Latin America's Climate Conundrum

In a recent article titled, "Latin America's climate conundrum," Simeon Tegel informs readers that due to climate change in Latin America, he is of the belief that not enough countries in this region are making the necessary strides to combat and sustain their environment, putting them behind the curve in keeping up with sustainable tactics to offset climate change. The article begins by painting a "future" Latin America where climate change takes a notable toll on the region. Tegel transitions from "future" to reality, where he mentions the possibility for implementable sustainability measures to combat climate change. However, this is being halted by developing nations because economic expansion and bringing the poor out of poverty are already a major concern for these semi-industrialized countries. There is a tradeoff to be made between economic growth and a sustainable future for Latin American countries. In conjunction with sustainability, Tegel notes that environmentalists want these countries to "be doing more to shrink national carbon footprints."

The debate on climate change is definitely a controversial issue. Opposing viewpoints dispute about what exactly needs to be done to sustain the climate. Readers of Globalpost are generally interested in subject matter pertaining to environmental issues, such as global warming. Therefore, people tend to be a bit more educated on climate change that read articles of this nature than ones that do not read these articles. With that said, the author's use of an emotional story at the beginning of the article makes him less favorable and doubtful to the reading audience. Also, Tegel's research of the current situation in Latin America is lacking statistical data for the region. He provides general statistics, but not detailed data for analyzing if Latin America truly is facing climate change. I am left feeling that there is a major concern in Latin America in terms of how this problem can be solved, and even though Tegel offers a broad solution to the problem through the use of sustainable resources, getting developing countries to rank what he proposes, is currently not on the table. I do not believe that somebody would object against climate change, however, the idea that supporting a sustainable developmental path to follow is the way to go, may be off-putting to some, especially developing countries that are more concerned with socioeconomic and sociocultural factors.