Perla Jimenez
Geog 112, Section 2
Professor Davis
May 14th,
2012
Final Essay: Tropic
of Chaos, Christian Parenti
Throughout
the class, we have read four books and from those four books, my favorite one
by far is Tropic of Chaos by
Christian Parenti. I strongly believe
that Parenti did a well job writing this book and getting his message across
through his perspective. Parenti used
many good examples to support his reason for writing this book. Like for example in part I of the book,
chapters 1-3, Parenti begins the book with a real life story of an East African
man named Ekaru Loruman. Ekaru was from
a tribe called Turkana and Parenti told his story because he had been a victim
of “cattle raids” that resulted in his death.
Why is his story important? I believe it was important because it is
proof of how bad the climate change is affecting certain regions of the
world. Ekaru died because of men
invading his tribe to find resources because of the climate change was
affecting their farming season, limiting them to scarce resources.
Climate
change and its affects was a main topic of Parenti’s throughout his whole
book. This book really caught my utter
attention not only from the first chapter of the book, but by reading each chapter
and learning something new and agreeing with Parenti and his views on climate
change effects. Before reading this
book, I never really knew how bad global warming and its climate change was. I did not know how the climate change was
linked to causing “cattle raids” within certain East African tribes, causing
many innocent deaths because of wars breaking out due to scarce resources. "Food insecurity, for reasons both of
shortages and affordability, will be growing concern in Africa as well as other
parts of the world. Without food aid, the region will likely face higher levels
of instability-particularly violent ethic clashes over land ownership."
This quote in chapter two by Dr. Thomas Fingar really made me think because
essentially, this is realistically true and is ALL being caused by the climate
change. Wars are happening out of
desperation, fights between tribes are occurring, governments aren’t seeing the
true issue behind this matter and are concentrating on “warfares” when they
should really be concentrating on the main issue at hand, climate change.
"The
situation is so bad in some areas that people are now killing
each other for water-shooting it out for control of wells and
pasture. This is perhaps the most direct example of how climate change
plays out as violence.” Parenti
genuinely states his opinion throughout the book and firmly stands by it. I greatly admired how he is reporting on
current issues that are happening right now and how he tells all these
occurrences through his perspective.
Yes, all the other books initially did have a main reason or issue for
their book, but this book in particular caught my attention thee most. Parenti presented his book with examples,
facts, statistics, and personal stories.
The way Parenti also wrote his book, made it easier to read and wasn’t
such a hard book to keep up with.
Everything was balanced out in terms of the number of personal stories
to the number of facts to the numbers of statistics; it was all evenly
distributed throughout the book.
Africa
is a place that’s very personal and meaningful to me, and so when reading this
book and learning that it’s mostly dedicated on the climate change and its
effects in East Africa and other parts of the world, truly captured my interest
and ended me really liking this book. In
my opinion, Parenti did a very well job in expressing his points and why this
is all happening by using all the evidence he did. He not only focused on climate change issues,
but he also brought the government into the picture and discussed how the
government is currently taking all these issues with climate change, and
ineffectively helping the situation.
This
book by far, opened my eyes to things that are going on in the world and how
the effects in different parts of the world are truly being hurt by climate
change. One thing that surprised me was
the fact that governments aren’t focusing on the real issue at hand, and are
turning their attention to “warfares”.
Instead of worrying about the climate change issue that’s directly
affecting everyone globally, governments are concentrating on wars. Parenti wrote this book very well in my
opinion and I would mostly likely enjoy reading more books of his and seeing
what else he has to say about other issues going on in the world currently and
other issues going on worldwide as well.
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