During one of our earlier classes, as a class we were discussing how covid has humbled humans, in a way. I think that the readings from this week, especially the reading of the genocide of indeginous people and how it draws parallels to covid. Taking a step back from Columbus and the result of his voyage, covid has really shown the world that we are still human and that there are things that we cannot predict can happen. 

Covid is a virus, which means you can’t see it unless it is under a microscope, and I think that covid could also be used like climate change. Because both are unseen, many people are unaware of how big of an issue it really is. In the earliest stages of covid, back during the summer of 2020, people were protesting lockdown mandates that were there to help keep everyone safe. I think because people either didn’t know someone who got covid, or couldn’t see the impacts of covid (among other reasons) they thought that lockdown was ineffective. While that is simplifying and ignoring some points, I would be surprised if in those early days there weren’t at least a handful of people who thought that way. 

I think that this is also like how some people see climate change, they think that because they haven’t seen the real effects of climate change they think that it isn’t happening or that it isn’t as big of a deal as it is made out to be. I think that the fact that there are some pockets in the U.S. that haven’t really experienced the same amount of warming over the past 100 years as the rest of the country has, means that they don’t feel the same thing that everyone on the news they watch talks about. 

Because of the fact that climate change is an unseen problem it may lead to more than a few people thinking that whatever is being talked about isn’t real. However just because there are people who downplay or outright deny the existence of climate change, it doesn’t mean that work to mitigate climate change should be stopped.