Last weekend, I attended the showing of Sun Come Up, a short film about the impacts of climate change on a small community living on an island.  They are forced to abandoned their homeland of many years in search of a new place to live as rising sea levels threaten their livelihood.  It was striking to me that we have already reached a point where people are forced to relocate as refugees due to the harsh environmental impacts of climate change.  This relocation, however, is not only stressful from a perspective of uncertainty but also due to the trauma from the civil war; the villagers are unsure if these new places will accept them.  As such, it is clear to see that climate change is not only making physical impacts on the world around us but also forcing many humans around the world into stressful situations that they would otherwise not be in.

I attended the Friday Film viewing of Sun Come Up which I found added to last week’s film on climate change nicely. One aspect that I thought was well portrayed in the documentary was the disproportionate effects climate change has on varying parts of the world. The movie followed the Carteret island community attempting to seek refuge on larger nearby islands as their home island was being taken over by the ocean. For this community, the effects of climate change were not something to worry about in the future, they were current and even past events. I found the overall generosity of neighboring island communities inspiring as these communities offered assistance and land to the Carteret community. I thought this generosity was well juxtaposed with the actions of the government who merely supplied emergency rations of rice rather than providing long-lasting assistance to the people of the Carteret Islands.