South Africa’s Fire Kingdom

South Africa's Fire Kingdom

SUMMARY: As we are all aware, global climate change tends to be devastating mainly because it has extreme effects - it makes wetter areas wetter and drier areas drier. Unfortunately, the "Cape Floral Kingdom" in Southern Africa manages to be one of the areas that is crusting over and losing its biodiversity to drought and wild fires. The Indiana-sized area is home to thousands of plant species that can't be found anywhere else on the globe, and the frequent, raging fires are wiping out all of the proteas, a native wildflower important to South African culture (it's carried by the national sports teams). The increasing temperatures are not only eradicating flora and fauna, but are also destroying the land, making it hard on humans as well.

REFLECTION: Upon first reading this article, it seemed a bit like deja vu. "I swear I've read that before..." I told myself. But the thing that managed to catch my eye was the last paragraph, which mentioned the effects of the situation on the villagers. As the old man in the beginning of the article portrayed, they aren't worried about what the fires are doing to the native species. “They are very quick to put out the fire when the mountain is burning, but when our shacks burn you never see them. They care about the birds and the tortoises and the antelopes more than they care about human beings!” he exclaimed.
But the last paragraph revealed one of the many roots holding this "global climate change" problem so steady - the fact that we are stuck in a downward spiral, a cyclical addiction we can't rid ourselves of. When his land finally becomes too dry to live off of, he is forced to move to the city, where he will (perhaps) find a factory job, mass produce a useless product to be shipped to America, and contribute to the very force which ruined not only his home, but the birds' and the tortoises' and the antelopes' too. The unfortunate thing is that what happens to his land and what happens to the Cape Floral Kingdom is not in his control. The fortunate thing is that it's in ours.

SOURCE: Mda, Zakes. "South Africa’s Fire Kingdom." The New York Times (2009). Nytimes.com. Web.