Over the weekend my dad and I did a mini road trip to Florence, Oregon. On the way there we saw a lot of trees that were being cut down. There were many trees in one area and then a gap of no trees. It made me sad because I saw right in front of my eyes our planet getting destroyed. When I went to the beach, I thought about if a flood happened and all the places that would be destroyed. This class really makes you think more about climate change. Especially, the weather in Eugene has been so nice and it is not like last year. Last year during this month we got snow and that was really cool to experience.
The book we have been reading in class Odds Against Tomorrow has made an impact on me. You hear about Seattle getting destroyed and I think about if that was my hometown. That’s were I grew up and I can’t even imagine it gone. This book talks about how the corporation called Future World is preparing for disasters. This book also talks about situations that could happen such as poverty and dead bodies. I can just picture the people in the novel terrified and desperate. The books cover can say a lot because you can tell its New York. The city looks like it is flooded and just does not look in order.
In this article it talks about New York and climate change and I thought it related a lot to our book. It talks about how sea level is increasing and will keep increasing. It will go from 0.5-0.7 each decade. That sounds pretty high and can only result in something bad happening. Also, it talks about temperatures are projected to increase to 4.1 to 5.7 degrees F in 2050. That statistic displays that our planet is going to keep getting warmer. We will have less resources that we will need such food and water because it will be too hard to farm. Additionally, there will be more heat waves and in San Diego we get a lot of those. The heat waves are really intense and nobody wants to be outside during one.
This class is coming to an end soon and I have learned so much in just eight weeks. I hope to keep preparing people for what could happen in the future. Also, tell people how important and informing non-fiction books are. They can teach a lesson by fictional characters and show what could happen in the future. In class we talked about what the year 2075 will look like. Most students only said negative things about the world. In the future there will be sickness, nuclear war, and no resources. This displays that most of us know that the future does not look good because of global warming. Most people do not care and won’t care until it affects them or the people they love. I really enjoy this class and want to keep learning about climate change and how it is affecting our planet.
It’s interesting thinking about Oregon and the role it has in climate change. You mentioned on your way to Florence seeing the gap of missing tress. I have also seen this on my way to Bend. It’s important to recognize these changes because it did what you wrote about, it made you sad. Having an emotion towards something like that is what empowers us to change it. I know when I get me water/electricity bill every month it makes me that much more intone with turning lights off or the TV off because simple tasks like that can change the emotion we have when seeing climate change in full effect.
Like you said, this class has also made me pay more attention to our weather patterns in Eugene. In the first paragraph, you brought up last year’s bad snow storm; however, this year, we are having beautiful, sunny weather. I can’t help but ask if these changes are related to global warming. You also brought up our class activity of our future brainstorming. It also amazed me how disturbing our class thinks our future end up looking. After reading cli-fi novels and studying climate change this term, it’s up to people like us to educate others of the consequences of our actions, so we can prevent our future from ending up how we fear it will become.