The Future Affects of What We Are Doing To Our World Today
In the documentary titled 2040 by Damon Gameau, Gameau takes on this wonderful embark on finding inventions and initiatives that would would reverse the melting of the ice caps and rise and chemical changes in the oceans so that his daughter and the other children featured in the film can live in a safer, cleaner, more equitable world. ‘2040’ offers a practical, achievable path toward solutions, but its most important contribution is the belief that change is possible. Gameau states that he wants to “create a vision of a different future” with “an exercise in fact-based dreaming.” This film is hopeful, not scathing. Climate change has been an ongoing issue in our world and we continue to allow it. By burning fossil fuels continuously, we are dramatically increasing the levels of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere.
All in all, this can detrimentally affect future generations and how they will survive in the future because extreme temperatures will leave many families living in poverty with less food, less clean water, lower incomes, their mental health and worsening health because children’s immune systems are still developing, leaving their rapidly growing bodies more sensitive to disease and pollution.
While being compared to the article titled “The Effect of Gain-loss Framing on Climate Policy Preferences” by Lea S. Svenningsen and Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, they both share the ideology of assisting climate change.
In the article, a constructed experiment was worked on for future generations that consists of exploring how gain and loss framing influences social preferences for the distributional outcomes of climate policy. The respondents are asked to consider climate policy alternatives with two main outcomes affecting three regions of the world: Income effects for future generations caused by climate change, which the respondents may not be affected by, and a present generation co-benefit from mitigation efforts, which could benefit the respondents directly.
Additionally, using a sample of the Danish population, scientists found a significant difference in the estimated preference structure for climate policies when future income effects are framed as income losses for future generations instead of regained income. Nevertheless, the welfare measures reveal that the framing did not generate significantly higher estimates for the framed income effect attribute.
As a result, the framing resulted in increased willingness to pay for additional climate policy initiatives and higher value estimates of the unframed, present generation benefit. interpret these results drawing on the behavioral science and economic literature on framing and reference point dependent preferences.
Both the documentary 2040 and the article titled “The Effect of Gain-loss Framing on Climate Policy Preferences”, by Lea S. Svenningsen and Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, find ways to solve the global issue. In the film, self-driving cars and ride-sharing are used to show how urban redesign can lead to the creation of green spaces and more livable cities through increased water retention. In the documentary 2040, Damon discusses different alternatives that allow money to stay within communities instead of going to intermediaries, where it is usually diverted.
Additionally, Dr. Nick Watts, the lead author of the Lancet Countdown On Health And Climate Change report, told Reuters that children are “particularly vulnerable to the health risks of a changing climate” across areas including the impacts of rising temperatures, resilience and economics, says the Press Association.
In the process, the article provides us with information that can be beneficial for future references. A report done by Dr Nick Watts, determines that the UK faces “increasing threats to crop production and the spread of infectious diseases as temperatures rise – with the presence of tick-borne encephalitis virus confirmed in the UK for the first time”. In addition, the report states that “with no requirements to prevent hospitals and care homes in the UK overheating in high temperatures, older people living in care homes are most at risk.” The report “found that human exposure to fires doubled since 2000”.
In addition, Save The Children is a global movement for children that boldly declares that children have rights. Taking a heroic approach to the realities of what’s going on in the world protecting children from the physical and emotional wounds of war, Save the Children has been a lifeline for families fleeing violence in Syria, Myanmar, Venezuela and dozens of other different countries/crises around the world. The global movement determines that natural disasters are more frequent and more severe. In addition, as always, children in crisis are among the most vulnerable.
In the process, the global movement provides statistics for us to be astonished by. Across the entire world, 1 in every 7 children experiences shockingly high rates of hunger, school dropouts, teenage pregnancy and/or child death. In addition, the global movement provides many solutions on how to donate such as creating a fundraiser, charity donation or honoring someone special.The documentary titled 2040 and the articles titled, “Lancet Countdown On Health And Climate Change” and “Save The Children is a global movement for children that boldly declares that children have rights” all declare that climate change is affecting our future generations. Additionally, 2040 and “Save The Children is a global movement for children that boldly declares that children have rights” both discusses the role of agriculture and how regenerative agriculture can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sequester carbon, and enable greater resilience, such as through increased water retention.
For example, in the documentary 2040, Damon suggests turning two-thirds of Los Angeles now into gardens to decentralized solar power grids that are not just environmentally beneficial, safer, less vulnerable to failure or attack, more efficient, and cheaper but are democratizing and community-strengthening instead of cars (parking and freeways) and skyscraper rooftops everywhere.
Studies shown by the United States Environmental Protection Agency show that children are affected by climate change differently depending on their age and stage of development and that children’s behaviors and interactions with the world around them increase their exposure to certain health threats. These stages begin in the womb and continue throughout childhood and adolescence. Children are more likely than adults to develop serious stomach and diarrheal illnesses if they drink contaminated water. Infants and toddlers breathe, eat, and drink more for their body size than adults. Symptoms of asthma may be triggered by air pollution or allergens in the air. Infants and toddlers are also sensitive to contaminants in water and food, which increases the risk of diarrhea. When compared to older children, school-age children and older children spend more time outdoors, which increases their exposure to extreme heat and higher average temperatures, air and water pollutants, and diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and ticks. The bug bites may cause diseases that are diagnosed more often in children, such as La Crosse encephalitis. Co2 has also resulted in increasing the Earth’s atmosphere. Gasses such as Co2, methane, nitrous oxide, and other greenhouse gasses all trap heat from the sun and stop it from leaking back into space which causes global warming, which the children would likely be exposed to.
According to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, children can become traumatized by severe storms and fires. In addition to destroying homes and uprooting families, they can disrupt education by damaging or destroying schools, resulting in anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Stress can cause illnesses later in life like heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and cognitive decline. Furthermore, children may experience anxiety or depression when confronted with the prospect of climate change- whether it is in the form of extreme weather or just from knowing about climate change in general.
In the documentary 2040, Gameau says that he wants “to create a vision of a different future” with “an exercise in fact-based dreaming.” Finding many ways to reverse the melting of the ice caps and rise and chemical changes in the oceans so that his daughter and the other children featured in the film can live in a safer, cleaner, more equitable world. Thankfully, motivated by concerns about the planet his 4-year-old daughter and other children would inherit, Damon embarked on a global journey to meet innovators and change makers in the areas of economics, technology, civil society, agriculture, education and sustainability.
Citation:
2040 movie review & film summary (2020): Roger Ebert
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/2040-movie-review-2020
Children’s Health
Climate Change and the Health of Children – Carnegie Mellon University
https://www.cmu.edu/steinbrenner/EPA%20Factsheets/children-health-climate-change.pdf
Save The Children, Climate Change Is a Grave Threat to Children’s Survival
2022
Carbon Brief, Climate change exposes future generations to life-long health harm, 2019
The Effect of Gain-loss Framing on Climate Policy Preferences, Lea S. Svenningsen a , Bo Jellesmark Thorsen https://cuny-cc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile_A659521410&context=PC&vid=01CUNY_CC:CUNY_CC&lang=en&
Reflection
To begin, writing this essay was thrilling. I have always enjoyed the ideology of writing papers because you are always going to learn something new. In my case, I have learned to properly write my own thesis statement and find sources to agree with my thesis statement. When I first wrote my thesis statement, it was not as strong as I intended it to be. However, making many changes to my essay allowed my audience to understand my intentions of writing my essay. Throughout my essay, I come back to the documentary and redefine my argument. Therefore, the audience can comprehend the comparisons between the documentary and my other sources.
Finding sources to tie in with my argument was not hard at all. Climate change is such a broad topic that everyone has their own opinion on. However, many websites had their own reasoning as to why they were created. I definitely could have used those websites but I did not want my thesis statement to seem broad. There were way too many websites that were fundraising or donating to this climate issue. Therefore, it was hard finding websites that were not like that. I tried to find more informative websites rather than the websites that were fundraising or donating.
Some problems that I had while composing this essay was the ability to compare my documentary to my sources. My sources were so informative that they were too much for my documentary to tie into. However, I did find a way to do so. For a specific source, I decided to adjust my thesis statement for it to fit in because the website was so informative and was beneficial to my audience’s understanding. All my sources fit into my thesis statement beautifully. Although I was thinking about composing a counter argument, I decided not to do so because finding a counter argument was very difficult. I feel as though everyone feels the same way about climate change they just have a different reasoning as to why they feel the way they do. Therefore, I decided to stick with the idea that all of my sources back-up my thesis statement.
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