Prior to this class, I thought of climate change just as weather changing in a particular area over a period of time. I was soon informed from our class discussions and the introduction of Mark Maslin’s book Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, that climate has evolved in more than just a scientific term. We are now approaching climate to affect our economy, sociology, geopolitics, health, law, and local and national areas. However another problem we have with climate change is the inability to predict the future (Maslin 69.) Cli-fi genre has thus provided us with possibilities of climate changing if climate were to become more problematic than it already is.
The two stories we read in I’m with the Bears, along with the Global Weirding website provided me with particular cases of what would happen if our climate problem was to get worse. With that and learning more about cli-fi genre I was curious to find out more about the possibilities that could happen to me, locally. Mark Maslin made another point in his Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction book was that “Humanity can live, survive, and even flourish in extreme climates… each society has a coping range, a range of weather with which it can deal (Maslin 71.) Living in Oregon almost all of my life I can live, survive, and even flourish with rain and cold unlike someone who lives in the Sahara. I was curious to know if I could then be able to survive if Oregon were to change entirely.
http://www.keeporegoncool.org/content/oregons-climate was a website I found myself on that provided climate information about the present and future predictions of Oregon’s global warming. I was shocked to find out the facts of what is happening throughout Oregon now. Our average temperatures are rising, snowpack’s slowly declining, and sea level are rising an inch every 15 years. The video below provided great visual connection for me to see what was happening and the climate predictions. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to see these predictions come true.
Keep Oregon Cool also provides great insight on what we can do in order to reduce extreme climate change possibilities. I found myself then wondering what my lifestyle habits were doing to global warming. I came across a carbon footprint calculator that detects your greenhouse gas emissions through household size, transportation, consumption of foods, goods, and services: http://www.deq.state.or.us/programs/sustainability/carboncalculator.htm
At the end it gives you a list of actions you can take in order to reduce your carbon footprint. I was a little shocked at all the things I could do in order to contribute to our climate change issue. Its amazing how little things like going organic to changing your faucets can improve! Just within the last two weeks of activities we were asked to do, readings, and class discussions, I have definitely opened my mind about climate change.
Work Cited:
Maslin, Mark. Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2014. 1 & 62-71. Print.
“Oregon’s Climate” Keep Oregon Cool. Oregon Global Warming Commission. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.
I think the point that you made about humans surviving in extreme conditions is a very interesting one and I had never thought about how each society can cope in certain ways. I like the idea behind the carbon footprint calculator, while it doesn’t overly work for me as I can’t put in an Australian zip code I still think it is a real eye opener for people who live in the United States.
I really like that you included a video to illustrate exactly how serious the effects of climate change are. Prior to enrolling in this class, I thought that climate change and global warming mostly affected temperature and in turn increased sea level. It is interesting to see that these problems can create other problems as well; for example, insect-born diseases and decreased biodiversity.