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.

For our final project I have teamed up with two other girls in our class to develop a short story using a different approach the authors we have read haven’t used. Our idea is to create a short story using the snowball effect. First, I will write two paragraphs starting off our short story of cli-fi. Next I will send those two paragraphs to the next girl and she will continue to write off of what I have started to plot out. We will continue this snowball affect in hopes of creating a strong cli-fi short story that has many different elements to it. The strong characteristic we have on our side is the element of surprise. It’s challenging enough writing a story, but to write one based off of someone’s previous plot is more challenging. The reason I want to blog about this is because I’m too excited to not share this idea with other people. It’s important that I can get feedback on my idea but also share it to excite others on how creative you can be with this opportunity Stephen has given us for our final project.

When crafting my first part of the short story I have been plotting out my characters and whom I want to introduce given the first opportunity to develop the main character. My idea was to start off with an accident, which leads to a young girl ending up in a coma. Then after 10 years of being in a coma her once present now past has changed and she wakes up in a new world. One where climate change has changed people and the gap between rich and poor has been opened wide. My thought process through this opening idea was for you as a reader to be able to experience alongside the main character what this new world looks like. So yourself and the main character are learning and understanding for the first time what this new world has become.

The best part about being able to write the opening paragraphs is that I get to set the mood, pick which tone I want the story to be written in, and decide what kind of main character I want to have. The problems with writing the first paragraph is also doing all those things because what I think might be a strong idea could be the next person brain fart on what to write next. I want to leave things open ended so my fellow partners have a lot of room to create and be creative themselves.

I believe this story will end up becoming a great success for our class to enjoy and read. It’s empowering being able to create your own story but even more empowering when you are letting other people create it alongside you.

As the interest of climate change fills my brain I have been conducting more research not on the future affects, or causes of the change, but what people are doing today to help prevent it. My blog post will harp on different communities protesting, fighting, and rallying on the ideas of climate change. Contine reading →

After reading Kathleen Moore’s article on “The Ethics of Adaption to Global Warming” she proposed a question, which asked, “Does the adaptation effort privilege the wealthy and powerful, at unjustified cost to the poor and dispossessed?” This question immediately reminded me of the short story “The Weatherman”. Characters in this story are faced with life changing decisions that are the exact answer to Moore’s question. Most stories we are reading in our English 104 class have to do with the powerful controlling the future while the poor are left to starve and die. It’s easy to imagine ourselves as one of the rich in a case like this but what if we are the poor? And are left to starve. It’s a harder image to grasp when faced with a question like that. You have to decide now what side you are going to be on. Either we can start to do something now to help face and protect the Earth from climate change, which ultimately will protect us, or adapt to it and become the rich, greedy, and self-preserving. Contine reading →

After reading stories that summarize our future as humans living on Earth in years such as 2040, I tried imagining where I would be in the situation of climate change and its destruction. I will be 45 years of age, hopefully with a loving husband and kids. Then it hit me, my kids would be living a life not even close to a life I had lived. They’ll grow up in poverty and hunger. Where the idea of “wrong” seems to be the only choice to live by. They’ll grow up without knowing the excitement of reality TV shows or vacations to tropical places. Lavishes will turn extinct and happiness will come from having food on the table that night.

The short story “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson is what makes me contemplate this future. Poverty is the only way of life in this story and even though it isn’t a true story, it has truth within it. If we don’t start changing habits or helping our Earth preserve itself our kids could face a world that’s been destroyed by it’s humans. Even worse, a world myself and all the other people who didn’t do anything to help destroyed. Contine reading →