46
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales
ambientales se continúa hablando del cambio climático y de
sus efectos negativos, que son cada vez más devastadores.
Palabras claves: ecología, diversidad biológica, ambiente,
cambio climático, monocultivos, erosión, desigualdad.
Abstract
Humboldt predicted that climate change is caused by
humans, and for this today he is considered a forerunner
in the subject. When he visited Venezuela, he saw the
environmental negative effect or the colonial plantations,
in particular commercial agriculture, monoculture, irrigation
and deforestation. Also he observed how the irrigation system
in the Mexican highlands turned the valley base infertile.
Von Humboldt paid close attention to deforestation, one of
the reasons for soil erosion, observing that when vegetation
disappears, torrential rain drags the top stratum of the
soil, causing erosion. Noted how the water levels of lakes
decreased. He was the first to point out the power of forests
to enrich the atmosphere with humidity, with a cooling effect,
important to retain water and protect against erosion.
He saw the deforestation caused by Spaniards when trying
to control flooding, by building the dam at the Apure River in
Venezuela. After visiting that country he wrote with sorrow
in his travel diary «in the future, the human kind will take
its ignorance, prejudgments and violence to other planets,
which environments will also destroy» (Wulf, 2015, p. 338).
Despite two centuries of his climatic and environmental
predictions, we keep arguing about climate change and its
negative effects, increasingly devastating.
Keywords: ecology, biology diversity, environmental,
change climate, monoculture, erosion, inequality.