Kate Powell
Professor Hines and Professor Gilbert
Environmental Thought in Antiquity
Moodle Forum Post 3:
The Great Derangement
I found this article to be fascinating. I think one of the most effective parts of it was the way the scope was set up. By adding personal anecdotes and first-person experiences such as the flooding of the river and the tornado he drove right under he is able to use this to drive home a greater point and observation about trends he sees in our current culture and our relationship to climate change. Furthermore, he often adopts a slightly pessimistic tone when drawing parallels between literature and climate change. At one point he explains his search for meaning with his near-death experience and the tornado, this leaves the reader to question the meaning of climate change as a whole. What can we draw from this besides the fact that “we as human beings are intrinsically unable to prepare for rare events” and what does this mean for our future as global warming increases their occurrence?
One of his points I found very pressing is the claim that there is an unproportional response and urgency in cultural reactions to climate change. While he focuses on literary works and the lack of serious fiction there are gaps in other regions as well. One which reinforces this trend of carelessness is the lack of media coverage of climate change and ecological events. The news and the press act as harbingers of public opinion and are supposed to be duty bound in informing the public what they need to be educated about. This issue annually receives limited coverage and in turn assists in culturing a lackadaisical public opinion.