A lot of the things I learned from the Bilateral were things I wasn't even aware of. I was able to understand what was going on in Alaska and Argentina through first-hand accounts, which really helped. 

A similarity between Argentina and California is that we both struggle from wildfires. However, the causes of these wildfires  are very different. Argentina’s wildfires are man-made by a source of uranium which can affect wildlife, people’s health, and Argentina’s environment and community. The wildfires in California were completely naturally caused. There were unexplainable lightning strikes a few weeks ago in the middle of summer. This is very rare for most of California, and was reported to be one of the biggest lightning storms in northern California. Both fires in Argentina and California threatened the health/lives of people and animals. California’s fires threatened property damage more, and were more widespread/big. The environments and communities of both places have been deeply affected by wildfires, which is a similarity between both of us.

Alaska and California also have a natural disaster in common - earthquakes. The earthquakes in Alaska are the most naturally occurring earthquakes in the world, and are very common. California is known to have lots of earthquakes, however, they don’t appear as frequently/strongly as Alaska. Alaska’s marine life is being very affected by the rising temperatures and earthquakes, which is something California and Argentina don’t relate to as much. Also, the whale population in Alaska is being heavily affected by oil mining/drilling, whale hunting, glacier melting, and more.

One big thing all of us can do is raise awareness about these issues, as Argentina’s fires tend to be out of the mainstream media, and don’t receive much attention/coverage. California’s fires and earthquakes receive a lot of attention, which makes the government act quick and implement policies to help. The government in Argentina has done close to nothing to help citizens affected by the wildfires/radioactive activity, and there’s not much the common people can do. Alaska’s government has implemented the Marine Mammal Protection Act which protects marine mammals. Argentina and Alaska could both use more mainstream media coverage, and more awareness, which can hopefully lead to more government policies.

There are many similarities and differences between all of our case studies, and raising awareness is the first step we can all take in order to start to resolve these issues.

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