Going to the keynote presentation was different than anything I imagined. Initially, when I walked in the “Raging Grammies of Eugene” were performing a skit about protesting various projects like the keystone pipeline. While I was caught off guard by the style of this presentation, I was interested to see what it was like to attend an environmental conference. The general vibe in the room was positive and everybody was thoroughly interested in whatever the people were speaking or singing about. What I was most interested in; however, were the concepts professed in Gary Paul Nabhan’s keynote about the importance of collaboration and agriculture. Contine reading →

This past Friday, I attended the keynote speech at the EMU. Upon my arrival, I was given a pamphlet of sorts entitled “Enviro NGO Greenwashing and the Cult of Hopium: Fueling Destruction and Denial While the Biosphere Burns”. Even based on the title, it is not difficult to infer what sort of message this pamphlet and its author sought to portray. More interesting, however, than the strongly worded argument enclosed, are the comics that were featured inside.  Contine reading →

For my final blog, I chose to interview two of my closest friends to find out what they think of global warming. It amazed me to hear that they both learned more about global warming in just this term than in their whole lives because I’ve been sharing what I’ve been learning in class. Therefore, I thought that their opinions would be biased after hearing mine for the past nine weeks; however, to my surprise, that was not the case.

I started the conversation off with the simple question, “What comes to mind when you hear the words, ‘global warming?’” One of my friends answered, “Polar Bears and flooded islands,” while the other said, “Melting glaciers, holes in the atmosphere, and creating of fuel efficient cars.” Feeling proud of their answers, I moved onto the second question, “Do you believe that global warming is happening?” and I was astonished to hear them both, flat-out, say “no.” When I asked them why, one of them said that they strictly don’t believe in global warming, and the other said that climate change is happening, however, it’s just one of the transitions the Earth goes through and it’s not permanent. Contine reading →

When I asked my father what climate change meant to him, he surprised me. His first response was that the polar bears are dying, but then he went in depth into some of good things first. Obviously, when one thinks climate change, they never think about positive changes, but my father talked about the opening shipping routes through the arctic and how that could benefit trade.

Now, my father was by no means supporting climate change and pollution, but he was merely looking at the bright side of the situation. This has been hard for us in a very pessimistic and negative class. Though he tried to do that, that example was one of the only practical ones he could think of.

He knew his stuff about climate change. He talked a lot about the gas prices and how they are going down. This was because they have found a cheaper way to produce gasoline (fracking), but it was worse for the environment. We posed the question: is it worth it? What is more important: saving money or saving the environment? Obviously, from a personal, here and now standpoint, one would say that saving money is worth it. Do we need to save money at that cost to our future though? Contine reading →

This week, I decided to talk to my grandparents about how they feel about the climate change issue as a whole.  I chose to talk to them because I know that they often have very different opinions than me on issues like this.  They also tend to be very stubborn–especially my grandpa, and do not change their opinions very easily.  I started by talking to my grandpa and asked very generally:  “How do you feel about climate change?”  He responded by saying that he did not think that it was something we had to put too much effort into right now because it will not affect us for a while.  When I asked him why he does not worry about it and dismisses it, he just responded by saying that his effort alone was not enough to make a huge change and that to change his ways would be inconvenient.  While I agreed with him that it can sometimes be inconvenient, I told him that I think it is important that we try to make a change sooner than later.  He shrugged it off.  “I’m not going to be around for that!”

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I decided to pick my mom to have a conversation with about climate change because I already know my dads response on what he thinks about climate change. My first question was, “Do you believe in climate change?”. My mom said that she does believe in climate change because she has seen long term climate changes across the globe and there has been a decline in sea ice in the arctic. She also thinks that people are impacting the climate change because there are the signs of the human pollution that is making are our air warmer. My next question for her was, “Why do you think people don’t believe in climate change?”. Her first response to the question is that people are ignorant but I told her to elaborate on that. She said that climate change is obvious because of all the snow fall in the East coast right now and how it is sunny here and in California. She went on to say I don’t know why people don’t believe in climate change because the signs are there. People are not aware of whats going on in our world and they are not educated enough to understand why these things are happening to our earth. She does not believe they are convinced that is happening but it is and it is a serious problem. Another reason why they may not be convinced that it is happening because they are not experiencing climate change first hand. Experiencing climate change would result in them believing in it. For example the people in the mid west had their roofs cave in on them because of snow. She thinks after these people experienced climate change they now understand. After she went on to talk about our electric car and how she hated it in the beginning but in the end she grew to like it because she saw the outcomes of the car. She saw that we save money on gas and helped the environment by not polluting any gases. Something else she said was, “Someone who knows very little about climate change does not care a great deal about its consequences”. Which I agreed with her on that quote because if you do not care about climate change you probably wont believe in it too. The next question I asked her was, “What do you do at home to help prevent climate change?”. Her response was that we own an electric car and that helps prevent climate change because anything that uses gas pollutes the environment. She thinks cars are a big problem why our climate changes because it is something that everyone uses. She said if you can do your part to prevent climate change that it will help not only the environment but everybody.

On Thursday I went to the opening ceremonies for the Changing Currents Conference where we saw a video from Amy Goodman coming to us live from New York. One of the first things she talked about was how our government is a broken system because some power figures think global warming is a hoax. She said that people think its a hoax because people would not know what to do if global warming was actually happening. Thats when people started calling it climate change. They started calling it climate change because it was a more appropiate title and it did not sound as harmful as global warming. After she started talking about how obvious things are happening to our earth because of climate change. For example she said that no one is making the connection that Niagra Falls is freezing and there is a drought in California. To me this connection is obvious that global warming is doing this but some people are not making the connection. Amy than talked about the word climate change and said people need to think about the science behind climate change. The science is, is that the temperature has gone over .8 diagrees of the industrial level. She went on to talk about how it is good that we are even talking about climate change and how so many people showed up to hear about it instead of letting this topic go unknown. She ended her speech with a quote that says, “It always seems impossible til its done”.
Going into this conference I did not know what to expect. When I walked in the whole ballroom was filled to listen to Amys speech which I thought was impressive. Most of the people in the room were climate activists but to be honest I did not know we had that many in Eugene. I thought her speech was very powerful and interesting. I learned a lot about climate change problems happening in World War II and plenty of factual information about climate change. I really enjoyed her speech and hope I can hear her speak again.

In my opinion, Cli-Fi is not yet popular. The first time I heard about a work of cli-fi was the movie 2012. This movie goes through the events of an average American family who wants to survive with the wealthiest and most influential people in the world. The character Charlie Frost played by Woody Harrelson is a theorist who has been predicting all the disasters happening in the movie for years, but no one listened to him. This is like the cli-fi writers and movie directors right now. They are foreseeing the potential danger to our planet. Nobody believed Charlie Frost in 2012 because everyone though he sounded crazy and unstable. Everyone believed that these catastrophes couldn’t actually happen, and I think that is what people think of cli-fi books and movies.

The New York Times “Room for Debate” article answering the question: “Will fiction influence how we react to climate change?” have writers share their opinion about whether works of literature is working to spread to the word of global warming. George Marshall the founder of Climate Outreach Information Network says, “Stories are vitally important for us to make sense of climate change. The rational side of our brain can readily accept that this is a problem. But it needs the alchemy of stories to turn that cold data into the emotional gold it needs to mobilize” (Marshall). His point is very true because people can’t imagine facts and data they can only imagine the stories people share or stories they read. People need to be told what they should expect the future to look like. But that being said, everyone has different opinions of what the future looks like. So stories are different and inconsistent and that makes people not want to listen to them.

In class we left voicemails for the game and website Future Coast. Almost all the voicemails students recorded were negative. The timestream I complied with all the voicemails had family as the main theme because that seemed like the biggest concern. Children and parents were worried about the future and whether they would see each other again. These voicemails are tying to send the same message cli-fi writers are sending to predict what the future will look like for humans. Even though these voicemails were influential the question is how many people are listening to them and actually doing something.

All the writers in “Room Debate” believe that cli-fi is helping. Dan Bloom blog “Dan Bloom’s Cli Fi Dreamin’ Webzine” he states that “novels and movies have the power to change minds” (Bloom). While this may be true it is not changing enough minds fast enough. I agree with the novelist Sarah Stone who Bloom quotes as saying “If we survive, ‘it will be in part because of the books like this one (California by Edan Lepucki), which go beyond abstract predictions and statistics to show the moment-by-moment reality of a painful possible future, the price we may have to pay for our passionate devotion to all the wrong things’”(Bloom). This is a very accurate because many people don’t think global warming is an important enough topic. Most people think that the warm days in December are normal, but they’re not. People are not realizing the danger we are in because not enough people have heard or read the stories writers are predicting.

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.

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Let’s start off on an honest note: if you were an ordinary person (and not in a cli-fi English class) would you have read any of the stories/novels we read in class? Personally, I know I wouldn’t be reading Odds Against Tomorrow for fun. However since I am in a cli-fi English class, I found a new respect for the cli-fi genre. I found a respect for the storytelling and how most of the stories grabbed my attention and opened discussion. Reading the NYTimes Room for Debate article on cli-fi, I noticed a lot of the debaters mentioned the same thing; cli-fi needs a good story and a teller to get the message out. Contine reading →

Over the weekend I had a conversation about climate change with my older uncle. I brought up the issue about global warming and how it could significantly affect now and future. He knew climate change was happening but I could tell that he did not know all the facts. He explained how no one really talked about climate change with him and it seemed he was not that educated about the situation. When he was a kid, climate change was not an issue at all. Not as many people recycled and it was a more stress free atmosphere. People weren’t as worried about using energy or cutting down trees as they are now. The older generation’s boom in technology and industry did help contribute to global warming today; however, they weren’t as aware or didn’t care about what the side effects and how it would affect the environment. They did not understand the long lasting impacts it could have on the world.

Today, my uncle does recycle and he uses energy efficient lighting along with other environmentally friendly equipment. He also drives a hummer which is known to be very harmful towards the environment but he has no plans to change it because he likes the car. My uncle has a lot of  mixed feelings about the future. He explained how much technology has advanced since he was a teenager and how he enjoys using that kind of technology today. The new equipment we have today has been more advanced than the world has ever seen before. Because of this, he thinks there can be a way that we can use this innovation to slow down the temperature rising. He also feels that because of the increasing population size, especially in Asia, it is hard to stop all these people from contributing to the pollution in the atmosphere. No matter how advanced our technology gets, we cannot stop all the people from further contributing to climate change.

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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 →

When thinking about what to write about for my last blog post of this class, I was conflicted with whether to write about how amazing this class was, how professor Stephen is the best professor on campus, or how fascinating yet scary climate change really is. Then I realized those were all such obvious topics so I decided to go a bit of a different route.

Climate change is a scary topic. It’s something that’s very challenging for people to understand fully. When Stephen first went into depth about climate change, then Cli-Fi, it didn’t phase me. For example, I didn’t look twice at our first reading and just assumed this class was like every other class I have taken where I go to class to try and get the best grade I can. Most my classes were all about getting a good grade. But this class was different.  It made me think. I actually wanted to go to class not only to get a good grade but because I was intrigued about the ideas we were talked about. It turned from curiosity to almost like a need understand what my future has in store for me. The next thing I know I was googling articles and learning about how all this change can affect Oregon. I wasn’t just studying it for my class but now for curiosity. Than I saw it in my every day life, I noticed the greater number of warmer days rather than cold. I noticed how there wasn’t enough snow on the mountains this year. I understood what it means when people talked about the drought in California. I understood why all this was happening and it actually made me think twice about it.

As scary as it was it was also satisfying. In our elementary school history classes we learned about wars, floods, and any sort of big event that happened in our worlds history. Well now we’re living through it. This change we are experiencing is something our grandchildren and their children will be learning about in elementary school. Whether for the good or for the bad what we are living through will go down in history. It’s scary to think about but also amazing to be a part of. It’s our job to be the heroes in this story. To be the Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington, Anne Frank, and all the other historic figures we have learned about and come to know from our past. Our names can fit into that list in the future and after taking this class, it’s important we take all the information that we have learned and use it to our best ability to help give everyone else a fighting chance. Remember, the smallest of acts in mass amounts is an effective way to help be a hero.