It was not until the lecture given by Gillen Wood that I learned about the year without a summer. This massive climate anomaly that occurred from 1816 affected a large portion of the world and yet I had not heard about it until today. Not to dismiss the intensity of the effects of this agricultural disaster, I feel that my lack of knowledge on the topic is reflective of our society. Professor Wood mentioned at the beginning of his presentation how the effects of the Tambora eruption were often dismissed by having no correlation to failing crops.  It made me wonder how such an important event in our environmental history could be brushed under the rug and dismissed as uncorrelated.  I then opened my phone and saw another reminding post on Facebook that Flint, Michigan, still does not have clean water! My lack of knowledge on the Tambora revolution echoes our society’s overall ignorance on many environmental issues today.

Focusing on the social effects of both the Tambora Revolution and the Flint water crisis, there is a large commonality with impacts of environmental disaster between class.  The effects of the year without a summer was felt by all classes, but some more than others. As mentioned during the lecture, the peasantry during the Tambora Revolution suffered the most because of their dependency on agricultural labor, which suffered the most from the temperature drops.  The flight into hell described by Prof Wood was mostly felt by the peasantry and there lies the class distinction. Those who tried to help the poor were criticized like Juliana de Krudener. She in response to a clergyman specifically makes the point that he does not know how bad it was for the peasantry because he along with the upper class did not have to deal with the impact of environmental disaster as gravely.  Relating back to the  Flint water crisis, this issue affects primarily a lower socioeconomic group of people. As with the exposure of the disaster in both cases, little is told about those who suffer the most from the hand of Mother Nature. The argument could be made that the reason for this environmental ignorance is related to who is affected the most. Without resources to recover let alone record the disaster, the aftermath seldom gets acknowledged both then and now.

In comparison, our lack of climate shock, to me is more frightening than the environmental disasters were facing today. I think with our scientific and technological advancement, we are less susceptible to complete upturning seen with the aftermath of the Tambora Revolution. However, this also blinds us from the degree of disaster we are facing. It makes it easier for us to move on from seemingly little climate issues and disregard it. Before we know it all the oil that we disregard that is still in the gulf of mexico will creep us on us when there is no fish to eat. I think that looking at this event helps stress the importance of interconnection as well as awareness of our current problems.