We Are A Product Of Our Pasts

The world is in a constant state of change, today’s decisions will affect the future of all species large and small, defining the ways in which society will continue to live. The essay “No New Worlds” written by Dr. Adrian Forsyth explores ideas associated with ever changing populations and states of the world. The essay describes the existence of humankind by their impacts on the surrounding environments. The reader is then introduced to the implications our world faces if these problems are not solved and additionally steps to solving these issues. Thus, both men and women need to take action to help or pay the consequences and protect the only world we have, planet Earth.

The Marshall Islands has always been that of a peaceful paradise for the Marshallese; that is to say before it was irradiated by nuclear bomb testing by its very own trust partners the United States. The Marshallese thought that giving up their island would help bring peace to the world and since most of the population was converted into Christianity, they were led to believe that they were doing a favor as “Judas’s children”. What they didn’t know was that for the next 12 years, their precious islands were to become the test site of hazardous atomic bomb testing that would change their life and history forever. What was first contentment turned into concealed resentment towards their only source of support.

The Western existence of modernization, especially technological and industrial development, economic growth, material prosperity, urbanization, and democracy, has been built upon a long line of industrial capitalism, an economic system predicated on the accelerating extraction and consumption of fossil fuels for energy (Clark & York, 2005). A major unintended consequence of the use of fossil fuels is an increase in the average temperature of the earth; known as global warming or climate change. Recognizing and responding to climate change, arguably the most challenging social problem of the modern era (Giddens, 2009), thus poses a fundamental critique of continued modernization processes around the world (Freudenburg, 2003). Climate change is a major issue that affects all life across the

In the 1950s, the United States conducted 66 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, which were then under colonial rule. The Marshall Islands are home to several indigenous tribes and nations. The nuclear tests devastated the inhabitants of the island, who experienced decades of birth defects and extremely high rates of liver, cervical, and lung cancer. “Between 1954 and 1958, one in three births in the Marshall Islands resulted in fetal death” (Smith 67). This is perhaps the most extreme instance of environmental racism in modern history, and the health of indigenous women was particularly abused.

Modernism represents an optimistic view of human impact on the environment that has been the dominant viewpoint for the last 200 years. The knowledge that mankind holds the ability to control the environment heavily stresses why climate change is not such a problem to worry about. One of the core beliefs of the modernistic perspective is that people have no need to fear future environmental disaster because the next technological advancement that will prevent it is right around the corner. Furthermore, those who share this view do not include themselves in their image of the ecosystem, believing they are detached from it. Lastly, a laissez-faire approach is taken to environmental problems, focusing on progression through technology, stressing that as long as progress is made in this area all problems will be fixed. For a modernist, climate change is nothing to worry about. This may be a real situation, but it will be solved with advancements in technology before one’s way of life is changed. What people should be worrying about is ensuring a laissez faire approach to the market with sponsorship to new technologies. As a result of reusable energy technology already existing, modernists believe that the problem of climate change has been solved and without disrupting free market system these technologies will be further implemented. As long as there are people given the opportunity to innovate, some will focus on and ultimately solve the concern of climate change. The issue of

Climate change is an issue that affects all life on Earth and is a major concern among researchers across a variety of fields. There is quite little argument against the possibility of mass disaster if human beings continue to consume fossil fuels in the same way we have been since the late 1700s (i.e. the Industrial Revolution). To mitigate the severity of climate change, many different courses of action have been suggested. Dale Jamieson discusses two of these in his article Ethics, Public Policy and Global Warming, and these strategies are what this paper will be focusing on.

that human activity is likely to be the primary driver of climate change, the politics of global

The highly-impassioned issue of human-made climate change, or the idea that current climate-warming trends can be attributed to modern-day human activities, has become a very debated topic in our current century. In the last few decades, proponents and challengers of the anthropomorphic effects of this problem have volleyed arguments back and forth about whether climate change is a paramountly human-caused phenomenon or a predominantly natural process, with the latter arguing that there are few to no man-made sources like environmental experts seem to constantly urge. Jeffrey Mazo exhibits many reasons as to why individuals may be hasteful in denying the overwhelming impact of human activity on this ever-pressing issue in his article

In the history of the United States many events of pacific Resistance have occurred to the laws that have been necessary to

The Marshallese people have internalized the invader's version of their own history and they need to resurrect their own collective memory to free themselves from the pernicious and malignant effects of colonialism. During the World War 2 United State conquered the Marshall Islands from the Japanese. The Marshall Islands were then consolidated into a trust territory governed by the U.S. Since then the Marshallese people saw the U.S. as some sort of saviours. In results to this they started to change from their own traditional ways of living and transformed into a country filled with Western Ideologies. As these transformation started taking place the island became

The author made the interesting analogy concerning the reaction of our governments to the deadly seriousness of climate changes comparing it to a patient being informed that he has cancer.  First there is denial, then the desperate search for a cure.  But as he mentioned, we are not close to find a solution.

I can’t help but feel unhappy and sorry for the indigenous people of Marshallese whose health was damaged by deadly and infectious diseases after the United State military nuclear testing that happened between 1946 and 1958.

"The Marshall Islands are marking 60 years since the devastating US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, with exiled islanders saying they are too fearful to ever go back because of nuclear contamination.

The Marshall Islands on its surface is a paradise waiting to be discovered. The atolls, only 7 meters average above sea level, offer beautiful vistas and eye catching sea life to tourists from all over. History though offers a different story to tell us. This is one not of vistas and paradise but of war, and nuclear bombs. The Marshall Islands holds in its lands some of the great stories of human expansion in prehistoric times, colonization during the European exploration era, and of human endurance in World War II and beyond. Looking through the past, present, and future of the Marshall Islands its clear all is not what it appears to be on the surface.

The most telling evidence in mapping out the U.S. geopolitical obligations to the RMI is the fact that, in the span of a decade, beginning in 1946, the U.S. tested around seventy nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. Stuart Kirsch, professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and research collaborator at University of Cambridge, Manchester, and Yale, argues the significance of these nuclear tests in his journal (name of article). Kirsch calls upon examples of court cases where the Marshallese people fought for reparations from global forces responsible for not only environmental devastation, but also the resultant withering away of Marshallese culture through the pervasive impositions of globalization. Through analyzing the