For my final project I decided to write a journal from the perspective of a girl named Hailey. The story is set in the year 2073 and Hailey, along with her family, is dealing with a rapidly rising sea level. The sea has already risen to the point where new enormous buildings had to be created to house all the people on the coastlines. The journals detail her day-to-day life and include many struggles and plot twists. I decided to create a journal because I enjoy this format and really liked the style of writing in Diary of an Interesting Year. Here is a journal entry from my final project: Contine reading
Water
Education is key
After taking this course I have a whole new perspective on how our planet is being polluted; I’ve learned extensive amounts about water pollution and how that, in the long run, is going to defunct a multitude of animal species and eventually destroy our planet’s ability to sustain life. I never thought someone else was as interested in this topic until I talked to a close friend of mine and found out that she grew up in an area that banned water pollution near recreational swimming zones. Of course that didn’t stop her city from dumping the pollutants into the water just further up the coast, but it was a step in the right direction. She spoke about how beautiful and pristine her beaches were; how, even during the rainy season, the water was still clear and fish still swam near the coast. Thats how beaches are supposed to look; however, the unfortunate truth of this story is that this is not a common reality for most coastal areas. Many beaches are polluted to the extent where they are closed off to the public because if someone swam in the contaminated water they could get extremely ill or even die. So why is this still legal? Why is it legal to pollute water to the extent that it may kill people if they swim in it? Why don’t we consider marine animals’ lives when creating these laws? My friend and I asked ourselves these questions and tried to come up with reasonable explanations as to why humans have created laws and norms that put human beings at the top of the pyramid of life. Contine reading
Friend Learns of Cli-Fi
As we have gone about this course we have discussed many aspects of climate change fiction, but what do others in society think. This weekend I called a friend of mine who is an English major to hear what she thinks of this newer genre of climate change fiction. She had only heard of the genre because I have told her about this course that I have been taking. She said that she had never put much thought into climate change and the effects that it would have on the lives of people. I explained to her a few of the stories that we have read in class such as “The Tamarisk Hunter.” We discussed how in this society the world basically became a desert and the need for water when someone does not have water rights. She found it very interesting that they would pay someone in water in order to kill plants that take up water. This was when she realized how important water is to society, to life, and how much we take for granted the water supplies we have. We then discussed what the Mark Maslin book, Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, says about adaptation to climate change as a ‘solution’. She said that she has always heard about the sea levels raise and that the weather is getting warmer, but not that we may have to change our lifestyles or move where we live in order to adjust to climate change. She suggested jokingly that someday we may just have to start hoarding water in preparation to the possible great droughts. This of course got a few laughs, but if we look at many of the themes of climate change fiction, if they were to come true, water becomes a rare resource and may need to be on hand once the climate change has created a new type of environment. This conversation really showed me how much people do not realize how climate change can change how we live our lives and the world around us. As someone who is extremely into looking into different aspects of literature she now plans on looking into more climate change fiction and seeing what other aspect of life authors of this genre have warned about the changing climate. It felt great to spread the information about how climate change can affect our lives. Even I did not understand until reading some examples of climate change fiction just how climate change can affect our lives. We can learn about the facts of how the climate is changing, of warming sea temperatures, but until it was put into perspective for me though climate change fiction, just as with my friend Melissa, it was not clear just how climate change can affect our lives. Climate change fiction has the ability to help us have a better understanding of the effects of climate change, and how it can affect our lives in a greater way than one may realize or understand.
Final Project Idea
So, right now, I have a pretty good idea for my final project for this class. I’m gonna propose my story idea by writing the first chapter of a possible cli-fi novel. Hopefully there isn’t too much of a limit to what I can write. I still need to do the close-reading analysis for the actual chapter. However, I could use some help with some details for the plot and how to weave certain elements of the story together. That is why I am asking for help from my fellow classmates.
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.