Global Weirding is Here

I never really grasped the total effects of climate change. I knew it was happening, and I knew that it wasn’t good, but I never really thought of it as something that would directly affect me. In fact, I didn’t realize that the more sever effects would take place in my lifetime. While examining Global Weirding (http://globalweirding.is/here), I began to have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I was surprised to observe that Climate Change was already beginning to have significant effects on the world right now, and even back in 2013-14. We have had the three warmest decades in a row in recorded history, which shocked me in a way, as there is quite a bit of recorded history.

Another aspect of climate change that I wasn’t aware of was that there could be intense flooding as a result of more precipitation from the evaporation of water. In fact, in North America, there could me more extreme weather events like storms or flooding due to this phenomenon. I think the some of the reasons the website might be called Global Weirding is due to the more strange and obscure events that many of us didn’t expect, like the increased spread of aquatic pathogens or that power plants could have problems with excess jellyfish due to increased reproduction because of higher acidity of the oceans due to carbon absorption.

Contine reading

An Emotional Impact

I think one of the main issues with climate change is that people do not acknowledge it or recognize it as a problem. I think this could be a result of the way people are informed about global warming. As I was able to see, a lot of the information that is presented about climate change is fact and is presented as fact. Our climate change introduction book and the global weirding website are an example of this. While these were both very helpful in finding out information and learning more about the effects of global warming, if I was not taking a class about climate change or if I did not have interest in the topic, I probably would not have been very interested in the factual evidence that both of these sources present. I think this is a problem that a lot of people have when they are told about global warming, they do not connect with the information.

On the other hand, the stories not only tell of what could happen but they introduce a whole new way to learn about climate change, through emotion. As I read the stories from I’m With the Bears, I could not help but begin to be more concerned about the issue of climate change. While the facts have always worried me just like they do most people, I was able to see the problem in a completely new light. Although these stories are just scenarios that could happen, they showed the effects that climate change could have on people and that was what made me truly worry. Reading the Diary of an Interesting Year took the issue to a whole new level. This woman seemed to have lost all hope. She just accepted every bad thing that happened to her without question or emotion. The fact that climate change could bring people to that point is a thought that had never crossed my mind before. This story not only showed what could happen but also allowed the reader to connect emotionally which is something that is hard to do with this topic in some cases. Most people realize the effects that climate change will have on the environment but do not necessarily recognize how much it will affect them on every level. This story was able to get both points across.

Contine reading

The Water is Going, Going… Gone?

The short story that we read, The Tamarisk Hunter, gave the possibility of the future with global warming effects. It describes a land controlled by the government, where water is the scarce liquid gold that everyone needed to survive. In the story, Lolo, the main character, is making a living, in some respects, by saving the water.

The water is fought over and through that, two economic classes are formed in California: those with a surplus of water and those who have to work very hard to get water to live. The ones with the water control everything. The author, Paolo Bacigalupi, writes, “The problem was that 4.4 million acre-feet of water was supposed to go down the river to California. There was water; they just couldn’t touch it,” (Bacigalupi 174). The people who own the water are the upper class of people and that left everyone else to toil in the heat. It seemed as though this theme felt like one from 1984 by George Orwell. It agrees with the idea in that book that a large part of the population has an idea that they are being mistreated, but they have no true idea how badly they have it. In both stories, the lower class has no way of moving up to the higher class either. It gives a sense of jealousy, as well as a need to understand more. Lolo is unable to figure out how to get more water without stealing and he thought it would be his end.

Contine reading

Hello class!

Welcome to our course blog!  I’m Stephen Siperstein, the instructor of this course, and I am excited that we will be using a blog as a way to explore the topic of climate change fiction and to communicate with each other. One purpose of the blog is to widen our discussion beyond the classroom.  The realities of climate change confront us daily, and a blog will provide a forum for bringing the questions we discuss in class to bear on a wide range of media, texts, and other conversations that we all encounter outside of class.  We’ll also use the blog to seed our discussions in class, and to open new directions of inquiry that are not necessarily on the syllabus.

Here are a few examples of blogs from other environmental literature courses.  Before you write your first post, I would suggest taking a look at some of the posts on these sites to get an idea of the many possibilities for different kinds of blog posts (a blog post is its own kind of literary genre):

http://blogs.uoregon.edu/environmentalliterature230/ 

http://aml24101614.wordpress.com/

http://eng670.wordpress.com/

If you ever need help with technical questions relating to the blog, email me (siperste@uoregon.edu), or contact the Information Services Help Desk at 541-346-HELP or helpdesk@uoregon.edu.

Welcome to the course and looking forward to a great term.