Barbara Kingsolver 's Flight Behavior

There are always two sides to every story, sometimes even more. When discussing the phenomenon of the Santa Ana winds and their accompanying brush fires, Linda Thomas and Joan Didion each have their own side of the story. Throughout the texts, Didion and Thomas converge with one another by means of their life experiences as southern Californians and also through using sensory details to illustrate their stories. However, they do not share similar feelings towards the nature of the winds and fire. The authors diverge in this way as well as in their viewpoints on the conflict of people and nature.

In this book, Kolbert travels to many places to find out what is happening with global warming. Quite often she ran into the same fear at the places she went, the fear for loss before the next generation. When she went to Alaska, many people were fleeing from their homes because the sea ice surrounding them, creating a buffer zone for storms, was melting and that was causing houses to just be swept away.

This adds a deeper level of relatability to a topic that is typically seen as complicated and full of confusing data analysis too complicated for the average person. One of her few uses of logos is to push the point that most people can understand climate change without needing to understand the data. She recounts a time the Canadian government tried to deny the disappearing sea ice through data manipulation (reference). Through her use of pathos she urges people to support climate change without getting caught up in statistical details. Atwood uses metaphors less sparingly then Wallace to describe human’s foolish and idiotic attempts to deal with climate change, such as burying our heads in sand in order to filter what we hear. (reference Atwood). She goes on to compare two possible futures; an environmental utopia where humans are self-sufficient, and a horrible dystopia where humans are forced to eat their pet dogs (Atwood reference). This serves as a rhetorical question as no one would willingly wish to live in the apocalyptic society she describes. The dark themes of her essay are masked with the use of satire and comedy which serves to soften the heavy tone and make light of foolish humans

Navigation is as hard as it already is, and for many moving to new places is a hassle. Wherever they go, something also seems to get in the work and work against them. In the except, The Street, Ann Petry establishes the wind as a foe through the use of personification and imagery, to further intensify Lutie Johnson’s discomfort in the new setting.

(Kingsolver 422) This quote most effectively shows her fleeting sense of faith and expanding scientific worldviews. Dellarobia’s ideals were stripped away from her, leaving her struck with a cold sense of realization that both she and the butterflies are in a struggle for survival. Thus she was left bare, with no protection, much like the butterflies. “Down here in the open, without the camouflage of the forest, with their cover utterly blown...”

Whether it is political corruption or global warming, humans can find ways to work with what they got to mold their community in a way that will help the human race continue to exist; even if it means traveling to another planet because, “the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars” (Butler 84, Sower). Since climate change is a huge factor in the novels, where it is one of the main factors that contributed to the creation of a dystopian society in America, Lauren teaches others that they must be open to find a new place to live and grow because if they fail to find a new home, the consequences would be death and chaos. Global warming would just continue to increase, resulting in stronger

Climate change, once considered an issue for the distant future, has moved firmly into the present, and is beginning to affect Hispanic populations in the United States. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, climate change causes a net rise in global temperatures that inflames health-harming air pollution, adds to extreme weather events and heat waves, changes the spread of certain vector-borne diseases, and more. Many of these health impacts are already being felt across the United States, mostly aiming at the Hispanic population because of the statistic that they’re more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods, and because of the type of jobs the parents have, Latinos are three times more likely to die at work from heat-related illness, according to Yale Climate Connections. Many elements in the BIG GEMS acronym play a role in why the Hispanic population is more likely die from

When deciding on a topic for my speculative fiction, I was drawn to the story Homing Instinct and the idea of living in world that has been destroyed by human actions. I decided to create a world after the effects of climate change with a focus on class divisions. There are two goals of this speculative fiction. One to show the negative effects that ignoring the effects of climate change could have on the planet, other organisms living on the planet, our lives and future generations. Even though there is a large amount of evidence supporting climate change, it is put on the back burner of many conversations since it is not seen as the biggest issue in society today, but it could lead to a devastating world.

The Western existence of modernization, especially technological and industrial development, economic growth, material prosperity, urbanization, and democracy, has been built upon a long line of industrial capitalism, an economic system predicated on the accelerating extraction and consumption of fossil fuels for energy (Clark & York, 2005). A major unintended consequence of the use of fossil fuels is an increase in the average temperature of the earth; known as global warming or climate change. Recognizing and responding to climate change, arguably the most challenging social problem of the modern era (Giddens, 2009), thus poses a fundamental critique of continued modernization processes around the world (Freudenburg, 2003). Climate change is a major issue that affects all life across the

The essay “The Climate emergency” is based on a speech made by Al Gore at Yale University in April 2004 to a room full of students. Al Gore is the former Vice President of the United States under President Bill Clinton. He is also an environmental rights activist. In the beginning of the speech the former vice president shares a story about his trip to a Shoneys Restaurant with his wife Tipper to draw the audience in. (300-301). Once he captures their attention he is able to focus them on his real message.

While we are immersing ourselves in the world which props up carbon-intensive lifestyle, our climate catastrophes are escalating, leaving a massive mess to our numerous future generations. Under our existing economic, social and political structure, it appears to be desperate in mitigating the climate problem. However, This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein, might have offered the most appropriate antidote to climate change. Klein is a Canadian social activist and in 2014, her above-mentioned book was a New York Times non-fiction bestseller and the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. This book discusses how neoliberalism and capitalism have led to climate change. In the book, Part One and Part Two are titled as “Bad Timing” and “Magical Thinking” as our climate problem is intensifying with the prevalence of capitalism, yet, people have erroneous inclination on the Messiahs to solve the disaster for us. TTTTTTTTT

The essay opens up with McKibben talking about how the political campaign against global warming is flawed because at our current point there is nothing much that can be done to fix it.(Mckibben,1) He then goes to state that humans are the biggest culprit behind global warming and supports this by giving examples such as SUVs and American ignorance.(2,9) He concludes by saying that if ten percent of America were to go green, it still would not save the planet, but ten percent could get the government’s attention to pass laws making everyone go green. (11)

In Egypt, the same word for bread is life. Food security and clean water are indispensable to survival, and how do societies react when exogenous variables prohibit access to the basic staples of life? Manfred Steger speaks briefly on globalization and environmental degradation and fails to draw real conclusions about the impact of climate change on social, political, and economic stability. In Steger’s A Brief Introduction to Globalization, he contends that, “how people view their natural environment depends to a great extent on their cultural milieu… [And] the US-dominated culture industry seeks to convince its global audience that the meaning and chief value of life can be found in the limitless accumulation of material possessions” (2003, p. 86). He later contends that a “revision” of our current extractivist-oriented cultural regime must occur as a response to our pleading planet, as if only culture were to blame (2003, p. 92). This paper underlines the connectedness of climate change and social unrest and uses case studies from the Arab Spring to color the arching narrative that the awakening was catalyzed and intensified by climate change.

American political activist Jody Williams once said “There’s a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted like Mother Teresa or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.” In an excerpt from his essay “Why Bother?” published in the New York Times Magazine, American public intellectual Michael Pollan reveals his goal to convince ordinary American citizens that they are capable of changing their behavior in order to reduce America’s carbon footprint. Through the use of the four rhetorical elements situation, purpose, claim, and audience, Pollan aspires to have his readers gain a greater understanding that the environmental crisis is “at heart a crisis of character” (Pollan 766). However, although Pollan targets the correct audience to carry out his purpose, he fails to provide proper evidence to support his claim that individual contribution matters.

Over the past few decades, a major concern is the threat climate change possess for today’s economy. Millions of people are affected each and every day by climate change but this is just the beginning of the worst. One thing that seems to go unharmed by climate change is social status; how long will money last as a barrier to the effects of Mother Nature? How does poverty increase the risks associated the devastating powers of climate change? When speaking in terms of poverty many different categories arise. Poverty in America is different than poverty in Asia or Africa. Every country has faced poverty. It is inevitable; some countries however, face a disproportionately high percentage of poverty.