Response: Eaarth - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of McKibben's Eaarth deals with the economy and our nature to expand, expand, expand, which (weirdly?) brought to my head images of the Capitol from The Hunger Games. In the Capitol, everything is rich and lush for the creme de la creme of Panem's citizens -- gaudy and over-the-top. The people stop at nothing for their fashion and spend crazy amounts of money on body modifications and ridiculous costumes that take crazy amounts of resources from the other Districts to produce. Attached is an image of two elaborate gold outfits from the Capitol; while obviously beautiful, one can only imagine at what expense they were made. At the start of the series, Capitol citizens give little if any attention to the thought of the resources they take for granted and the hard work that goes into harvesting them, or the environmental toll their thoughtless spending may make. I know it's a bit of a stretch metaphorically, but Collins, the author of The Hunger Games, was trying to make an allegorical America essentially, and I think she may have struck a chord with America's current unwillingness to reduce expenditures as a conscious means to adapt to our new planet and hopefully slow its deadly change. You can read more on the link between THG and climate change here. But for now, I digress.

More relevantly, McKibben talks about one very specific thing I want to tackle in this post (and it's something we talked a bit about in class and I've already discussed a bit): "A warmer planet," he quotes Scott Canon, "could find itself more often at war." As I stated before, I did a bit of political research and was pleased to find that my preferred candidate, Bernie Sanders, believes wholly that our nation must be accountable for fixing the already-existing problem of our globe's changing climate. During October 2015's Democratic Debate, Sanders was the only debater who said climate change was this nation's biggest threat. While I originally stood by him for his social views, I have to admit that, as a member of the communities of our class and of our changing (and changed) planet, I am impressed equally with his thoughts on climate change.

Another quick last thing I want to address: I find it interesting that McKibben says that "we" have already screwed up this planet -- because I was apparently never alive on 'Earth,' but only 'Eaarth.' While I'm more than positive I have contributed to climate change (I can't lie and say I've never used aerosol hairspray or that I've never driven in an SUV), it seems to me that climate change is not my generation's fault. However, picking up the mess is going to have to be our responsibility.

Hopefully, we're willing to take it on.

Response: Eaarth Preface & Chapter 1

I guess the best way for a person who strived to be in-tune with his emotions all the time (read: me) to respond to this chapter would be how they felt. And Lord, they (read: I) felt a lot.

I actually could feel myself having visceral reactions to a lot of the statistics and facts McKibben pointed out in the opening chapter of Eaarth. I'm not sure if 'anger' is the word I would use to label it, but I was certainly pretty disgusted to find a lot of things out for the first time. Yes, I knew that global warming/climate change is a current and harmful process already, but I'm shocked to find out just how quickly it's happening - and has been happening - not to mention that it's an exponentially growing process in the first place.

One thing that really alarmed me is that "freak storms" can truly no longer be called "freak," as they occur more and more often. At right is just one graph I found illustrating just that (its source is Weather Bell Models, a site that seems interesting in relation to this class's content). It's pretty clear that, while it is inconsistent, there is a strong relationship between progression of years and number of tropical storms in North America, and this positive correlation brings me nothing but negative feelings and a sense of urgency.

To expand a bit on my feelings on the exponential nature of this rapid change, I am utterly shocked by how recent many of the events talked about in this chapter are -- and how the quantity of these occurrences appears to get larger and larger as the timeframe gets closer. McKibben cites numerous examples from 2008 and 2009. As the book is from 2009 in the first place, he's gotten about as recent as he could have. It's very strange to me to see these years tossed around in a book alongside what looks like history, as I remember those years fairly vividly. It's hard to imagine how many related events must have happened in the six years that have passed since Eaarth's publication -- the disastrous Copenhagen conference occurred at the tail end of 2009. Just think how much has happened since that failure for a moment. Related: research quickly lead me to this article, which talks about leakage of information that practically lead to a climate change deniers' daydream, though of course all of the information (at least, according to the article's author) appears to have been presented without context. Thoughts?

Ultimately, this reading left me in a bit of a negative place, but one quote from the preface really stuck out to me quite positively: "Maturity," (here referring specifically to the maturity to see these upsetting facts and accept them for what they are), "is not the opposite of hope; it's what makes hope possible." I hope that through this semester, our eyes are open to any more truths we may not currently be aware of as far as climate change goes and that we continue to use this maturity and acceptance to bring about action that will lead to an eventual cease of further damage.

Also (slightly unrelated): I apologize - I just saw on the syllabus where it says blog posts should be posted by 10:00 PM the night before. It's a very busy week for me, but that's on me.

Introductory Post

Hello! I'm Aaron, and I know very little about climate change and our relationship with it, but I'm excited to learn more about it with you all.

As I said in class today, I'm a junior musical theatre performer, hoping to add a minor in marketing. I'm slotted to graduate sometime in 2017 -- whether it will be in Spring or Fall, I couldn't tell you yet. I'm actually hoping that it'll be in the Fall; I want to study marketing abroad in the Netherlands at the Hogeschool Utrecht next Spring semester. A lot of my favorite art hails from the Netherlands (if anyone has read Tartt's The Goldfinch, the painting it is about is by Carel Fabritius of Delft and is housed at the Hauge - I've attached an image of it at right); it's one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly countries in the world; and I just love the language, which is like if German and English had a very alcoholic
baby.

My initial interest in this class, I won't lie, lay simply in that I need to get my credits in to graduate with honors. I was really unsure what the class would focus on initially, but now that we've had the first day to get ourselves more or less familiarized with its content, I'm very excited. I currently work in the campus bookstore, so I was able to pick up a copy of Eaarth up last week and start diving into it a bit, and it's proven a good read thus far... I'm only about three pages in, but nevertheless.

I'm excited to get to know all of you and work with you this semester. It's gonna be a very busy one for me: I have 17 credits, work, and my show (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which performs the last three weekends of February and rehearses 3.5 hours nightly Sunday through Friday), in addition to some semblance of a social life and several planned excursions out of state for auditions and the like -- one this weekend even -- but I am feeling really encouraged by the challenging times I have ahead. Let's go, Broncos!