If someone were to ask me what the Tar Sands were prior to the class readings, I would have told them that I have no idea what they were. Unbeknownst to me, the Canadian Tar Sands are a 54,000 square mile area of what used to be lush Alberta Forrest, but is now the home of some of the dirtiest oil mining operations in the world. These lo mines are largely contributing to greenhouse gas emissions as well as the world’s climate change. Reading the articles and viewing the pictures on the Tar Sands were shocking to say the least. What was more shocking, however, was the fact that I, nor anyone I asked, knew anything about the Tar Sands or even knew what they were.
After the past few weeks of talking about climate change, I have realized how important it is to write about it so that the world can see that this is a real thing and it is affecting us right now. This led me to think how we can educate the world better about climate change because the more people know about it, the easier it will be to change it. I started thinking about how it seems like most of the people that know about climate change are adults. This led me to think about whether or not we should educate young children about climate change. Contine reading →
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.
Spending a great deal on morality and ethics in class discussions recently, I wanted to look at the challenges we face with being green. Holly Howitt’s story The Weatherman, showed drastic measures of being green people. Within the story there was a strict class system along with strict orders for the green people to maintain perfection within the world (after previous generations ruined the climate.) The weather station was built to control everything from sunshine to rain by the press of a button. Even though this was beneficial to the greens, it was not to others. In the end the main character sacrifices himself to destroy the weather station and give everyone an equal chance. Was that really the moral thing to do? Was his decision going to help his family? Would it even help the world? Some of these questions got me to think deeply into ethics and morality within today’s climate change. Contine reading →
During this week in class we looked at the Alberta tar sands. As it is obvious that the chemicals that are being taken out of this area is dangerous to the environment, there are other effects on the environment that these tar sands have that I would like to discuss. The first thing done to the land in this area is that it is cleared of vegetation and swamps so that the soil can be reached. This is a form of deforestation, which is devastating to the environment. Deforestation’s effect on the land as stated in the book, “Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction” by Mark Maslin is that, “Deforestation and over working of the soils had started to reduce fertility, so farmers were cutting down more trees to open up more land to produce enough food to survive” (158). The soil in the area where deforestation takes place because useless especially when the land is being used for tar sands, then those in the area that are wishing to farm have to move elsewhere and clear land to find an area to grow crops. With the tar sands, the soil is what the people are after, and so lack in fertility of the soil is not as much of a worry. Then comes into play the other effects of deforestation. Deforestation takes away the plants that are pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, and in this case the land is being used to get a fossil fuel that is going to add large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere. The tar sands are a ‘double whammy’ when it comes to the amounts of carbon in the atmosphere.
I find narrative discourse to be very interesting and very important to any story told. While it may seem like it does not have that much effect on the story I think it has more impact than anybody realizes. As we discussed in class, narrative discourse is the manner in which a story is told. This can include style, diction, syntax and vocabulary. Although sometimes we do not realize it as we are reading stories, the narrative discourse of the story completely changes the effect it has on the reader. The stories we have read thus far are a great example of this.
The one that stuck out to me the most as having a unique narrative discourse was the Diary of an Interesting Year. This story was told in a very casual, personal way. Writing the story as a diary made it a lot easier for the audience to connect with the author and the story they were telling. If this story had not been told in the first person or had not been written in short, choppy sentences, it would have seemed a lot less realistic and would not have gotten the point across in the same way. While the actual events in the story have a huge emotional impact on the reader, the manner in which it is told also makes a huge contribution to the story. I know a lot of the kids in our class really connected with this story and it really helped all of us understand the personal effects climate change could have on all of us. The storyline itself cannot get all the credit for this; the narrative discourse combined with the story helped to get the point of the story across. Contine reading →
It seems lately that a lot of focus on Climate Change right now is adaptation instead of mitigation. I think this because people don’t fully realize the effects Climate Change might have on their respective environments, so they assume that even if there is a change in the weather in their area, it won’t cause anything too drastic. This prompted me to see how Climate Change would effect the region we currently reside in right now, the Pacific Northwest. I grew up in a town about an hour south of here, and I had noticed some strange weather patterns over the last few years. It turns out, Climate Change is going to affect the region significantly within the next few decades. During the last century, the temperature here rose by nearly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit on average, and in some places rose nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit. This really surprised me, as I never really heard about it on the news, or from anyone else really, as it seems like this would be a big deal.
From my own observation, it seems that summers around here to have lasted longer and warmer with every passing year, and that the weather in the winter is more unpredictable and doesn’t last quite as long. I also read that climate change is significantly affecting snowpacks, as well as the flow of streams and forest top covers in our area. The average annual temperature in our region is expected to increase by 3-10 degrees Fahrenheit within the next 100 years, which is truly frightening, as this would be a very changed climate from the one I grew up in. The amount of winter precipitation is expected to increase, which seemed odd to me, as I thought the climate would become more arid with increase heat, but then I read that the summer precipitation is expected to decrease by a large amount, which sort of fits in with the trend I’ve been noticing the last few summers. Contine reading →
Learning about the Canadian oil sands really opened my eyes. It showed me how people are the reason for this climate change that is happening to our planet. I thought it was interesting how in the photo essay the photographer got to capture every moment and makes the reader feel like they are there in the airplane with the photographer. One picture that really grabbed my attention was the picture with the caption, “The ponds are vast and some look more like lakes” [(Johnson) I tried to insert the photo from the blog onto this post, but it was not working]. This was an unbelievable picture to me because I cannot believe that those ponds are oil, sand and water mixtures. This makes me question why people on our planet are doing this? I understand that we need oil in our lives to be functioning humans, but why do we have to take up this much territory? Why can’t we just keep it more contained in a smaller area? I also thought the photo of the memorial of the family that passed away was extremely sad. I notice how dangerous this type of oil mining factory is. I believe that if it is as harmful where there is a death something needs to be changed, but I feel like nothing is going to be changed.
There’s always talk of climate change, of what is going to be left of the world. Sea levels rise, cities become submerged. Is there any hope? According to this article from Business Insider, the United States as a whole is, for the most part, safe. So no need to worry, right? Nope.
Though the infographic deems the U.S. safe from climate change, it is misleading. The map is a zoomed out effect. It doesn’t focus on smaller state, region, or city specific information. So on paper, the U.S. looks safe. But what happens to the cities at current sea levels? The coastal towns we love on the East and West coast? What happens to those? Contine reading →
Check out this article on climate change and literature that recently appeared in The Australian, a major online and print news outlet. The writer addresses some of the questions that we have been discussing together so far this term and writing about on this blog, including whether “cli-fi” is its own genre, whether literary fiction can change minds and affect people’s choices, whether literature can help us “repossess” and think through the future. This passage from the article stood out to me as particularly powerful:
“Genuine imaginative engagement with the meaning and effects of climate change demands writers do more than imagine devastated worlds and drowned cities. We need to find ways of representing not just the everyday weirdness of a world transformed by climate change, but also the weirdness of the everyday, to find ways of expressing the way climate affects not just the natural world but our own worlds, our own imaginations.”
Do you think any of the stories we have read so far have done a good job representing “not just the everyday weirdness of a world transformed by climate change, but also the weirdness of the everyday”?
Living on the Coast, my community tends to be affected by the ocean and the animals living in it. When I was younger, a trip to the beach meant I could walk on a near clean beach, spot marine birds, and the local sea lions. However, due to rising climate temperature and the effects that global warming has on the environment, the Coastal zones are changing.
Most of the Coast and Marine waters have been polluted by the expanding urbanization around us. This causes many beaches and waters to be filled with trash, toxic materials and unwelcome bacteria. These foreign objects polluting the waters have negatively affected the marine wildlife living in Coastal environments. Sea level temperatures rising can affect where species live and affect their lifestyle. It could even endanger species, forcing some into extinction. Rising temperatures directly affect a marine animal’s metabolism, life cycle and behavior. The increase of temperature can result in some marine animals engaging in reproduction and mating earlier than usual, risking the survival rate of the offspring. If offspring don’t survive, this can risk the population numbers, sending species near extinction.
Over 200,000 different species live in our oceans, all depending on different ocean environments to survive. The rising of temperature affects some species that require cold water to survive, this forces fish and other species to migrate North to colder waters. It has also affected the Caribbean and warmer waters because the water is too warm, causing coral to die. The lack of coral in a habitat will force fish move because they rely on coral and the bacteria around it to survive. In dense coral habitat, over 70% have been bleached by the warm waters. Some species are even losing their homes, like the penguins and polar bears. The melting of ice on each pole has driven both the penguins from the South and polar bears from the North, to migrate inland because the ice near the coast is continuing to melt.
When the issue of climate change comes up, many people are quick to dismiss it.It’s similar to how when we are young we can find ourselves feeling invincible.“That may be dangerous/bad/scary but it will never happen to me.It will never affect my life.”While we have learned by this age that we are not immortal, there are still many people who do not think that climate change will directly affect them, and some people that do not believe in climate change at all.
I used to think about climate change as a thing of the future.I knew that the environment was in trouble and about the green movement, but I still had a hard time understanding that the damaging effects of climate change were approaching rapidly.Being from Berkeley, California I have been reusing, recycling, composting and conserving my whole life, but I was still under the impression that climate change was not going to create any serious problems until after I was long gone. Contine reading →
There were three different ways climate changed was presented to us last week in class. One is the Global Weirding website that shows us how the earth will change throughout the years. The Global Weriding website has a timeline that takes you through the future years and how the earth is going to be permanently affected. The second is the scientific book, “Climate Change” by Mark Maslin which talks about the evidence of climate change, the impacts, the politics, and much more. It tells the reader about the facts surrounding climate change and what is the cause. The third way climate change is brought up is through a fictional story. One fictional story we read was “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson, that described how terrible global warming had become and how it has affected her family. Out of all three forms of information about climate change the story, “The Diary of an Interesting Year,” had the biggest affect on me.
The short story written by Helen Simpson was most impactful because of the obstacles the main character had to face due to global warming. She went through horrible conditions like no sewage system, no food, no heat and much more. People in this futuristic world had to fight over something as simple as a can of sardines. The bugs, due to the lack of sanitation left people with bites and sores. But, the biggest difficulty the main character had to battle with was the violence. In a society where order has been lost violence breaks out because people will do whatever it takes to survive. She had to fend for herself and in some situations she was unable to protect herself. The lack of structure allowed for peoples survivor instincts to take over, and this means doing anything and everything they can to stay alive. Doing anything and everything includes having to make one of the biggest sacrifices as a woman, and that is giving up her child. The main character writes, “I’ve wrapped your remains in my good blue shirt; sorry I couldn’t let you stay on board, but there’s no future now for any baby above ground” (114). The main character had to sacrifice her child because she thought the conditions were too horrific. To me, that’s when you know climate change has taken over. When people no longer want to reproduce and bring a beautiful baby into the world.
Even though this is a fictional story, it could one day become reality. The story is based in 2040, which means I would be 46 years old and that’s a frightening thought. I would still be young and wanting to enjoy life, but global warming could get in the way of that. People can read facts and scientific information about climate change, but I feel the real way for people to realize what is happening is through stories. People don’t understand the significance of what is happening around them, and once they read a disturbing story like the “Diary of an Interesting Year,” they start to grasp the impact of climate change. For some people facts and predictions open their eyes to the reality they can someday face, but for me reading a fictional story opens my eyes.
Cite:
Simpson, Helen. “Diary of an Interesting Year.” I’m with the Bears. N.p.: Verson, n.d. 101-15. Print.
Global warming is a word that is thrown around is today’s language. A few weeks ago, I thought it was self-explanatory; it has warming in the name. It’s a very ignorant answer but I’m probably not the only one who thought this. It brought to my attention that why I am not concerned with global warming and why haven’t I been informed?
Most of the population is probably not well informed on the topic of global warming. They are most likely just as oblivious to the significance it has to the Earth and the population as I was. For example, I have seen the Hollywood movies based on the near destruction of the world. World War Z, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow have the underlying message that “the world is coming to an end” but used that thought and made it into entertainment. They fanaticize it, focusing on one character and then, like most movies today, someone comes in and, literally, saves the world. Global warming is usually not the main headline on social media and gets swept under the rug; people are uneducated and blinded to the distresses it has already caused. The “information” people are getting about global warming from these movies may make an unconscious impact in the back of their mind. In most stories, there is shown to be this continuous pattern that everything in the end will be fine and that someone will always be there to save the day. Is that why people aren’t doing anything? That sounds almost absurd but for me, almost every movie, TV show or book I have read or seen ends on good terms. We expect things to go right; we expect things to go our way. If things don’t go our way, is it really true? If we look at the world today and see all our great innovations and history we have created over the past few decades, it’s extraordinary and shows tremendous progress. When we hear the talks on devastation and are told that it is happening but all we see is progress, then is it really happening?
Almost all of the stories we have read in class have used scare tactics to try and persuade readers to change. After retaining this information, the reader is informed on what the impacts look like but not told how to help. After the recent “Climate Change” reading, I now know ways that I can save energy. The thought I have in my head, which I’m sure most people do too, is that I am only one person, how much can I do? Social media and social networking have an enormous impact on almost everything. I feel that that may be the biggest factor that could help or hurt us. People glorify celebrities so if more celebrities start posting about using solar panels, electric cars and wind mills, would that encourage more people to do it? Would making movies with realistic possibilities of the future have an impact? What would happen if we as students branched out to people now that we are more educated and have found ways to help? Even though I didn’t elaborate much on all of the readings we have done, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the massive impact that social media has and could do.
Throughout this course we have been reading short fiction stories about how global warming and climate change can/has impacted, in many negative ways, the world we live in. These stories have created a picture in all our minds, or at least in mine, of what our society could turn into with how global warming can affect the way we live day by day. Not only has it created an image in mind, but also, has influenced questions like how would our world react to such change? How would we sustain life? How would people treat eachother in such a world of panic and fear?
In the short story, “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson, we got the chance to experience what it could be like in a women’s position through world apocalyptic type situations. “If we run out of beans I think he might kill me for food,” the main character states(112). In the story people were being abused, fighting or bartering over little amounts of food, and worrying if their children were going to be in safe hands if something were to happened. Scientists and researches have already made the analysis that over time our worlds water supply, food supply, electrical systems, and so on, will be affected meaning our civilization will have to be able to adapt or start preventing. As we all have seen in movies where the world is coming to an end and people are setting stores on fire and rioting like all sense of humanity is all of a sudden gone, makes me wonder if this will actually be a reality. When people are afraid and feel the need to protect themselves and the ones they care about it is natural to worry about yourself before anyone else. Which is a scary thought because if global warming and climate change does impact us in ways that creates starvation, homelessness, sickness, and so on, do you think morals and values will still be amicable to our society? Contine reading →
The climate change that we are bringing to Earth is believed to be nearly irreversible. Most automobile, electric, and fossil fuel companies are taking steps to minimize and maybe even neutralize the damage that their industries are causing to our planet. Although less emissions in our atmosphere is ideal and necessary, many scientists believe that the damage is already done.
With our population increasing every year, our societies need to look past just the emissions and pollution to our planet, but also focus on how we are planning to sustain human life. Food and clean water are necessary for our prosperity. But how long until our planet cannot sustain the population? One day our food supplies and resources will be drained and humans will have no way to provide food for their families. Modern farming can only provide so much before the land refuses to provide the amount our world’s population will need in the near future.
The first week of class we were asked what questions we had about climate change. Mine was, “How will climate change effect how or what we eat in the future?”. This led me to think about the recent blockbuster film by Christopher Nolan “Interstellar” starring Matthew McConaughey. The film is based around the main character who is a farmer in around the year 2070 (an exact date is never given). The conditions of this society is that of the dust bowl in the 1930s. Dust is killing all the crops every year as well as causing major health problems to those who live in the dusty areas. On top of this, a disease called blight is spreading and replacing the oxygen in the air with nitrogen. These factors are making it impossible for farmers to provide for their families, let alone a population of nearly 9 billion people.
The storyline of this film is that Coop (McConaughey) locates NASA after it has been shut down for almost 20 years. They were working on a way to leave Earth and find a new planet that humans can prosper on. NASA’s efforts were unsuccessful and the government shut them down in order to stop providing the population with false hope. After they locate a worm hole that has possibilities to reach 3 planets possible of holding human life, Coop is sent on one last mission in an effort to find humans a new home.
I am not here claiming that we will one day be able to go through a worm hole and find a new planet to prosper on. I am more focusing on the inevitable problems that Earth is going to face in the not so distant future if something doesn’t change. Someday our population will reach a breaking point and our planet will not be able to provide enough food. Famine and starvation will spread through the underdeveloped areas, while the developed countries will have wars over food, water, and other resources. Farmers today are more important than ever. They are more vital to the human race every year as our population increases and our planet perishes. Contine reading →
Last term, I was fortunate enough to take an environmental science class. Although the class was a part of the FIG I was in and had no interest in majoring in the field, the class provided a much needed dose of reality for me. While I was aware of most of the global crises occurring in our world today, the class covered almost every problem in just a few weeks. As you can imagine it was very overwhelming and for the first time I realized the serious danger humans were putting themselves in. Especially with global warming, people are very blind to what they don’t want to hear, but the facts are real and global warming doesn’t seem to be a concern to anyone.
I relate the class very much to the story “Diary of An Interesting Year”, by Helen Simpson. For most of the class, we focused a lot on only the facts of what was happening and did very little on thinking of possible solutions. The students even addressed this issue to the teacher because it was depressing everyone. My teacher responded with saying that yes we were focusing on only the problem, but felt that focusing more on the problem would give us a greater insight into the significance of finding the solutions later. Much like in the “Diary of an Interesting Year” the whole story is mostly pessimistic. There are unhygienic conditions, society has pretty much collapsed, and many people die in the story. However, in the end the narrator does eventually escape her boyfriend’s murderer and becomes free.
She also wraps her journal in six plastic bags even though she doesn’t think anyone will ever read it. I believe that that ending contained a glimmer of hope in it, not just from the narrator but for the readers as well. The narrator takes extra care into Contine reading →
This past week, we were assigned to read “The Siphoners” by David Mitchell, a short story found in the compilation “I’m With The Bears”. In this short story, which is set in the near future, the governments essentially runs out of resources with which to support the massive population of the planet. Mitchell depicts a vaguely anarchist society where the lack of personal comforts leads the way for people to forget their general manners, laws of possession, and respect for each other in favor of their newly activated survival instincts.
Being a Biochemistry major and having an immense interest in the sciences, I have approached the issue of climate change and global warming from an objective point of view, seeing both sides of the matter. While some of the issues may seem clear cut, there are a variety of issues that are not black and white. An example of one of these issues is presented in “The Siphoners” by David Mitchell, with the idea of a potential threat of overpopulation in the future.
In many of my Biology classes, especially those pertaining to evolution, the term carrying capacity has been used consistently. The Third Edition of Biological Science by Scott Freeman, the textbook used in my latest evolution based Biology class, discusses carrying capacity at length. This textbook defines carrying capacity as “the maximum population size of a certain species that a given habitat can support”. Below is an example of a carrying capacity graph taken from pixshark.com. The population of rabbits, which is the species used in this example, exponentially increases to a point. When the population hits the max that it can achieve with the given resources in their habitat, the population levels off and stays at a constant rate that the habitat can support. The idea of a carrying capacity is that every species has a population limit that a habitat can sustain, even humans.
With the population of the world already over 7 billion and with no signs of slowing down, the fear of overpopulation is an issue that is on the minds of many and should be addressed. Below is a graph from the United Nations website from 2010 which indicates that the population could more than double in the next 100 years. While the threat of overpopulation does not seem to be directly related to climate change, it is still impactful as it takes a toll on the environment and more people will undoubtedly contribute to the problem. Contine reading →
Most people in Palos Verdes, California, my hometown located in Southern California, do not believe in using the term global warming, instead they call it “climate change”. In their minds, changes on earth were brought about by an increase in temperature; however, they never really cared about learning more about the effects of “climate change”. So you can say that I grew up in an area that is not very environmentally friendly.
Luckily I have my dad who is extremely interested in global warming and wanting to save our earth. He made me watch the Al Gore movie, The Inconvenient Truth and explained to me what global warming is but at that age I still did not really understand it. After a couple years my dad went out and bought a Nissan Leaf which I was not too happy about. I thought it was the most unattractive car on the market and did not want to be seen it. To me it looked like a space ship and looked like it was from the future. My dad had to explain to me how this car is going to help our earth and to see pass the unattractiveness. After I started understanding global warming, I started seeing more electric cars everywhere.
I think many people do not buy electric cars because of the way they look which is true but they need to see the pros about the car. Some things you may not know about the leaf is it is 100% all electric, it provides an 84 miles of driving range on a single charge of its 24 kilowatt-hour battery pack, and you can lease it for $200 which is cheaper than putting gas in the car for the month. If the homeowner has solar panels installed in their home than charging the car is totally emission free. It also provides you with an on-the-go charger in case you run out of miles, you can plug it in anywhere. But charging stations are becoming more common in places like malls, grocery stores, drug stores, and even have front row parking. There is also an app where you can see on the go how much charge you have instead of going in your car to look. Other then the fact that the car looks like a space ship, the inside has a button that you move around to put the car in drive, reverse, and neutral.
Getting a Nissan Leaf will save the 100,000 ppm of carbon monoxide from driving a car for a minute. An article I read about electric cars says, “drivers should feel confident that owning an electric vehicle is a good choice for reducing global warming, pollution, cutting fuel costs, and slashing oil consumption”. Buying a Nissan Leaf is one big change to our earth and I read that Nissan Leaf outsold every other electric car manufacturer. In 2011 almost more than 40,000 Americans own a Nissan Leaf and 92,000 globally. Could you imagine what it would do to our environment if 50% of our population owned a Nissan Leaf or an electric car? It is not only saving you money on gas but it is also helping the environment. In conclusion, after owning a Nissan Leaf for three years we put $60,000 miles on the car and it still charged up to 70%.
While searching the internet to learn more about the Nissan Leaf, I came across a blog from a guy about his life owning a Nissan Leaf. I attached the link so you can all read about it
By definition global warming is the gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth’s atmosphere generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. What does all of that mean? Those that are unaware of global warming and the fact that it is a real thing, and it’s happening to the very planet that we all live on need to know that it’s important we start to pay attention. Because it is due to our lack of attention that this is happening in the first place. I think that the lack of knowledge and publicity about global warming can be attributed to a lack of understanding. So, to put it in simpler terms, air pollution is collecting in the earth’s atmosphere and thus trapping in the suns heat causing the entire planet to gradually warm up. How is it affecting us? This is a question that is difficult to answer and is a reason why there are so many people that don’t believe that global warming is real. Because there is no direct effect on our daily lives, apparently that constitutes non-belief, which in turn results in lack of action to work toward any kind of resolution. Because the effects of global warming are hard to predict, I feel as though that is all the more reason to care. As humans, we possess this fear of the unknown. We fear our futures because none of us know what it entails. But in most cases that is in reference to things like careers, relationships, and our individual person in general. But not knowing anything about global warming isn’t cause for concern? Apparently the fact that the world is essentially dying doesn’t strike as much fear in people as potentially having to work at McDonalds for the rest of their lives, or potentially ending up alone. Some very real and recent effects of global warming to name a few, are various droughts, wildfires, rising sea levels, animal extinction and in some cases human death due to heat stroke. What can we do to be proactive about global warming and what preventative steps can we take in our daily lives now before global warming actually affects us on a day-to-day basis? It’s simple! Conserve energy. Use florescent light bulbs, be conscious of how much water you’re using, walk more drive less, or, bike more drive less. If walking or biking isn’t a suitable option for you then look into hybrid vehicles and just smaller vehicles in general. Another great way to help is just to talk about global warming, raise awareness and create a sense of urgency, I can understand that we don’t want people in constant panic mode because that would result in chaos but it is something that we should be scared of and that warrants a fire to be lit under all of our feet because not enough people are doing anything about it when everybody should be.
Before taking this class I had very minimal knowledge and awareness on the subject of climate change/global warming. After doing a couple of the assigned readings and hearing discussions in class I have come to the realization, like many of my other classmates, that climate change is real, it’s happening now as I sit and write this post, and it’s effects are tragic resulting in immeasurable calamities. Water and food shortages, lack of social services, diseases, floods, and droughts are just a few calamities that come to mind. Before, when I would hear or read discourse on global warming and climate change I would blow it off my shoulder, thinking that other people in higher positions of power have it under control.
After reading more extensively and learning about the topic during the past couple of weeks, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I have gained a newfound passion towards preventing climate change and it’s extremely harmful and life threatening effects. In the short story Diary of an Interesting Year, the author Helen Simpson writes a fictional narrative that illustrates the destruction of planet Earth due to climate change.
The narrator conveys her story in first person using the format of a diary. Using a diary to share her story and phrasing her thoughts in sentences that are considered normal dialogue makes it more of a personal and intimate experience with the audience which I personally find to be more interesting as a reader. I find this style of writing to be relatable and helpful in trying to bring your perspectives and points to light. I also believe that conveying a story in this particular format is informative, especially a story with such a serious issue as its main backdrop. Throughout the story there are many parts which describe the drastic effects of climate change on human life such as; untreatable diseases due to lack of social services (102), unhealthy and polluted air (102), rationing food as a result of a permanent shortage (103), lack of water (103), and deaths (107). 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 →
I personally have never thought about the damages climate change could have until this class. This class talks about what the future holds for us here on earth. We have done some readings about how people are handing climate change. In a story called, The Weatherman by Holly Howitt, talks about a man who gets a job for the weather and gets to control the weather. He gets to make it rain, snow, and make storms. He and his wife Marly are a part of the green people society. That means they are not in harm of damages from climate change. Since the husband works for the weather their family is not in harm. Marly does not think that his job is fair because there are people suffering because of climate change. Marly said, They were filthy starving. Half dead. And here we are, us fat green people, getting everything we want and destroying everyone else”(Howitt, 136). This is a strong message because it shows what the other side is going through. If I was a news reporter and knew what was going on with other people I would try my best to help out in any way I could. It shows that food and water are scare during this period. The wife makes a point to be realistic and think about other people instead of just them.
I picked this picture from a website called, Global Warming: Causes and Consequences because it has as strong meaning it shows the two different sides. One side illustrates a pretty sky and the city is in good condition. The other side is showing what global warming is doing to our planet. It proves a message that one day our planet is going to look like this. The skies will not be blue anymore but instead coved with dust and smoke. This picture makes me worry because when this starts to happen I will be alive during it.
In another story we read in class called, The Siphoners by David Mitchell was a story about how when people turn sixty you have to take a sleeping potion. The sleeping potion kills you because the younger generation needs the food. A man named Hija does not let his grandma take the potion because he wants her to live. I do not think the age sixty is fair because that is still a young age. When Hija was talking to the emperor he said, “your majesty”. The emperor wondered who taught him that and he told him it was his grandmother. Then Haji explained that his grandmother lived past her sixtieth birthday. The emperor got very upset and the Haji said, “ I am afraid, but fear or no fear, how could I alter one world” (Mitchell, 140). This shows that even if Hija does have fear he still wants to change the world. The world is in danger but he still has hope about making a difference. Overall, global warming is a problem that we all need to be thinking about because it can affect all of us in some way. Contine reading →
It’s safe to say that we all have heard about Global Warming in some shape or form. Most commonly, we have heard of the escalating temperatures it has caused; however, there are many more side affects, such as rising food prices, sea levels, and species extinction. Global Warming has already affected our communities and will continue do so. At this point, we can only slow this problem that we created, so why not adjust according? It’s time for us to adapt to our new conditions by preserving the natural resources we have left, and making the transition to green communities/lifestyles.
We should start with addressing our personal lives. It can be as simple as limiting ourselves to ten minute showers, only doing large laundry loads, unplugging our electronics when we aren’t using them, or just turning our sink faucet on and off when washing dishes and brushing our teeth. We don’t need to cut ourselves off, but just learn to be aware of the amount of resources we are using and noticing when we are being wasteful.
I know it’s hard to believe that one person can make a global difference, but if 300 million people alter their lifestyles too, we will conserve a vast amount of natural resources! But, in order to tackle the health of our atmosphere, we must reduce the amount of toxic emissions that are released from our corporations and vehicles and transition to more energy efficient and environmental friendly techniques. Contine reading →
When I think about global warming, I relive the memories when I witnessed melting glaciers and rising water levels flooding villages; however, most people in America haven’t been able to see these effects first hand. Consequently, creating action to inhibit emissions and start helping the environment is hard because most people can’t connect the news headlines to personal experiences. This is where writers and short stories come into play. In the introduction to the collection of short stories titled I’m With The Bears, Bill Mckibben writes, “Of course, in the end, the job of writers is not to push us in some particular direction; it’s to illuminate. To bear witness” (4). By using the word “illuminate” Mckibben almost personifies the word into meaning that it gives life to a cause; that these writers are able to grab the soul of their audience and make them passionate about global warming simply based on fiction. This powerful writing is strewn throughout the book, but the story which burns brightest to me is Time Capsule Found On The Dead Planet by Margaret Atwood.
This short story by Margaret Atwood should be a required story for everyone in America to read and here’s why. I believe that this story puts mankind and humanity, as we know it today, in the perspective of an outsider. Also, it allows the reader to relate to the people in the story, allowing the reader to create emotion. First off, when describing the first age, Atwood describes our creation of Gods by saying, “We carved them out of wood; there was still such a thing as wood, then. We forged them from shining metals and painted them on temple walls” (191). By opening up the story and using words like “wood”, “shining metals”, and “temple walls” it immediately makes us think of ourselves. Not only is this an accurate account of what humans used to do, but it makes the reader feel as if they are looking in the mirror. This is essential in creating a personal experience because without this mirror-like effect, it is impossible to make the reader feel emotion if they can’t see themselves in the world described in the story.
During the second and third age, Atwood sets up modern society and humanity. In the second age, Atwood describes how money is created and, even though it is still very mysterious, it is thought to have had special powers. Then, in the third age, Atwood goes on to describe how, “It was all-powerful, and out of control. It began to talk…It created greed and hunger…towers of glass rose at its name, were destroyed and rose again” (192). By describing money as “all-powerful”, being able to “talk”, and how it created “greed and hunger”, Atwood alludes to money as a God. This allusion is essential to the “illumination” that writers are trying to accomplish. By making money appear as a God, it helps the reader reflect on society and its issues. In day-to-day life, most people think of money as a necessary component, not an issue, but when we are able to remove ourselves and look down upon society through this story, we can observe all its issues through a clear lens. Contine reading →
I have been in this class about climate change for about two weeks now. I have read multiple stories about climate change and what the future may hold for the human race. Most of them are bleak, miserable futures, with environments deteriorating in barren wastelands, and society along with it. I quote an example from the short story “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet”:
“In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it. Wars, plagues and famines visited us, but we did not stop in our industrious creation of deserts. At last all wells were poisoned, all rivers ran with filth, all seas were dead; there was no land left to grow food.”
This describes a possible future where the land becomes bone-dry deserts, and the seas becoming poisoned and rotten. And yet, despite all these morbid stories, I don’t feel afraid about the future. The human race is a resilient and adaptable species, and will more than likely live on after the worst of the “global wierding.”
Sure, if the ice caps are lost, then sea levels will rise. Coastal cities will be flooded. Florida will be a thing of the past. Temperatures will swing from sweltering hot summers to freezing winters. Some places of the world will become more productive for plant life, while others will become less productive. Some animal species will become extinct. Others will thrive in new environments.
I’ve been following climate change and its effects for years now through various news publications and documentaries. It seems that every year, scientists from around the world, release more and more evidence supporting the fact that ‘global weirding’ will not only happen, but is happening as we speak. After these reports trickle out, get passed around the Internet bloggersphere, and garner a few precious minutes on various network news segments, I watch eagerly in anticipation of some sort of social uprising or massive political and economic shift towards saving the planet. Yet, year after year, society sees the evidence, panics for a second, and then moves on as if forgetting about the research will somehow make it untrue. I always ask myself “Why does no one seem to care? This is THE most important issue in the entire world. If we don’t address it, there won’t even BE a world.”
I’ve asked a few of my close friends about this and I mostly get the same answer: “Dude, there’s nothing I (as in individuals) can do to really change things. It’s a lost cause.” That passive type of thinking is not only a massive cop-out, but also the reason why no one tries to change anything. If everyone thinks they won’t have an effect, then no one will actually try to change the way things are.
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 →
Global warming has always been a topic that I have felt passionately about. Ever since I was able to recognize that the environment was changing, and not for the better, I have felt strongly about the changing climate, as well as the reasons behind it. In recent years, I would say that I have stayed fairly “in the loop” with climate change topics, including the preventative measures on both the small and large scale. In addition to this, I have also followed some scientists predictions on what could and will happen if we as human beings stay on the same course we are on now with regards to CO2 emissions and air pollution. However, it wasn’t until viewing the Global Weirding is Here website that I truly understood the massive, global, and near future effects that climate change will have on the environment, animals, and even humans.
One of the most shocking initial facts that struck me upon viewing the Global Weirding is Here timeline was that climate change has already affected people across the world on a very large scale. Issues such as increased heavy rainfall in the United States and a rising sea level across the world have already been occurring right in-front of our eyes. Although those issues alone seem fairly large in scale, that is nothing compared to what will come if we don’t do anything. Based on the “Do Nothing” scenario where we as humans continue what we are currently doing we should expect to see rising water and surface temperatures, an increased risk of wildfires, severe drought across the world and mass extinctions of species; all in our lifetimes. The last part, “all in our lifetime” is something that is truly shocking and eye-opening. It is something that should be a wake-up call for all people, regardless of age, regardless of whether this will occur in your lifetime, your children’s lifetime, or even your grandchildren’s lifetime. This stuff is happening and it’s happening fast. It should be our responsibility as humans being to make a difference on this Earth that will benefit people for many years to come.
It’s shocking to think that something such as global warming, which is usually talked about in the future tense (“if we don’t do this, then this will happen”), is already occurring. Contine reading →
I am so fortunate to call the beautiful city of San Diego my home. However, during May 2014 San Diego, California faced an eruption of 20 wildfires. These wildfires burned almost 30,000 acres and cost the city over $60 million dollars. Many of these fires were due to the impact of the high changing climate.
A study conducted by the college UCSD states that by 2050 San Diego sea levels will be 12-18 inches higher, the climate will be hotter and drier, will face a severe water shortage, wildfires will be more frequent and intense, will not be able to meet energy needs, native plant and animal species will be lost forever, and public health will be at risk, especially among the elderly and children (http://meteora.ucsd.edu). What is scary to think about is that there are still 35 years until 2050 but a majority of these climate-changing results have already begun. This website also explains that about 70 miles of beach will be lost which will overall affect the economy since San Diego relies so heavily on beach towns as a major source of revenue. But not only is climate change affecting the city of San Diego, but also the world.
The book Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction by Mark Maslin discusses the current and future climate changing impacts that will affect the globe. The potential impacts the world could face include sea level rising, an increase of storms and floods, more heat waves and droughts, a growth in diseases, and loss of biodiversity and agriculture (Maslin 68). However, I think the biggest problem with climate change is that people hardly realize that it’s actually happening. Contine reading →
Up until this point in my life, when people have talked about “climate change” or “global warming”, I haven’t thought much of it. It’s always seemed like a distant problem, one I won’t have to deal with in my lifetime. It seems abstract, much like a Jackson Pollock painting. There are so many different things going on that all contribute to one greater outcome, but thinking about (or in the case of the painting, looking at) it for too long begins to give me a bit of a jumbled mind and a headache. I can’t tell where it ends and I can’t figure out where it begins. I can’t seem to grasp the entire concept long enough to understand it. That scares me.
Though it’s only been two weeks into this course, I’ve learned far more about climate change and global warming than I’ve learned in my last 20 years of life. And quite frankly, it terrifies me. It’s a force of nature that, regardless of what we do to try and stop it, cannot be stopped. It’s going to happen anyway. We as a human race can work together to take precautionary and preventative measures to prolong the inevitable, but that’s it. It’s inevitable. Whether what we do prolongs it for 10 years, 50 years, or 100 years, I can’t say. But the thought that I may experience the harsh effects of climate change in my lifetime is a real possibility. That scares me.
The stories we’ve read so far have described a desolate, ruined planet. A planet that has harsh climates and abandoned cities. A planet that can’t maintain a human race. A planet that is far from what we know our planet to be. That scares me.
There have been so many studies done about global warming and the ways in which we can contribute to prolonging it. Those facts and statistics are some of the few that I actually find comfort in. Yes, it will still happen, and yes, it’s still difficult to grasp the entire concept, but knowing that there is at least something I can do to contribute is somewhat reassuring. Having been born and raised in Oregon, I’ve had the privilege of growing up in an area full of trees, rivers, oceans, beaches, mountains, and just about every other type of natural beauty one could think of. I’ve recycled my entire life, and I learned what a carbon footprint was long before I actually understood what it meant. I’ve spent much of my life trying to give back to this planet all that it has given to me, and I will continue to do so. My actions may be small, microscopic even, in the attempts to save our planet, but could you imagine the impact we would all have if everyone tried a little more? If everyone recycled a bit more? Or walked or biked a few days more than they drove? Or bought more food from local areas rather than food that has been shipped in from around the globe? It would make an astounding difference. That gives me reassurance that, although global warming scares me, there is hope that we can make a difference. That doesn’t scare me.
Climate change is something that is happening right now in this day and age. Just by being in this class within the last week, I have learned so much more and have become more aware about climate change. The readings that were assigned for the first class, I really enjoyed. The stories “A Fable for Tomorrow” and the story by Margaret Atwood, “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” were both very similar but different at the same time.They both have similar messages that they are trying to convey that the human race is to blame for global warming. Although I inferred the same message from the two stories they were both diverse than one another. “A Fable for Tomorrow” was more of an imaginative story, that created a clear picture of the land that was eventually destroyed. In the story, “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” I though it was more of a dark interesting way of view on society. After we were assigned the blog post of Global Weirding, I really started to think that these stories are really implying that we are the reason global warming is happening. The way that the Global Weirding sight really scared me because it was so real and made me start thinking that if our society does not make a change then our planet will soon have so much damage no human can fix. That really scares me. These two stories really connected with me once I started looking really in depth to the blog. One part that I really connected to in Margaret Atwood’s story in age three, when it says, “money became a God. It was all powerful and out of control” (192). This quote really opened my eyes because it is true that our society cares a huge amount of their life to money. Throughout my life I just have noticed people that have only wanted to do what makes them the most money and not what is the right thing to do. I think this is such a big issue in our country that needs to be fixed, but I know that it probably won’t be. Our planet is so important to everyone that lives on it, and it seems like (at least to me) that no one really caring about the climate change that is happening to OUR planet that we live on. The other assignment we had to do was find out what was happening to our hometowns. I am from Orange County, Ca and when I looked up what was happening to Orange County it really scared me and hit home because this is where I grew up and where I have lived my whole life, and seeing the increase for wildfires is about to rise immensely, and that the sea level rises nearly everyday is a scary thought, because no one ever thinks this is going to happen to them. I personally was never really aware about what is going on in our planet until I started this class. Climate change is something that everyone needs to be aware of, and people need to start making it aware to everyone.
I want to first talk about in this blog entry what Bill McKibben was addressing in the introduction of Im With the Bears. He talked about why it is important to write about climate change. I found it very interesting how he brought up the idea that we need to write about climate change so that people feel more urgent about it. A lot of our people are still unaware about what is happening to our world and what we have to do with it. (To be honest I recently became aware about climate change and how much of an impact we could have on it.) So, by writing these fictional stories people can imagine what our world will be like eventually because of climate change. People are not taking it seriously now because climate change is not affecting them in the present. By reading these stories it brings climate change to reality. They can start to see the long term effects that climate change can have on our world. People can hear facts about climate change all day long but they will actually start to listen when you bring real life situations and emotions that they can understand.
While I agree that our world today is not taking climate change seriously and should be informed on what our future will look like if we do not change; so far with all of the stories we have read, they have all been very pessimistic and scary. I wonder if using these stories as scare tactics is the only way to get people to notice that climate change is important. To be honest, when I read stories like Diary of an Interesting Year by Helen Simpson and see movies like 2012, it makes me terrified of what our future holds. Although this fear is effective in making me think about climate change it gives me no hope and leads me to believe that our world will ends without our control and we will all end up being either miserable, sick, poor, or dead. It seems that we could approach this in a different way. By now we have already caused lasting effects on this world so what if we started to write stories that would uplift the audience and cause them to want to help the world. What if we wrote a story about the effects of climate change and our world getting through it and persevering. In my opinion, when you leave an audience stripped of their hope it does not motivate them to want to change their ways and stop climate change. Even if it does it gives them no place to go afterwards. We need to start writing things that can spark solution. Although I wonder if my thoughts our too naive. Maybe saying that we can inspire the audience through wanting to help our world just by the kindness and hopefulness in our heart will never happen. Do you think that scaring the audience will end up helping the fight against climate change? Or are there other ways to approach this such as providing a solution or giving hope to the audience?
This class brings up many arguments about climate change. Climate change is a serious subject that is often times pushed aside as something that is not a worry at the moment and that people will worry about it when it gets worse. This however is not the case. As we saw in the global weirding project and discussed in class, even if everyone was on board and acted the best they could to prevent further pollution and greenhouse gasses going into the environment, the results of global warming are not reversible by these actions. As we discussed, the greenhouse gasses that are already in the environment will continue to warm the atmosphere, damage has already been done. There are ways though to slow the amounts of the greenhouse gasses that are going into the environment, and we as humans need to do as much as we can. Last Sunday I read an article in the newspaper about the disregard for this need written by Alan Journet titled, “Jordan Cove Analysis Ignores Climate Change”. In this article he discussed a new pipeline that a group wants to build to carry natural gas.
The author of the article is clearly one who is concerned about global warming, but he explains other reasons as to why this pipeline is a bad idea to build other than the environment, showing that it should not be built. He explains that the pipelines that exist are not being used to full capacity, and that there is no new sources of natural gas being made so there is no need for a new pipeline. As far as the environment is concerned he argues that the pipeline would endanger the environment more than do any help for humans. He explains that natural gas is methane which is a greenhouse gas, so if there is any leak then a green house has is escaping straight to than environment. He uses this to argue that natural gas pipelines are much more dangerous than coal or oil because natural gas is already in the state of a greenhouse gas where coal and oil have to go through a chemical reaction first before they are a greenhouse gas.
I grew up being aware of what climate change was, but it was never a topic that my parents talked with me in depth about. Understanding what climate change is and how it is affecting our planet is actually quite scary. Everyday I feel like there is a new way in which climate change is affecting our world, slowly, but gradually at a constant rate.
While reading A Fable for Tomorrow and Time Capsule Found on a Dead Planet, I realized that there are many people in our world that understand how large and serious of an issue climate change is. A Fable for Tomorrow is a fictional short story about a town that does not exist and has a sequence of events occur, but most the events that happen in the story do exist today. Time Capsule Found on a Dead Planet is a fictional story as well that discusses the different things we have created over time on our planet and how those various things have affected our planet. Both of these stories are very powerful because they are both relatable to our everyday lives even though they are fictional.
After reading both of these short stories, I was shocked by how many of the events they referred to related to events that I have heard about worldwide. In Time Capsule Found on a Dead Planet the author explains, “Towers of glass rose are its name, were destroyed and rose again. It began to eat things. It ate whole forests, croplands, and the lives of children” (Atwood 192). This quote made me instantly think of industrialization because that has been one of the main causes for climate change. It is really scary topic to think about because if people would have realized it was an issue sooner, then there may have been a way that we could fix it and prevent it from happening any longer.
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.
My first thoughts on Global Warming in this class were climate change and how the world will cope. I didn’t quite understand how fiction could be created through this; however, through the texts that we have already begun to learn about I have noticed how broad the spectrum is and how texts can definitely help inform, prepare and warn society for what may come.
A proverb that I think personally a lot of people use in regards to Global Warming and what I was reminded of when first entering this class is “Ignorance is bliss”. I myself find it hard to be confronted with sites such as Global Weirding simply because I feel the issue is so colossal that it feels too large to handle. While I understand that there are motions in action to try and prevent Global Warming from happening I find it hard to personally feel as though I can make much of a difference. For a lot of people I honestly believe they would feel the same way and just pretend things aren’t happening because they feel so disconnected from the issue. I believe that writers have an obligation to educate the public on certain issues, in this case Global Warming. This is why I’m not quite sure if I overly enjoyed the short story A Diary of an Interesting Year by Helen Simpson. The idea itself I enjoyed however I personally did not agree with some of the craft elements Simpson uses throughout. The concept of a diary is interesting and I think it works in a lot of stories such as The Perks of Being A Wallflower By Stephan Chbosky and The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll however in this short story I really didn’t feel connected to the main character. I don’t know if this is because it’s a much shorter story or it was simply the style that it was written but I just couldn’t connect with her as much as I did with other characters from other stories in I’m With The Bears.
re so many different things going on that all contribute to one greater outcome, but thinking about (or in the case of the painting, looking at) it for too long begins to give me a bit of a jumbled mind and a headache. I can’t tell where it ends and I can’t figure out where it begins. I can’t seem to grasp the entire concept long enough to understand it. That scares me.