My work of climate change fiction takes it inspiration from the classic 8-bit video game, The Oregon Trail. My goal with this project is to design a video game that is both fun to play, but also is informative, educational, and adheres to the constructed genre expectations that we created in class for Climate Change Fiction. For the purpose of the project, and due to my lack of drawing ability, I am going to focus more on the plot and setting as opposed to the gameplay and visuals. The game will hold true to its predecessor and be based on text commands in order to venture through the game.

I remember growing up and playing the Oregon Trail video game in elementary and middle school. I thought it was just a cheesy game that Oregon students played during their grade school years to help them better understand the Oregon Trail. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that the game was widely popular all over the country and was considered a cult classic. This was an example of an educational video game that was popular. It was both fun to play and informative, which was my overall goal with this project. The original Oregon Trail game was released in 1971, and this could be an idea for an update that is both pertinent and helps educate the up and coming youth about climate change.

Brief Excerpt: My vision with this game, and something that will make it unique is that it will not be the same experience every time. You will start in the same location, the same year, and travel to the same location, but much like the weather and climate change, it will be entirely unpredictable. One journey you may face multiple horrific weather events that ravage your food supplies, caravan, and animals. Others you may experience various bouts of disease that once may have seemingly been things of the past. Bouts of smallpox, yellow fever, and other diseases run rampant in this world and medication for them is not cheap. You can’t protect yourself against them all, so you must make a wise prediction about what you may encounter.

While Bill McKibben’s talk left much to be desired, Gary Paul Nabhan had some very pertinent points, one of which being the idea of a common ground. So often we think of climate change as a polarizing issue. There are categories, groups that are constructed. Those who believe it’s a thing, those who don’t. Those who want to take action, and those who sit idly by. Gary Paul Nabhan wants us to break these groups and try to find something common we all can agree on.

The political realm is often the battle ground for legislation that both helps and hurts the climate change movement. Nabhan stated that this portion of the history has the most partisan group on Capitol Hill. The politicians care more about voting with their party as opposed to the issues at hand. Politics aside, I find that this is the issue with a lot of things including climate change. Many people will choose one side in order to stay consistent with their religious beliefs or other varying circumstances. This is where the idea of common ground comes in.

Contine reading →

It is likely that everyone has heard of the flight or fight mechanism, but is the same knowledge known about the incredulity response? What many claim to be the opposite of the fight or flight mechanism, the incredulity response was something that was brought to my attention in the reading. While floating through Grand Central Station, Mitchell encounters one of the most horrific sights in the novel. “The tunnel between the twin marble staircase was like a large greedy mouth drinking the water. But clogging that mouth and against the bottom of the stairs were bodies.” (173). Nathaniel Rich presents a very gruesome image that allows one to easily imagine and put to scale the amount of destruction that took place due to Hurricane Tammy. What really struck me about this passage wasn’t this image however, it is what Mitchell thinks to himself about the groups of people caught up in this catastrophe.

Contine reading →

One of the few aspects about climate change that we have gone over briefly in class, but have not gone into depth with is the political and economic impact of climate change. The majority of the short stories we have read also have neglected to go into depth on the political and economic impacts but these are some of the most important aspects in the fight against climate change. I ultimately believe that political legislation and the impact of the economy due to climate change, will be the largest driving force in favor of doing something about the problem. One of the major reasons why I enjoyed “An Athabasca Story” and the various photo essays on the Tar Sands in Canada was they tied together issues that are relevant today, issues such as the Keystone pipeline, with the Cli-Fi genre. Contine reading →

Being a Biochemistry major and having an immense interest in the sciences, I have approached the issue of climate change and global warming from an objective point of view, seeing both sides of the matter. While some of the issues may seem clear cut, there are a variety of issues that are not black and white. An example of one of these issues is presented in “The Siphoners” by David Mitchell, with the idea of a potential threat of overpopulation in the future.

In many of my Biology classes, especially those pertaining to evolution, the term carrying capacity has been used consistently. The Third Edition of Biological Science by Scott Freeman, the textbook used in my latest evolution based Biology class, discusses carrying capacity at length. This textbook defines carrying capacity as “the maximum population size of a certain species that a given habitat can support”. Below is an example of a carrying capacity graph taken from pixshark.com. The population of rabbits, which is the species used in this example, exponentially increases to a point. When the population hits the max that it can achieve with the given resources in their habitat, the population levels off and stays at a constant rate that the habitat can support. The idea of a carrying capacity is that every species has a population limit that a habitat can sustain, even humans.

With the population of the world already over 7 billion and with no signs of slowing down, the fear of overpopulation is an issue that is on the minds of many and should be addressed. Below is a graph from the United Nations website from 2010 which indicates that the population could more than double in the next 100 years. While the threat of overpopulation does not seem to be directly related to climate change, it is still impactful as it takes a toll on the environment and more people will undoubtedly contribute to the problem. Contine reading →