Polly the Polar Bear

For my Final Project I wanted to use an animal that is endangered due to climate change, so I used Polar Bears. Since I feel like a majority of the stories we read about climate change fail to talk about the many animals that are affected by climate change conditions and are voiceless and helpless to what’s going on around them. But, I tried to make my short story as playful as possible because although most of the stories we read have a distinct ominous tone, I didn’t want mine to be completely depressing. So you could say my short story is somewhere between a children’s and an adult book, so I guess you could say it is a “young adult” story. The premise of my story is that it is the year 2075 and Polly is the last Polar Bear to live on this earth, because of the rareness of her species she gets captured and further becomes an exhibit at the zoo. As she struggles with the journey of waking up in a counterfeit Antarctica dazed and confused, to accepting that she is becoming an exhibit with hundreds of people finding joy and hope in her existence. Here is a small preview:

“Was I finally going to be able to reunite with the people I longed for in my lonely solitude of the desolate sanctuary of ice that would eventually melt. I started gaining consciousness, and as my eyes wandered to this plethora of white light all around, I faintly saw my mother in the distance, crawling towards me. I became overwhelmed with joy, and complete bliss, I hadn’t seen her since the huge wipe out of my entire family and fellow Polar Bears of the community in what was supposed to be winter of 2062, with nothing but an overabundance of sunshine. I ran towards her, and she was coming towards me looking as happy as I was, as we became closer and closer I reached out my hands and SMACK, I immediately fell to the floor with an impending headache that was quite the doozy. As I leaned back up, I saw again what I thought was my mother in the flesh, so I reached out my arms again to sadly become acquaint with nothing more than a wall of transparency glaring back at me”

There’s actually people who don’t believe in climate change..?

Prior to this class I never thought about climate change for more than a couple of minutes when I would read about an area affected by climate change, or the toll it will have on our future world. Which seems surreal because I find myself seeing and thinking about climate change so frequently now that it has become a daily thought of mine. It’s like an ex-best friend that you try and avoid at all costs, but somehow they just happen to be at your new favorite coffee shop, around the corner and basically everywhere that you are. Similar to this ex-best friend climate change is something that is prevalent everywhere, it is the grass and flowers we see blooming way before they should be, it is the invisible winter that was nothing short of sunshine and 55 degrees (which is extremely warm for a Eugene winter,) it is everywhere. Unlike this unavoidable ex-best friend, climate change is something that can be tackled, something that is not all bad, and something that we can slow down the progression of if we put our entire effort forward.

With all of this in mind, after seeing how climate change is affecting the world around us immensely it shocked me to have a discussion with one of my roommates about climate change. After a long and tiring back-to-back argument about climate change I left the room furious. Essentially in a short synopsis she told me that she didn’t believe that climate change was moving at a more rapid pace because of the human effect on the world. She tried to explain to me that climate change would happen regardless because of the natural toll of the earth. As that is true, we have a huge impact and carbon footprint that is in-erasable. Everything we do is helping the progression of a world heavily affected by climate change, a world that could have a limitation on water intake, rising sea levels, cities being wiped out and so on.

The idea of any of those things happening would frighten most people, which is what shocked me most about this conversation that I had with one of my roommates. Although people are obviously entitled to their own opinion, I just don’t understand how someone could turn a blind eye to the world around us. For example, these wonderful sunny days in Eugene are an indicator that our climate is changing, it is hot somewhere where it is supposedly still “winter,” yet rather than a winter full of rain we have a winter filled with sunshine. Last year around this time, if not a month prior it was snowing here, and now it’s as sunny as can be. I suppose, if you don’t believe in climate change you can pin it to us being fairly lucky. But for those who realize and understand the path our world is taking can only hope that one day more people will realize that climate change is occurring, and will continue to occur if we don’t change.

Aesthetically pleasing Hurricanes?!

While looking at the various articles on Hurricane Sandy, I had flashbacks of turning on the television and constantly seeing the news coverage of the storm and the devastating toll it was having on the people of New York. Although I was watching this coverage from the comfort of my own home in sunny California, I thought of those individuals in New York that had to handle this treacherous storm. I can only imagine the panic and complete frenzy I would be enduring.

Yet while I read Nathaniel Rich’s novel, Odds Against Tomorrow I did not feel the same way. Although Rich discusses the immaculate hurricane that the people of New York are enduring he does it in a way that is extremely aesthetically pleasing. Which is odd because usually even the thought of a hurricane brings nothing but horrid and saddening images to mind. However through Rich’s vivid figurative language he does a great job at erasing the images seen in the articles regarding Hurricane Sandy and shines a light on bright colors and images. For example, “Out of this murkiness the larger shapes emerged first: the curved seat of a wicker chair; a strip of rubber insulation curled like an octopus’s tentacle; an inflated red yoga ball, like a candy apple; and the smooth black hull of a plasma television, bubbles coalescing and darting on its screen as it rocked in the current”(Rich 166.) As Rich explains the scenery while he is canoeing down the street flooded with water, he chooses to describe mundane everyday items such as a wicker chair, or a television and highlights the beauty and delicacy of them. Which makes me wonder if he does this to romanticize the tragedy of this storm.

Although he is making this storm sound and seem much more pleasing than it is, it makes me question that he points out these everyday items to make a point of the intensity of the storm and its effect on things that we see everyday, and take advantage of. I personally think that Rich does a wonderful job at displaying the effects of this Hurricane, because it allows us to be put in Mitchell’s shoes. And rather than being absolutely terrified as we are on a tiny little canoe roaming to safety, we are engaged in the scenery and the emerging objects all around.

Overall I think that Rich’s novel does its job as a climate fiction novel, it highlights the effects of climate change on natural occurrences such as hurricanes. Hurricanes are inevitable because of the unpredictability of our weather, yet things like higher sea levels, and extremely warm temperature can escalate these hurricanes, which is very scary. But Rich makes a point that these storms can effect and overtake a whole city, and I would certainly be nowhere near as prepared as he is. Which is even more frightening.

Questions we need to ask ourselves

As climate change persists, and we begin to understand more about the adaptation plans that have been developed we can see how individuals react to these plans and implement them into their daily routine. Yet there are so many questions still left unanswered, and so many minor holes in the details of these developed plans. Kathleen Dean Moore shines light to some of these questions that should concern us all. She firstly asks us what the Earth is asking of us, and although these adaptation plans seem to be directed solely to the well being of our planet earth and the bettering of it, there is still questioning left to be done.

The ethical questions she proses particularly interested me because it makes me think about the effects of climate change on not just myself but on the people that don’t have a say and aren’t able to speak for themselves. We are essentially making these elaborate and extremely costly plans that will further help us live in denial and alter the course climate change already has in store for us. But in doing so, we are turning a blind eye to the people in countries that have already been heavily affected by climate change but don’t have the resources and funds to slow down the course. We are making these plans because we see the damage our toll is taking on other countries, and we do not want such occurrences to happen to us. Therefore we are implementing million dollar plans, to further benefit ourselves but leave the unable to fend for themselves.

This problematic theme of natural selection is apparent in many of the readings we have also discussed. Although the readings are based in the future and have the setting of a world that has been drastically affected by climate change, it still is an overwhelming problem. For example, in The Weatherman the main character struggles with a dilemma of whether or not he should control the weather. In doing so he can help himself and his family or help the sandtowners who have no say in the weather and furthermore are helpless to their own fate. This brings along the moral question of: Is my life more valuable than someone else’s?

Although we have grown up in a world where we are taught to protect ourselves and our own, when does enough become enough? These stories are futuristic and one could argue that they are a stretch of the reality we could face, although this is true, it still shares a common theme that Moore questions. In order to help ourselves against preventing climate change, we are only thinking of ourselves. Yet I think we should make a plan that is effective for all, one that takes into consideration people who may not have many assets but those who have the willingness to make a change in a small way. In doing so all of these small efforts, could turn into a large-scale change in our universe.

Global woaah..eirding

Global Warming is something we are all familiar with, whether that be we understand that it is happening, we heard about it in science class, family parties or so on, we all have a level of familiarity with the idea of global warming. Yet, we as a society are all blissfully ignorant about what is actually happening to our world. We turn our backs to the mere fact that our world temperature is literally rising, as we know it. Little did we know, that we are not only heating up, but there are endless reactions that will occur if we don’t step in and make a change. We turn our backs because we excuse ourselves from the problem, by simply believing that there is no way we can change Earths course, yet there is.

In order to truly assess and hopefully tackle a problem such as global warming we have to first understand what we can do to change it or in this case slow it down. In Margaret Atwood’s text, Time capsule found on the dead planet she describes our world in ages, beginning with the creation of gods progressing to the creation of money, and ending with deserts. In my opinion she shows this progression, to appeal to our emotional side. Personally, it scared me because as we discussed in class, we are somewhere lost in the middle of the third age. It is especially relevant because Money rules our world, and I think she intends to make a correlation between how we first idolized gods, and migrated to idolizing money. Unfortunately that is the world we live in, in a world where our motives are fully powered by the idolization, and chase of money. This is just one of the many distractions that keep us enthralled and ignorant to global warming.

Yet I firmly believe that if everyone took a second out of their day to visit the Global Weirding website it would change 99% of peoples perspective and willingness to make a change for the benefit of our universe. Contine reading