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.
I felt the same type of emotions as the chapter progressed. I was scared, as the entire future of the Earth is quite uncertain. I was angry too, because why the heck are we not doing anything differently if we know that how we are living is what is causing harm to the Earth? I also felt pretty negative as the chapter ended. Something along the lines of we've already ruined the Earth, we can't really fix it. The only thing that we can do is adapt to it, and that is going to be a hard process. I agree that maturity quote did give relay some type of positive attitude, that if we maturely deal with the situation at hand we can adapt to this new Eaarth. I have a hard time believing that adapting is going to happen with maturity though, especially with the outcome of both the Copenhagen conference and the most recent Global Climate Summit in Paris.
ReplyDeleteI think your reference to the comments about maturity is important. Lauren picks up on that, too.
ReplyDeleteI too shared your deep emotional reaction from this chapter. I find that I am feeling hopeless if anything towards the question "what can we do?". 2009 was a few years ago, and I wonder what an updated version of Eaarth would sound like. Just based on how terrifying that dated information sounds, it can't have gotten any better.
ReplyDeleteI think when you mention how shocking you found it to be that all of this change has happened so recently that it only goes to show even more so that humans are only progressing climate change.
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