult it is to fight climate change because of politics, but also gives the viewers ways of making a change to fight climate change.

Since climate change was identified as a problem decades ago, there have been climate change deniers, as Patrick Curry labels them (201). These people are the main reason that legislators have not been able to pass legislation that regulates the companies to not burn as much fossil fuels as they are burning currently. These deniers claim that global warming is just a natural occurrence and that we humans are not causing our climate to change drastically. Currently, according to the film, there are 131 climate deniers in the House of Representatives and 38 climate deniers in the Senate. James Inhofe is one of the many senators that are climate change deniers, but it is very suspicious that “he is one of the largest recipients of fossil fuel money in the U.S. Senate” (Before the Flood). Of senators that receive money from the fossil fuel corporations, James Inhofe is just one example. It is because of this corruption that fills our government, that we cannot move a step forward into slowing down the damage that we have been causing our planet.

Throughout the film, Leonardo DiCaprio seems committed to finding answers on how to stop climate change and have everyone come to an agreement by asking experts what we need to do and why it is difficult to come to a consensus on climate change. When DiCaprio interviewed Philip Levine, the Mayor of Miami Beach, Levine discusses projects he is doing to help the people in Miami not be driving on streets that get flooded due to climate change. His plan includes building higher roads and pumps. He shows that he is doing everything he can do to help, even if it means he has to raise taxes in his city to pay for the project. He blames the lobbying in politics and industry for the lack of legislation that is being passed to regulate the amount of fossil fuels being burned. Levine says, “The ocean is not Republican and it’s not Democrat, all it knows how to do is rise” (Before the Flood). The main point is seeing how politics plays an important role in whether or not the fossil fuel industry will be regulated to reduce the burning and extraction of fossil fuels.

In the film, DiCaprio and his team travel to the second most populated country, which is India, to see why they have not moved to renewable energy. DiCaprio interviewed an Indian woman named Sunita Narain who works for the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, India. She explained that they have not taken that step because it is much cheaper to buy coal. Due to the high cost of switching towards renewable energy, India cannot switch even if they wanted to. Narain asks with sadness and hopelessness in her voice, “300 million people here in India have no access to electricity, so how can they help?” (Before the Flood) There was a farmer that had his crops destroyed due to climate change. He had half of the year’s rain in five hours. The pain and hopelessness in the farmer’s eyes could be felt through the film as he saw the plantation he worked so hard to create destroyed. This situation supports the type of problem that Hamilton, an environmentalist quoted by Curry, addresses when he wrote, “The relentless logic of the models proves over and over again that the poor and vulnerable will be hardest hit by climate change, even though they are not responsible for causing it and are in the weakest position to defend themselves against it” (Curry 207). In Fact, the consumption of one American is the equivalent of 34 Indians and one American’s consumption is equivalent to 61 Nigerians.

The film makes clear that agriculture, and what we eat, also hurts our fragile world and is a factor in climate change. In an animated scene, the documentary film shows that forty-seven percent of the land in the United States is used to grow food. Out of that forty-seven percent, seventy percent of that land is used to feed the cattle (Before the Flood). Gidon Eshel, who is a research professor that appears in the film, says that it takes only twenty percent of the space used for cows to raise chickens and only one percent of the land that is used for the cows to plant fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Cows also release methane when they eat, one methane atom is about twenty times worse than one atom of CO2, which is worse for the environment (Before the Flood). The farmer that was interviewed said that “if we all eat plants and vegetables or even just change our diet to chicken we will be helping the environment a lot.” The film makes us see that we can make a difference in our environment even if we are just one person. Patrick Curry agrees and points to Paul G. Harris’s argument that, “people, rather than states alone, are the agents of climate change and the bearers of related rights, responsibilities, and obligations” (Curry 207). Harris also points out that there are now hundreds of millions of affluent and high-polluting people living outside the so-called developed countries and that they should all limit their atmospheric pollution regardless of where they live (Curry 207). The point is that we could make an impact on climate change even if we do not have a position of power or have a high economic status by simply changing our diet from beef to chicken.

In the film, there is a specific scene that could shock many viewers with the mood that it sets and the delivery of the message. Dicaprio interviews Dr. Piers Sellers who is an astronaut and also the Director of the Earth and Science division at NASA. He describes his experience in outer space and he describes our atmosphere as “tiny little onion skin around the earth.” He goes on to say that, “The atmosphere is where all the oxygen is at and where all the CO2 is at and where everything we burn goes” (Before The Flood). The scene’s background music, while the doctor is talking, helps set the mood to show how beautiful the world is and that there is still hope to stop the damage that we are causing to our fragile planet.

We all need to accept that we are damaging our own world. This film shows that there are problems and corruption in political systems around the world, but we can still contribute to putting a halt on climate change. If we put our ego and ambition out of the way and acknowledge that we together can make a change, then this prominent problem will finally find its solution. I believe that one day in the near future I will not have to ask myself that same question that has haunted me for years, “Will my grandchildren ever have the chance to see the same animals, trees, plants, lakes, and other environmental things that I have seen growing up?”