Earth in Peril 2017-18

This is a tumblr account for an honors class.

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Why are women the only ones allowed to see into the future:(

Originally I did not believe that Oryx and Crake was a novel that could be related to our talks about ecology. I felt that the novel was mistakenly praised for making people uncomfortable because it talked about subjects such as child pornography; I believed that it was just a twisted science fiction book. After bringing in Klein’s piece, and a few class discussions I realized how wrong I was. Oryx and Crake may be classified as science fiction, but our world is on the verge of proving that the fiction part is wrong. Margret Atwood has amazed me with her ability to predict where our social constructs will lead us in the face of environmental destruction. Oryx and Crake has so many parallels with the real world. In the book, the pleeblands are for the poor and “words” people, and the compounds are for the numbers and rich. This is how our world really is; the rich live in nice, gated communities so that they may avoid those that they deem as dirty, or diseased. These parallels extend beyond our social standings, and reach far into our economy as well. When the book talks of Crake’s father, who worked for a company that Crake “hypothesized” (I say this in quotes because I’m sure it was more of a statement of fact) produced diseases, Atwood’s commentary on our current anthropocentric world is obvious. Crake’s idea is that a health company eventually needs more sick people, or diseases that make people sick, so that they do not become obsolete; the company then repeats a cycle of curing a disease, creating a new one, and then curing the created disease for a profit. This is how our world operates; our world is destroyed by those who wish to monetarily gain from that destruction, and the poor are left to live in the destruction in the most high risk areas. The people that create the destruction and high risk environments also are the people that create “solutions” to those problems. People that suffer from massive natural disasters are then bought out so that the companies may start the cycle over again. Atwood also provides commentary on how modifying animals will come back to haunt us. Atwood does this by using the pigoon in two situations: the first is when Jimmy’s dad is modifying it for human organ farming, and the second is when Snowman (Jimmy) faces the pigoon as a predator. Jimmy’s father essentially created the animal that would come to one of his son’s two predators, and shows how our society lacks foresight when it comes to decisions such as genetically modifying organisms. While these are just two examples, Atwood provides commentary throughout her novel, and when paired with Klein’s piece the two writings become a crystal ball that lets you see into the future.

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#SorryNotSorry Right Wing

In The Right is Right, author Naomi Klein talks about how the Conservative party is actually right on a few matters concerning climate change. While they are wrong about the movement being about communism, they are correct in their fears that the green movement will inherently disagree with most of the “ideological battles” that they have been fighting (Klein). In other words, and excuse me for breaking my academic prose here, the right wing group is being a bunch of babies (resuming academic prose). This type of battle is representative of almost every industry in America, and is even represented in Oryx and Crake. In Oryx and Crake, Crake talks about a healthcare company that is fighting to eliminate disease; at the same time however, they are most likely creating disease so that they may stay in business (Atwood). We see this in our own medical systems, although not to such an extreme. Our insurance companies are not concerned with keeping us healthy, they are concerned with making money. The companies make more money when we are sick than if we are healthy. However, in places like Japan there are monetary incentives for doctors to keep you healthy, and you can even write off doctor visits on taxes if you stay healthy. The right wing, in this case, sides on the side of the insurance companies. They would rather see the world plummet into apocalypse than make one dime less than they do. This is exactly what Oryx and Crake is about: companies that value nature only for profit and eventually lead it into apocalypse. And the worst part is, is that it boils down to simple stubbornness. As Klein says, the right can not challenge and lessen the value of others lives, so instead of being open to change they simply dig their heels in and start fighting against the change itself. The novel may be fiction, but it is quickly becoming fact.

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Spontaneously  Dynamic

Kingsolver’s novel is one of self-discovery. Characters we thought were very much one sided turn into beautifully developed and dynamic characters. Women have often been denied agency, in comparison to men specifically, in all types of media. I play quite a lot of video games and very rarely is there a female protagonist, unless you are able to choose your character’s gender (I would argue that being able to choose very much nullifies the significance of a female protagonist), but I digress. In Prodigal Summer we see the women finding agency through other ways than supporting a man, as is the common theme for most women in the county. In Lusa’s case she begins in a city, disconnected from nature except for her bug studies. She feels as though her parents aren’t sure of how to deal with her, and it creates a picture that she never had the closest family. As the novel progresses, Lusa begins to find her agency through the land, a connection she thanks Cole for leading her to, and in taking care of her sister-in-law’s kids. It is the last place she expects to find herself, but she finds she shares more in common with the land than first imagined. Next we have Deanna, who is almost a backwards case of Lusa. Deanna starts out the novel with a very secure sense of who she is and what she is doing. This becomes disrupted when a man enters the picture and she begins to question what she is doing. She finds agency in the predators, specifically in the coyotes. Once the coyotes have started a family and look to be rebuilding, Deanna begins finding her agency in her pregnancy; and while she will always have her alternative relationship with the earth, she heads back down into civilization to begin a family (much like the coyotes). Finally, we have Garnett. His relationship with the earth is much like his relationship to people, in that he really only cares for the lives that further his own agenda. He would spray pesticide without a thought, just as he would cast out his own family members, namely his son, to help protect his reputation. He is seen struggling constantly with the idea that people would think less of him due to his overgrown yard. Garnett’s views don’t seem to progress much, but we do see him at least allowing himself to hear Nannie Rawley’s ideas.

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How media’s representation of climate change affects today

Porto Rico was devastated by a tropical storm, right after Texas and Florida were also hit. There seems to have been a jump in tropical storms in our lifetimes (me being 20). Yet when media talks about the connection of human activity to these storms, it seems to be exaggerating the uncertainty. In the article How Grammatical Choice Shapes Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty by Adriana Bailey, Lorine Giangola, and Maxwell T. Boykoff, it is found that “US prestige press would emphasize uncertainty…by using a greater number of epistemic markers.” Simply put, the US uses phrases that lead to the read believing that the uncertainty in studies or scientific findings is greater that what it actually is. I would contend that this type of representation will cause us to become desensitized to scientific findings, and eventually leading people to treat it like murder; that is to say that we see so much of it that murder is almost no longer sad or a tragedy unless it directly affects you. I believe it also affects how we feel like disasters like the above mentioned storms. I know I personally was extremely worried about the first storm in Houston, Texas, and almost missed the fact that two others had happened as well. It is articles such as the New York Times’ article, Scientists Study Links between Climate Change and Extreme Weather, that accentuate uncertainty in findings. In the article author John Schwartz claims that “Climate change is often discussed in terms of predictions about what may happen in the next 100 years or more as average global temperatures rise.” Schwartz uses terms like “may” and also implies that the implications of climate change are hundreds, if not more, of years away. These phrases help to imply the idea that there is not sound evidence that supports the predictions of climate change impacting us within the next decade (or that we are already experiencing these impacts). This is just one example that is in this article, and is representative of so many other media outlets’ language about climate change. Personally, the article has completely changed the way I will read news about any science in the future, and has put me on guard for how exaggerated uncertainty is portrayed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/climate-change-extreme-weather-global-warming.html

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Egotistical, but only when it suits.

Prodigal summer is a novel that takes nature and turns it into more than just a setting. We see dualisms in almost every instance, but mostly in relationship to other species. We see how the females of the coyotes or moths are the gender that is surviving most often without the other gender. The female moth in Deanna’s room, as well as the coyotes she sees. Deanna herself is represented in this way, as is Nannie. Both are women who survive without a man, and even have troubles when they come into play. Although, in humans there is the issue of egos; Lusa’s reaction to Herb and Rickie’s father not planting tobacco for her is one of scorn for the size of their egos. She questions whether she is to “apologize for [her] rash attempt at self-rule and beg them on bended knee to come set [her] tobacco” (Kingsolver, pg 147). In the same way we see egos at stake in our own environment. President Trump’s ego has led to the shrinking of national parks, so that we may use the land for our needs (as if the companies that will be buying them don’t have enough land already). We also see this in Merchant’s theory. Merchant brings in many quotes from outside sources and the quote from Henry More is a statement about the egos of men, even hundreds of years ago; More states that “that the earth first brought all manner of animals…yet we see she has grown sterile and barren, and her births of animals are now very inconsiderable.” In this we see that man can only be responsible for the good in nature, not the bad. While mother earth was the original producer of all the great animals we have enjoyed, now that they have started to disappear can only be because the woman, that earth is, is barren. We see this also in Deanna’s situation with Eddie, in that he must always have her figured out. It frustrates Deanna and is representative of the egos of all the men in the book.

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I never remember my password

Prodigal Summer takes a viewpoint on the environment that I did not think existed in today’s world. When Dr. Battista mentioned that nature was a part of the book, I couldn’t comprehend how encompassing that statement was of the role of the environment in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel. Each character has such a different, yet alike, way of interacting with nature. The introduction of the character Deanna was filled with her connections to nature that are so far from how majority of people are today. She leans down to smell animal pee, and can identify the species of animal based off the scent (page 3). I would generalize that most people, including myself, would smell animal pee from a distance and not only avoid trying to smell it, but voice complaints about the fact that even though we are in animals natural homes, we are “forced” to be smelling urine. Deanna seems to have the profound understanding of living in an ecosystem. I fully expected her to be hunting the animal she was tracking, but in fact goes on to criticize farmers for attacking coyotes sooner than learning to pronounce the animal names (page 28). She even talks about anthropocentrism (although she does not use the same terminology) when she talks about how if you “give man the run of a place…he will clear it of wolves and bears,” (page 28). I think this, and passages surrounding it, are the parts that stuck out the most to me so far. I had the thought that, of course she is connected to nature, she lives in a place where she has nothing but nature. Then we begin to meet the other characters and see how this does not hold to be true. We encounter a women, Lusa, who is widowed and is from a city, and feels totally alone in nature, despite having a love for moths. We also meet Garnett who, although lives off the land as a farmer, is content with having the parts of nature he doesn’t like (the weeds) destroyed by weeds that could affect his neighbors orchard. Garnett only has concern for his livelihood, and is living anthropocentrically when the nature in question is not strictly for his benefit. He even talks about how he could “cut through all this with a weed-eater or a mowing scythe,” but promptly uses his age as an excuse not to (page 86). I came into the novel surprised at how big a part nature plays, and am finding myself equally surprised after the first one hundred pages at how the character’s, although in slightly different locations, can interact so differently to the nature on the mountain that they all live on.

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People suck

Gibbs mentions a few things in her writing that sparked memories for me. Not exactly environmental ones, but ones of someone being forced into a school district they did not want to be in. Gibb’s piece brings up how regardless of the environment, our social and economic status come first. The entire basis of her problem starts on a foundation of economics. The school was built above this graveyard of chemicals because it was cheap. She is not able to get out of the situation, because she can’t afford it. Even the scientist at the environmental meeting declare that the school is safe, while also saying that they should not be on the playground. If that doesn’t scream that the scientist are on the payroll I don’t know what does. Even if the officials aren’t ignoring it because of the money they make off the school, they are ignoring it because it would cost them too much to close and relocate. This is just the start of Gibb’s problems. Then she runs into people’s egos; her neighbor is so unable comprehend the idea of someone besides her being the solution to the problem. Even with all this, she begins getting signatures for her petition. She begins telling people about the environmental problems that require change, and while she gets the signatures, she gets them from people that are all anthropocentric. The people are not worried about the environment, they are worried about what the environment is doing to them. One man even is worried about his steps sinking into the ground and away from his house. Even Gibb’s herself is coming from a human centered view. She only began to care about the chemicals after she realized that they were in contact with her own children; while she does admit this in the beginning, it is not justification. On a side note, this class has introduced me to a whole other way to be upset about people.

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White and Abbey and Today

There are quite a few similarities between White’s and Abbey’s points. White talks about how Christianity is largely anthropocentric, and shows examples of some of the man centered language. White and Abbey both mention progress as the main enemy of ecocentrisim, although not in those exact words. I believe that both White and Abbey are both talking about the same point. White brings up progress in the form of the plow, and when we finally find a way to provide for each other on more than a per family basis we begin to supersede nature. Abbey uses his experience in the national park, about how for some reason accessibility for people must also mean accessible for their machines. In both causes the problem is the same: progress pulls us out of nature, and tells us that we are above it. Abbey talks about now instead of being a place “where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out…like a suburban village,” (pg 419).  So instead of a few people coming out to experience nature, masses of people come out to sit in their campers and trailers; and this is synonymous to White talking about how “distribution of land was based…on the capacity of a power machine to till the earth,” (pg 406). In this case, people are no longer worried about how much land they should have based on their need, but based off of how much they can farm. I think both of these issues are still seen today. With the Trump administration lowering protections on national parks, presumably to let businesses find more “accessible” ways to make a profit, or simply because we have the machine power to do so. I think that White’s point is also present in the mass deforestation we see. We are continually cutting down massive forests simply because we want to. There is no scarcity of lumber products, yet because we can we will.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should” - Dr. Ian Malcom (Jurassic Park)

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Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism, I believe, is linking literature with ideas about our environment, in an ecocentric way. It is looking at the sun setting during a particular chapter of a book and wondering how it plays into the overall theme, instead of just wondering about the symbolism in something a character said. Glotfelty talks about wanting to help two groups, the people who write about the above scenes and the scientists that study the environment, come together. I think this would be enormously helpful to our cause of saving the earth. I think it would open many people’s eyes, as it did mine, to the ideas of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly well versed in writing in anything other than logical research writing. I’ve also never thought of myself as someone who cared at all about the environment, beyond the obvious destruction. And while I am certainly not an environmental scientist, I believe that it could do the same for them as it did for me, that is, to give me a new window to look at this problem through. While I do consider myself someone who bases quite a few beliefs off of science, the literary works we have looked have shown me how to evaluate different writings at more than face value. I think that no matter how well versed an environmental scientist is in the environmental crisis we are in today, that it would be beneficial to be able to step back, and find a way to look at results, or opinions through a different window.

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Thoreau has a condescending view on man’s relationship with nature. He states on page eight, “no doubt all creatures that live on its surface are but parasites.” He also talks at length about how when the two lumberjacks cut down the great, old tree, that they do it with no thought to how long it took for all these natural things to reach perfection, or how many animals they may displace with such little work. He also mentions that when he goes down to measure the tree, there is no one mourning, and the lumberjack has already measured the tree for the timber it will be cut for without thoughts of sadness. While we see that he has almost a sadness for the disregard of the tree, we then see him cutting down many trees for his own house. Thoreau’s justification for this seems to be that they are young trees, and he is doing it to build a house, not just for production of timber. Thoreau goes on to tell us the cost of his house and afterwards states that, “these are all materials excepting the timber stones and sand which I claimed by squatters right,” (page fifteen). So it seems although that Thoreau told us earlier how sad it is that these trees are being cut down, he then exclaims that he claimed a few materials by the right that he simply wanted to live there. This anthropocentric way of living is still largely prevalent today, and is what we talked about in Wednesday’s class.  Thoreau also talks of living deliberately, in which he contends that the structure of college, and labor division, does not allow one to live a life, so much as hear lectures and learn about what life has to offer. He gives the specific examples of two boys, one mining ore and crafting a knife, and the other learning about how it is done and being given one. I believe that this is still present today. The idea that college is unneeded and that one can venture into the world and gain the same knowledge is an idea that I personally have seen gaining steam more with my peers than ever before. This, as well as the disregard for the ecosystems we destroy every day, are still very prevalent problems in today’s society. We are seeing mass deforestation like never before, and are producing plastic with little thought of the environments.

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Staying Green While Moving Forward

http://mentalfloss.com/article/518666/dutch-designers-want-turn-algae-greener-consumer-products

This article tells about how a dutch company is going green in the 3D printing world. They are using dried algae to make a material that could replace plastic, and is suitable for use for household items like bowls and cups. At first glance, one would think that they are having negative impacts on the environment by tearing up already dying out algae, but they have been working on cultivating this material as well. They grow it, dry it out, and process it, and finally are able to feed it into a 3D printer. The company claims that “dishware, trashcans, and shampoo bottles could be made this way.” I for one have been excited about 3D printing for a while, as it could help in so many different fields. Last year I found information about how they could get a specialized printer to print living human cells, and be able to mass produce organs. But I digress, this company is taking the idea of 3D printing to the next level. They don’t want to factory produce to save money, they want to put printers into stores so that a consumer may walk in and “bake” (as they say) their own item right before them. The only problem is that even a simple design could take hours to produce, so maybe we need more technology advancements, or we could set up an ordering service to have it ready before you got there. Either way, the innovations are not only eco-friendly, but very exciting.

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Thoreau has a condescending view on man’s relationship with nature. He states on page eight, “no doubt all creatures that live on its surface are but parasites.” He also talks at length about how when the two lumberjacks cut down the great, old tree, that they do it with no thought to how long it took for all these natural things to reach perfection, or how many animals they may displace with such little work. He also mentions that when he goes down to measure the tree, there is no one mourning, and the lumberjack has already measured the tree for the timber it will be cut for without thoughts of sadness. While we see that he has almost a sadness for the disregard of the tree, we then see him cutting down many trees for his own house. Thoreau’s justification for this seems to be that they are young trees, and he is doing it to build a house, not just for production of timber. Thoreau goes on to tell us the cost of his house and afterwards states that, “these are all materials excepting the timber stones and sand which I claimed by squatters right,” (page fifteen). So it seems although that Thoreau told us earlier how sad it is that these trees are being cut down, he then exclaims that he claimed a few materials by the right that he simply wanted to live there. This anthropocentric way of living is still largely prevalent today, and is what we talked about in Wednesday’s class.  Thoreau also talks of living deliberately, in which he contends that the structure of college, and labor division, does not allow one to live a life, so much as hear lectures and learn about what life has to offer. He gives the specific examples of two boys, one mining ore and crafting a knife, and the other learning about how it is done and being given one. I believe that this is still present today. The idea that college is unneeded and that one can venture into the world and gain the same knowledge is an idea that I personally have seen gaining steam more with my peers than ever before. This, as well as the disregard for the ecosystems we destroy every day, are still very prevalent problems in today's society. We are seeing mass deforestation like never before, and are producing plastic with little thought of the environments.