Like Mother, Like Daughter?

My only other encounter with climate change in school was sixth grade in my science lecture. We were shown Al Gore’s documentary titled An Inconvenient Truth. I don’t remember too much about the documentary, except that I was left with the question: Why is he spending so much money and gas by traveling? He’s using private jets and limos to get everywhere, yet preaching about saving energy and gas in order to reduce our carbon footprint.

Well, I went home and explained my day to my mom, including that we were shown this documentary. She is a lawyer, and therefore she loves a good argument. She’s also a conservative, so she doesn’t have the nicest things to say about Al Gore. At the time, 2006, she believed that climate change was not manmade at all. So, she emailed my school and told them that they needed to show the other side of this controversial topic. It being my first year in middle school, I was so incredibly embarrassed that she did this and I think I didn’t talk to her for a day or two.

Looking back on that instance, I realize that, firstly, I was a brat. And secondly, I realized that I respect what she did, despite being embarrassed (which, I had no right to be because I doubt that my friends would have found out). Regardless of the “right” or “wrong” stance on climate change, children need to be informed on both sides of a topic before forming an accurate opinion about what they believe in.

Now, about 10 years of research later, I do believe that there is enough evidence to prove that human kind has a large part in what is happening to the environment in regards to climate change. But, my opinion was different at the beginning of this course. I definitely did not do enough research from the time I was introduced to climate change in sixth grade until now, but it was extremely hard for me to believe that the human race, who’s been on Earth for such a small fraction of time, could have the ability to make such a huge impact on the planet. My mother currently has the same opinion.

I’ve been having conversations with her about this course throughout the term, and you can see our recent text conversation below.

She has done some research on the topic, and still believes that this couldn’t be caused by humans. It’s very, very difficult for me to disagree with her because her logic is all there. But the statistic that about 97% of all scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans is hard to ignore. While I do trust these intelligent people forming that research, I’m really not inspired by it, and neither is my mother. It’s not that I don’t believe that it’s true, I just don’t feel compelled to really do anything about it. But I want to.

I think the reason behind this attitude I have behind climate change can be explained through a conversation we had in class last week. Someone pointed out that a majority of our voicemails for the Future Coast project were grave and unhopeful. But, not all of them were. Sure, they all mentioned flooding, disasters, etc. but there were a few that depicted a scenario that has adapted to whatever happened. For example, the one set in Miami was not disastrous at all. The city had adapted to the rising waters and the family seemed to be fine with it.

I truly believe that whether or not climate change will continue to worsen, the human race will adapt. The works of literature that we’ve read in this course do not scare me because I have this underlying feeling that everything will be okay. There are some really smart people in this world who have made a huge impact and who I believe can get us through anything. I don’t think that we have anything to worry about.

IMG_9384IMG_9385IMG_9386

3 thoughts on “Like Mother, Like Daughter?

  1. I found your story to be very interesting. One thing that I took from it was that it is important to know all of the information before making your decision and I think you did a very good job of doing so.

  2. I defiantly agree with you the children need to learn both sides of the situation for choosing a side. When I was little I chose a side with my parents because they taught me their side but I never got to learn the other side and I think if schools are going to start teaching younger kids about climate change they need to know both sides not just the teachers opinion

  3. I think that your mom has a very interesting a strong thought on climate change. I think that this is a big part of our parents generation because when I talked to my dad he seemed like he didn’t really care much about climate change, but what he thought, he thought very strongly about. I think that our parents generation thinks completely different than ours about climate change and what we perceive and what they perceive is very different.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*
*