The cli-fi novel got no further. The fictional Greta, born in 2036 and displaced from Illinois because of climate chaos in the story, has been replaced by a real-life climate heroine named Greta from Stockholm. More about that later.
I worked on climate issues for the last five years by supporting others and doing things myself. The way I supported others was first and foremost Our Children’s Trust and the local 350.org.
The things I did myself were install solar panels, got rid of the natural gas furnace, used less water, did not fly, mostly divested from all fossil fuel funds, changed diet, supported and cajoled politicians at all levels of government to be involved in climate issues, and tried to educate friends and family to the threat of climate catastrophe. I continued to educate myself on climate issues through many means. Of course I could do more, but for this five-year period I was trying to see if I could do something to walk the talk.
Past blogs explained why I saw the judiciary was a way to break the log jam of climate inaction in the U.S. That does not mean I was not involved in advocating through other pillars of government, but I was betting on the judiciary to have a major effect on the needed change.
To that end probably stories and pictures of my young she/heroes is probably the best summary of the last five years.
They are the future. I support them.
Here is the first time I saw them all together, March 2016, Federal Courthouse Eugene. I have made many trips back to the Courthouse since then as the case is winding its way to victory.
I have accumulated some knowledge of these young people and the people who nurture them, including their parents, lawyers, and the entire staff at Our Children’s Trust.
The youngest plaintiff lives on a barrier island off of Florida. In the short time I have known him he has been evacuated once for a hurricane and sat a second one out at home. His schooling has been disrupted by these events and his fear has increased. He made me this t-shirt. It is way cool.
I have watched the next youngest plaintiff go from a little girl to a young person who raises chickens and loves horses and the outdoors. She spoke eloquently at age 10 at the Courthouse and has only gotten better over the ensuing years. She lives in Eugene.
Two lads living south of me are involved with farming, in one case a very long time in their families’ history. They have seen their farms go from a climate they knew to one which is drier and with more smoke. Again, I have seen both of these now young men come into their own as speakers and tellers of their story and the impact climate has on their lives and their future.
Five other plaintiffs live or have lived in Eugene, my town. The lead plaintiff, Kelsey, has been at this since she was either 14 or 15. Prior to the Federal Lawsuit I supported her with the suit filed in the State of Oregon. She is committed, authentic, and she takes good pictures with Scholar Duck. This one taken in my back yard.
I have watched Kiran, another Eugene youth plaintiff, do an exchange program in Sweden, where I once had a Fulbright and we kept in contact during his experience. He writes well…very, very well. His passion comes through in writing and his actions with community organizations. He, too, takes good pictures with Scholar Duck, seen here with Jacob, a farmer to the south, and Tia from Bend, Oregon.
And Native American youth plaintiffs have touched my life through this lawsuit, and I have learned much from each of them. One is now a well known hip hop artist, another a great budding artist working in many medium, and the last in private exchanges called me auntie, I found in his culture that means a respect to an elder. In reality, he was the one teaching me.
Plaintiffs from different parts of the country also taught me much.
Jayden, in the time I have known her, has been flooded out of her home twice in Louisiana and she does not live in a flood plain. Nathan, from Alaska, is seeing his state change as a result of climate events before his very young, now 19-year-old eyes; and Vic knows his home state of New York and how it was affected after Hurricane Sandy and now schooling in Wisconsin sees how climate change is changing farm life there. Miko was born in the Marshall Islands and now has a megaphone to describe how climate change is poised to change the life of her relatives there forever as the seas rise in her native born country.
One plaintiff is the granddaughter of climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, but now she speaks and writes for her generation which will live under the projections made by her grandfather a long time ago when we should have listened harder and done more.
These are not all the stories I have witnessed with these young people, nor have I touched on the staff spearheading this effort or their parents. Their reward is how far the case has gone when few thought it would go much of anywhere. They were wrong.
Thus, I will keep watching and supporting them.
And Greta Thunberg will come to the U.S. in September via a sailing boat, forgoing airplanes. I shall be watching and supporting.
The fictional Greta I imagined would expect no less of me on both of these fronts. It is the least I can do.
My birthday was quickly approaching. I decided the best gift I could give myself is another contribution to Our Children’s Trust, the organization fighting the legal battles for the rights of our next generations to have the air we have, not the air that is predicted if we keep pumping CO2 and methane into the air. I learned of the Flood Wall Street event which was to take place the day after the Peoples’ Climate March, flooding Wall Street in blue and protesting what I was not quite sure. It was billed to be more radical and disruptive than the Peoples’ Climate March which was getting support from the likes of Al Gore and Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the U.N. With support like that, it hardly made the March look radical, but certainly important.
On September 17, 2014, Eugene broke the record of number of days over 90 degrees and the forecast was for more warm. And I was warm in many ways, not the least of which was climate and the importance of doing something.
On September 18, I gave Scholar Duck to two young friends, both 21. They posted Grant Woods style with him and the Ripley pitchfork from our farm in Illinois. Later that day I went to the Democratic Fund Raiser with my 350 t-shirt and Environmental Duck (Scholar Duck’s first cousin, ED) in tow asking to meet any legislator interested in carbon price and tax. I forgot my checkbook so perhaps my interest was not noted, although two people did know what the t-shirt stood for, and that was a start.
On September 19 I learned Swedish friend, Jan, was to be in NYC at the same time as the Peoples’ Climate March, but there for an unrelated reason. I was informing him of everything that was to take place in NYC while he was there.
On that same day Bill Moyers had Kelsey Juliana, who is from Eugene, on his TV program which I watched every week. The description was, “Kelsey Juliana was 15 when she, and 11-year-old Olivia Chernaik, filed a lawsuit against the governor of their state of Oregon, claiming that the state government had “violated their duties” to protect the water, land and atmosphere. The first judge said his court didn’t have jurisdiction to resolve the issue, but the Oregon Court of Appeals found merit in the case and told the lower court to try again.” One could not help but be proud as punch when you watched the show, at least that’s how I felt.
The NYC-bound young friends posted a picture of Scholar Duck driving to the airport and then boarding. I was their media team, and wrote in my diary. This. Is. Fun. September 20th started by posting a picture of Scholar Duck flying through the NYC skyline with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground. Classic, made by my tech guru. I picked up a cake I had ordered in the image of a 350 button, and did not have a clue how I was going to use it. But I knew I wanted it on hand for the coming days.
On September 21 I started watching the Peoples’ Climate March live at 7:30 streaming via Democracy Now with 3 hours of coverage. My two young friends were sending me pictures and I was reposting on facebook and friends were noting our presence. I went to the Eugene complimentary event, it was a hot day so I listened to some speeches but did not march.
Next stop was Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of This Changes Everything by Klein, which it had the build up of being ‘the’ book for this movement. Back to the latter part of the Eugene event at Cosmic Pizza and by then the national media was reporting 310,000 people were in NYC. Final counts later made that 400,000; or as my young friends liked to point out to me, 400,001 with Scholar Duck!
In NYC Peoples’ Climate March 2014
My daily efforts of posting to the local 350 Eugene group were receiving some good head nods. I was glad I was finding avenues to share what I was learning. September 23 was the UN Climate Summit which was not much of a viewing event, but I did some and perhaps more importantly for me, I started reading This Changes Everything.
My 70th birthday was mainly spent responding to people who were doing nice things for me and it was a fine day. I longed for the decade plus that Jack and I went to Crater Lake, alone, no wifi, no phones, and I started each new year at a place and with the person I most wanted to be with for day. Perfect.
Now I had reached an age neither my mother, father, or brother achieved, what to do with this gift of time. Right now my answer was pretty clear, keep doing what I have been doing this last year. It was important, I deemed.
By September 27 my two young friends and Scholar Duck were back from NYC. I took the 350 cake down for us to share, Jonathan turning 22 the day before I turned 70. Even though the cake was a week old it was fine, just fine. When people asked me how was it to turn 70, I said, “liberating.” And it was, mainly because I felt I had an extra gift of time and had a purpose that seemed important, at least to me.
Scholar Duck post parade back in Eugene
The following days I continued reading This Changes Everything and YouTube climate videos, several recorded during the events of Climate Week in NYC.
The month changed into a new one and I was still reading This Changes Everything. Normally I can get through a book quickly, but not this one. Lots of information to digest. I also watched several videos of the author as she was going around the country on a book tour. She made sense.
Looking forward I did not expect I would suddenly get more energy. I was clearly on top of climate literature as it came out, reading at least 5-10 articles a day. They ranged from the climate aspect to economic to political. I was a climate nerd who did not have an audience. It seemed to me that This Changes Everything could change the debate. I was pleased it was rising in the NYT best sellers list so shortly after its release.
I sensed we were in a time like the early 60’s. Many movements. Different issues. Then in the mid 60’s the movements began to converge. I saw the same thing might happen again. Labor issues; wage issues; indigenous people issues; climate issues; gun issues; how campaigns are funded….I foresaw a time we would work on all these issues at the same time, all starting with grass roots efforts who begin to realize they will get what they want when others do as well. Dreaming? I did not know, but I know it’s possible. The pinnacle is, of course, the climate. If we don’t get that one right, the rest doesn’t make much difference.
My YouTube viewing ranged from former energy secretary Steven Chu to Winona LaDuke “an American Indian activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development.” I was more and more clear indigenous people have been working on these issues for a long time and had been good stewards of the land even longer. By this time my YouTube recommended list was nearing 200 entries and I had watched at least four times this many to get to a ‘two thumbs up’ list.
On October 10 the Pacific Islanders reached Australia and were ready to stop coal exports. Through all the ‘likes’ I had on facebook I was on top of almost every movement, which included: chain ourselves to equipment, stop them coming down the river, tie ourselves to the railroad tracks and other efforts to stop fossil fuels. Many, many things were happening but little was getting reported in the main stream media. But again I felt a true movement was emerging.
I began to focus on the main efforts I wanted to make for the fall and they were to understand the carbon pricing issue and specifically how that can be brought to Oregon. I watched on YouTube what Massachusetts was trying to do and hoped someone here was trying to do the same thing. I begin to plan my own strategy for engagement on the issue.
On October 15, 2014, my homeowner’s association passed guidelines for solar panel installation. It had taken a few months to get to this point. The next day I began looking for a solar panel installer.
Five months later I had 16 solar panels.
In trying to get back to Greta’s story set in 2064 I thought of a different way to engage readers, perhaps a series of blog posts. I was contemplating a different approach and here’s how I wrote it to my great niece.
“I’m thinking of combining my story of going from ‘Farm Girl to Climate Elder: Full Circle’ with the fictional story of Greta. I wanted to leave the farm and now I see they had the sustainable life and it’s taken me full circle to get there. How much blame I’ll give my generation, I don’t know, but however we get to seeing the light, there is a story there. And what I can tell you, I’ve gotten very few to see the light as I see it in the last year, which just goes to show that your grandmother is right when she says, don’t take yourself too seriously, no one else does. BUT I’m trying. It could be a series of essays rather than a book.”
Time passed, the hot August was turning into the hot September. It appeared we were on track to have a record-breaking hot summer and hardly any rain, the latter being normal. It was dry here, as was drought-plagued California, and then horrific flash flooding in Arizona and moving East. Birds were dwindling because of climate change. BBC reported, “In less than 50 years, some states such as New Mexico, Utah and Arizona, have lost almost half their bird populations.” And CO2 was rising at the fastest rate since 1984.
Happy September.
I muddled on with my efforts. Writing on the cli-fi novel stopped, even though it was the third anniversary of starting Theresa Ripley, Publisher. On September 1, 2014, the 7 ebooks had 33,000 downloads. My head was in a different direction now.
Action was the intent, in addition to keeping on top of information the best I could. On August 25 and 26 a good friend whom I have known for a long time was making a visit. She lives in the Midwest and we’d not seen each other for several years but in touch regularly. We are in synch on many things. She read Eaarth by McKibben before her arrival.
I knew if I had her for 24 hours, she’d leave even more involved on climate issues than when she arrived. I was correct. She took five 350 buttons with her to broaden our effort. She is savvy, intelligent, political, and engaging, a good addition to the team of foot soldiers that, if I was not building, at least I was trying a person-to-person approach in my effort.
Later in the week my good friend Mike, who is also my tech guru, webmaster, and did all the covers for the ebooks, is also a professional photographer. We discussed how his pictures and a climate effort might be put together. He juxtaposed a picture of my stuffed duck on Mendenhall Lake at the foot of Mendenhall Glacier in the Juneau Ice Field, with the words “Keep It Cool” on it.
It was way cool.
Mendenhall Glacier Near Juneau, Alaska
As August turned into September I knew the People’s Climate March was coming closer, and I was closer to turning 70. I felt just fine about the latter and interested to get others involved in some way with the former. I used every opportunity to discuss and engage at my disposal, knowing I influence very, very few people.
I was reading and viewing information of why people don’t ‘think’ about climate change. A newly released book Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired To Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall gave some reasons why people are ignoring this. I heard him give an hour lecture the first week in September.
The review from Booklist stated, “In 42 engaging, bite-size chapters, Marshall presents the psychological research demonstrating why climate change simply doesn’t feel dangerous enough to justify action and how we can trick our brains into changing our sense of urgency about the problem. His work is a much needed kick in the pants for policymakers, grassroots environmentalists, and the public to induce us to develop effective motivational tools to help us take action to face the reality of climate change before it’s too late.”
Some listened, though, and a friend of 40 years was one of them. He came to know what I knew, which is not everything, but enough to make one aware you need to know more and do more. We both marveled how far off the ball we had dropped over the last couple of decades on this climate mark. After watching a documentary I sent him, he said, “Hopefully, DISRUPTION will lead to many, many more. As I can, I’m going to raise questions with some of my preferred candidates for fall to see where they stand on climate change. A drop in several buckets will not create change, but it signals my change.”
Statements like that from people I respected kept me going. My two 21-year-old friends were on board to take my stuffed duck with them to the People’s Climate March in NYC. I still was not getting much response to my efforts on facebook so I posted the picture of the duck on the glacier again and tagged my friends with children mostly under the age of five and said the duck wanted to be thinking of them while he was in NYC if that was all right with them. That got a response and I made a list of the children and tucked it under the beanie of the duck.
Hit them where they are, with their young children and their future. Good.
September 8 brought a huge upset in a legal case in Massachusetts. The DA dropped the case against protestors blocking a coal port, citing that global warming needed to be addressed and the political leaders were not doing it and ALSO he would join them in two weeks for the People’s Climate March in NYC. Woot!
Was the tide turning?
I began using every excuse I could to pass out 350 buttons. My house cleaner came and when she noted my landing, all primed for the March in NYC, she asked, “what is this?” Ten minutes later she was holding a 350 pin and said she was scared for her children. Good, we all need to be. The same day my BMW had it’s yearly exam and the woman who takes it to the shop has a four-year-old. Yup, she left with a 350 pin and a new awareness and Scholar Duck had two more young people on his list to think about in NYC.
My mission, if I was really on a mission, was to use a part of each day to engage at least one person to think and do more about this. Some days were more successful than others. I went to the people I knew best and tried to use the tactic I thought would engage them. It was a test of how well I knew my friends/family.
My tactics were getting more direct. I asked a relative, 30, to get her generation to watch the documentary DISRUPTION. She made an effort on facebook which was a total fail. I expected that, but she tried, and this after over 50 friends had commented the day prior on her great new hair cut. Hair cut is one thing, a planet in peril is another. The important thing, though, is she put herself out there. I ‘pushed’ a 350 pin on another friend who read parts of earlier versions of what I was doing and said, “It is very, very moving, and really made me feel like a lightweight….” We have to move from lightweight to getting others involved.
Talk. To. Each. Other.
On September 12 I received the Emmy award-winning nonfiction series Years Of Living Dangerously originally shown on Showtime. I had preordered, natch, and now there it was–all 9 parts. I watched 3 episodes via YouTube when it aired in April, but now I was ready to binge watch the entire series. Some people binge watch Breaking Bad, this was my binge watch.
Was I ever going to get back to the cli-fi novel and Greta’s life in 2064?
I did not think approaching my 70th birthday I would be able to keep up my end of a conversation discussing the relative merits of geo-engineering techniques to counteract climate change, i.e. solar radiation management versus carbon capture and storage or removal and various sub techniques under each category. Those will all be needed, of course, if we are not successful at mitigation. Or I could equally engage in debate over carbon tax versus fee and dividend versus cap and trade. What alternative universe was this.
Right now it was my universe.
I wondered how many other people I could make it their universe. Never underestimate the power of an older woman with a stuffed duck who was becoming more active. How close is more active to becoming an activist?
My story narrative came to an abrupt halt as I learned more about the Alberta Tar Sands; the Canadian government; the Keystone pipelines and other pipelines in process in North America; and what the First Nation people in Canada had been doing for years trying to stop the production and movement of so-called dirty oil. And dirty it was. I read the 1000-page tome of Daniel Yergin entitled The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power as soon as it came out in 1990. This hardly prepared me for understanding the Alberta Tar Sands in 2014. This was an entirely different animal with different consequences.
For Greta’s story line I needed to make a decision of just where the world’s temperature would be by 2064. Would it 2, 4, or 6 degrees higher Celsius by the time of this story. I was getting much clearer on the consequences for Greta for each alternative. The June 2014 data from the National Climatic Data Center was, “The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for June 2014 was the highest on record for the month, at 0.72°C (1.30°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F).”
In the back, actually the front of my mind, was the nagging thought of what was I doing to make it a 2-degree Celsius story, which is destined to happen by the gases already in existence in the atmosphere, rather than 4 or 6 that might happen. I decided a little more action on my part was necessary rather than writing. The research, though, was key to understanding. YouTube and Google and I became even better friends. I learned what Dr. James Hansen had been doing since 1988 and his more recent efforts to ‘do something’ to avert the crisis, switching from doing science only to trying to influence policy. I watched many more videos from experts. I was to the point I could do the lectures, at least some of them.
What could one person with a stuffed duck do?
I started to engage, some would say push, friends. I got two interested in the stories and videos of the sinking Pacific islands of Kirabati. One said the President of Kirabati was her hero. Understandable. I personally thought an Arctic elder was remarkable. Her name is Shelia Watt-Cloutier and every one of her videos was inspiring. I awaited her 2015 book on The Right To Be Cold. The pre-publication blurb said this.
“The Right to Be Cold is a human story of resilience, commitment, and survival told from the unique vantage point of an Inuk woman who, in spite of many obstacles, rose from humble beginnings in the Arctic community of Kuujjuaq, Quebec—where she was raised by a single parent and grandmother and travelled by dog team in a traditional, ice-based Inuit hunting culture—to become one of the most influential and decorated environmental, cultural, and human rights advocates in the world.
“The Right to Be Cold explores the parallels between safeguarding the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture—and ultimately the world—in the face of past, present, and future environmental degradation. Sheila Watt-Cloutier passionately argues that climate change is a human rights issue and one to which all of us on the planet are inextricably linked. The Right to Be Cold is the culmination of Watt-Cloutier’s regional, national, and international work over the last twenty-five years, weaving historical traumas and current issues such as climate change, leadership, and sustainability in the Arctic into her personal story to give a coherent and holistic voice to an important subject.”
I encouraged another friend to read Bill McKibben’s book, Eaarth, and she was so impressed she was going to buy copies and give it to friends. Good. Another friend asked if I thought I had to save the world, to which I replied, “no, don’t take yourself too seriously, no one else does.” I did think, though, that one or two people, if I caught them at the right time and did not go overboard like an evangelist, would give a listen for a minute, the elevator talk, if you will, which hopefully would inspire more from them.
The Alberta Tar Sands, though, is where the metal hit the road. After writing about the Pacific Islands and the Arctic I conceded in my mind many islands would go under and the Arctic ice cap would melt and there would be major fighting for resource rights in the Arctic by several nations by 2064.
By researching the Alberta Tar Sands I began to understand perfectly that here is where we have to do something if we are serious about this. Climate scientist Dr. James Hansen said it this way in a 2012 New York Times op-ed piece.
“If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
“Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.”
My research of James Hansen turned me back to research I had completed on the Climate Recovery Ordinance in our very own town of Eugene passed in late July 2014. The Ordinance, championed by Our Children’s Trust, was based on Hansen’s scientific assessment of what had to be done to get back to 350 ppm CO2. I didn’t even understand that when it was passed. Where was I?
I was just a woman with a stuffed duck and a 350.org t-shirt sitting in the audience. Now I knew more.
Suddenly all my circles were coming together: 350.org; Our Children’s Trust; James Hansen; reading hundreds of articles; watching dozens of YouTube videos. I was to the point I could say with some confidence, I tried hard and I understand some of it. But then I looked at the hours and hours I had spent to get there and realized my friends, bright though they be, did not have the time to do the same thing.
It appeared neither did Congress. Science is science; politics is politics.
I became more confident of using the judiciary as the way forward. Forget Congress, even though I want to see passed the following: Yes to Carbon Tax; Yes to Incentives to Renewables; No to Keystone; and No to subsidies to Fossil Fuels. Will it happen, I don’t know. Congress is beholding to fossil fuel companies. My faith in Congress being able to do anything is slim. Other nations were doing better than we were. More renewables. More regulations. They had more agreement that climate change was real, and we were still dealing with that one on the table; that is, convincing people it was real and caused by us.
Back to the judiciary for the U.S., I thought.
To that end I learned more about Our Children’s Trust and how I could support their efforts which are legal in nature. As one of their instructive videos pointed out…there will some judge, a decider of law, some place who will rule for youthful plaintiffs having the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate. The judiciary will define the action that the other two branches of Government are not doing.
I could see myself more involved in these legal efforts than chaining myself to a pipeline so it would not be built in Nebraska or elsewhere, although I admired tremendously the people who are doing just that. Or the First Nation people in Canada taking Healing Walks to intervene in tar sand production. Or…I could go on and on, movements were building. Was it just that I was looking in that direction, or was it really occurring because that was where my attention was focusing? Was I being too hopeful we really could come to grips with this before tipping points?
I made arrangements for my stuffed duck to participate in the People’s Climate March in NYC on September 21, 2014. Could this March be a game changer, poised right before the UN Climate Summit on September 23? The goal of the summit was described as follows:
“The Secretary-General is hosting the Climate Summit to engage leaders and advance climate action and ambition. The Summit will serve as a public platform for leaders at the highest level – all UN Member States, as well as finance, business, civil society and local leaders from public and private sectors – to catalyze ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience and mobilize political will for an ambitious global agreement by 2015 that limits the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature.”
I knew the Summit was important, it had to go well for future efforts to go well. Both the President of the U.S. and China had committed to be there on September 23, 2014. If this was effective, then the conference in Lima in December 1-12, 2014, would go better which was the build up to the important conference in Paris 2015 or the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) as it was more officially called which would be November 30-December 11, 2015.
This was the road we had to follow to approach a 2-degree Celsius world for Greta.
The People’s Climate March on September 21, 2014, in NYC was coming closer, those who were passionate about this issue were doing a lot. I tried to find methods to engage those who were not so interested to become involved and feel an investment in something that is vital for their future. I was reminded in my effort of a quote from one of the cli-fi novels I read which seemed to fit most situations.
The protagonist in the novel is a climate change scientist and this quote from the book.
“She approved of his mission and loyally read climate-change stories in the press. But she told him once that to take the matter seriously would be to think about it all the time. Everything else shrank before it. And so, like everyone she knew, she could not take it seriously, not entirely. Daily life would not permit it. He sometimes quoted this observation in talks.”
I did not think about climate change all the time; but I did take it seriously and felt since I did understand it, I had some responsibility to do something while I still could. It was finding the effective actions, that was the key for me. I knew there was no one answer to effective actions. Until then I would keep muddling on the best I could.
Really, who could get upset with an older woman with a stuffed duck. And if they did, what would they do anyway, other than ignore, which, on this issue, they might be doing anyway. Thus, I could not lose by doing more.
No doubt about it, I was being changed by writing about Greta, a person who may never exist. I had written about ancestors before, and was changed by that experience, but now I was being changed by a prospective descendant. Researching for every piece left me more informed, some would say wrongly, but I was informed. I was probably better versed than many, and got more concerned about the future Greta would inhabit.
But what could one person do?
Very little, I knew that. If you talk too much you are tuned out, if not immediately, at least soon enough by those who are patient or kind enough to listen for a while. I redoubled efforts. Watched more videos, read hundreds of articles, liked more pages on Facebook, and followed more scientists and journalists. On one level that made me feel like I was doing something, but I knew it did not make much of a difference. Paraphrasing one environmental leader, Bill McKibben, it’s time to do more than change light bulbs.
Thus, I kept on. If not changing light bulbs, at least changing myself by trying to know more. In July 2014 the city where I live, Eugene, Oregon, passed a Climate Recovery Ordinance, the first in the nation to do so with such specific requirements. I was there with Scholar Duck at many of the city council meetings and hearings. Here is how Our Children’s Trust made the announcement on July 29, 2014.
“Last night, with a vote of 6-2, the Eugene City Council adopted a powerful Climate Recovery Ordinance that was promoted by the city’s young people, and backed by a scientific prescription for climate recovery. The Ordinance is the first in the country to require carbon neutrality, fossil fuel use reductions, and the development of a carbon budget based on the best available science.
“At a public hearing on July 21, over 100 community members showed up to testify or stand in support of Eugene adopting the Climate Recovery Ordinance. Eugene’s faith community, scientists, lawyers, business owners, children, parents, and students all spoke in favor of the Ordinance.”
Here is SD at one of many city council meetings attended in 2014 with the city’s mayor.
Thus, on one level things were going better, the local community was responding. This was more than changing light bulbs, but how could more light bulbs be changed elsewhere?
As I was researching the Inuit people I had a dream about them one night. Then the next day I watched a video on methane and the Arctic and wondered, Holy S#%t, can this really happen. Ironically, the very next day I saw this report from Motherboard on August 1, 2014, one of my many climate-related likes I followed on Facebook.
“This week, scientists made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean: They saw ‘vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor,’ as the Stockholm University put it in a release disclosing the observations. The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat more powerfully than carbon dioxide, the chief driver of climate change—was unsettling to the scientists.”
But it was even more unnerving to Dr. Jason Box, a widely published climatologist, who had been following the expedition. As I was digging into the new development, I stumbled upon his tweet, which, coming from a scientist, was downright chilling: “If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we’re f’d.”
I signed up immediately to follow Box’s project in the Arctic on facebook. What else to do? I tried to learn about methane and get contrary opinions, which there are. Novice indeed I was, I knew that; but I was trying to make sense of it in the best way I could.
I began following the Arctic Council Organization as well as the Inuit Circumpolar Council, “Founded in 1977 by the late Eben Hopson of Barrow, Alaska, the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) has flourished and grown into a major international non-government organization representing approximately 155,000 Inuit of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka (Russia). The organization holds Consultative Status II at the United Nations.
“To thrive in their circumpolar homeland, Inuit had the vision to realize they must speak with a united voice on issues of common concern and combine their energies and talents towards protecting and promoting their way of life.”
Then came the day when tears came for Greta during a meditation. Tears are not uncommon in my meditations, but they had usually been for family and friends who were gone, now they were for someone who may never exist; and if she does exist, I will not meet her.
Is this being an elder?
I did not know. What I did know is I wanted to continue to understand, put my oar in, and try to involve others in understanding these issues; and, if they so desired, do what action they deemed appropriate in their situation. I did know I had been influenced by the President of Kiribati and Shelia Watt-Cloutier of the Inuit nation. They were elders and they were talking. I was listening.
I began talking to friends about this project. They seemed interested in what was going to happen next to Greta. I facemailed with my great niece, Erin, the potential grandmother of Greta. We wondered if writing children’s books, which would in reality reach parents, was a good idea. I knew with two very young children she had little time, which was true of all my friends in that age range with many life responsibilities.
I contacted a couple of Eugene 21-year-olds friends who expressed an interest in going to the People’s Climate March in NYC on September 20-21, 2014. I knew the world’s attention on this event was key. The Climate March preceded the UN Climate Summit on September 23, 2014, a day before my birthday. By August 2014 both Obama and Xi Jinping, President of China, said they would attend. Good, that was key.
The September 2014 Summit had to go well for the Lima Climate Change Conference to go well in December, 2014. All that was the build up to the 21st Conference Of the Parties (COP) on Climate Change 2015 in Paris. This had to go better than Copenhagen in 2009. I thought Paris 2015 was our last best chance to do something that would be key and helpful in mitigation and really help the future Gretas of the world. I knew the importance of all these dates and what needed to happen when, but did I know anyone else listening to this? In reality, not many in my world.
So, back to me, what to do? I decided what else I could do is try to understand more and engage others if possible.
Next, Greta would meet more people. The Alberta Tar Sands were calling as wildfires were ramping up in the West in August of 2014. Thus far I was learning indigenous people knew a lot, but were we listening to them. That was my question as I would turn to the First Nation people in Canada.
Greta put her thumbprint next to her door and was securely checked in for the evening. She told Anota she would meet her in the lobby at 6 and settled in to make herself at home. Greta grabbed her photo album which had Rt. 66 in her own distinctive artwork on the cover and went downstairs ready to meet Anota and whoever else would show.
Anota was already there when she arrived and was talking with another woman who had a P.S. Gathering, April 10-14 badge. Greta made her way to them, a little sheepishly, but now that she was here, she wanted to make the most of it.
“Greta, I’d like you to meet Akitla, her ancestors are Inuit and originally lived in the Arctic, about as far away as you can get from my ancestors, but we already realize how much we have in common.”
“Common, in what way?” Greta asked Akitla, a woman who appeared to be about the same age as both she and Anota.
“We both had to change our lives drastically because of water–in my case water that had been snow and ice, and in Anota’s case water that rose too high over the land,” Akitla said without a hint of shyness, but direct and clear. “Are you from a coastal area, Greta?”
“No, land is my background, and far away from coasts, which has been both good and bad.”
Small talk, that was really big talk ensued for another 15 minutes and gave Greta the chance to begin to understand the Inuits who came from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia and were called Eskimos by their neighbors, which meant ‘eaters of raw meat.’ They call themselves Inuit, meaning ‘real people.’ They are the indigenous people who inhabited the Arctic.
“Don’t confuse indigenous people with the others who live in the Arctic zone,” Akitla said very emphatically. In her mind, there certainly was a difference, that was clear.
Anota moved on to meet someone else, but Akitla stayed. Greta asked if she wanted to see any pictures of her ancestor’s land.
“Yes, very much. I brought old pictures as well. Let’s sit down.”
Greta opened her album, and showed Akitla an aerial picture of the farmland she wanted to see in Central Illinois. It was of a farm and grain elevator by the four lanes of Rt. 66.
“I understand only one building remains from the farm and even the grain elevator is gone, but I want to see it. The picture was taken in the 1970’s. My ancestors lived on the farm at the top right of this picture.”
Akitla nodded her head, “I understand, my ancestors use to live in igloos up until about the 1950’s and here is a picture I have of that.”
Greta and Akitla went back and forth with pictures sharing what they knew about people who lived a long time ago. Greta described small farms and farming operations and raising corn and soybeans. Akitla described a hunting life and travel by sled and dogs through ice and snow.
Akitla explained all seemed to change in the 1950’s or 1960’s as Inuit children were sent away to boarding schools; native language lost; and the Inuit people began living in houses.
Greta’s turn came and she described small farms getting larger, corporate farms coming, climate change making more difference in crops that would grow, and then finally becoming climate refugees to the North. Greta went back even further in history describing the prairie grass being changed forever by the plow of her European white settlers as they moved across the continent.
Akitla related breakdown of her community, sea ice cover melting, corporations trying to mine for energy resources, and then permafrost melt happening. The elders had tried early on to warn that it was warming and life was changing. They knew their lands; they knew their animals on it. They warned those who would listen that the Arctic was the barometer for the world, and they were the mercury in it, and the mercury was rising.
Their sea was rising at a much higher rate than the rest of the world because of the conditions in the Arctic. When ice and snow left, the bare earth absorbed more heat and that caused more melting. Campaigns developed around saving polar bears, but no one seemed as interested in saving the people and the way of life of the Inuit who lived in four countries at the polar cap.
Inuit people developed campaigns for their human right to have cold, snow, and ice and continue their culture as it had existed. This existence was tied to nature, unlike what developed on much of the earth over time, which was called ‘growth’. Their voices were heard, but not loud enough to make a difference in the long run.
Akitla described when the Arctic Ocean finally melted year round and the Northwest Passage was entirely clear, thus making new trade routes possible. Those that had been used, like the Suez Canal, were then less profitable. Life changed forever for her peoples as new animals came, not the least of which was the human animal of the corporations who wanted to explore for oil and gas. New crops could be raised; new fish came; but now instead of being hunters, they were mainly workers in the mining industries. Countries were in huge disputes over who had rights to what. Abundantly clear was the peoples who had lived there the longest were treated the worse.
Akitla went on, “And it changed even more when the permafrost melted.”
“Explain please, I remember reading about this but never really understood everything that happened.”
Akitla did the best she could to explain permafrost.
“You understand soil in Central Illinois. Yes?”
Greta shook her head yes, knowing Illinois soil had been the among the richest in the world.
“Well, our soil was rich in carbon, but frozen. When it started to thaw, first the land was unsettled and buildings buckled, but the bigger issue was the carbon and methane released in the atmosphere, which lead to even more warming, and more warming, and more warming–a positive feedback loop is what they call it. And it’s still happening today. It could not be stopped once it was started.”
Greta shook her head and looked down. “Why didn’t ‘they’ do more when they could? I just don’t understand, do you?”
Akitla had no response except a shrug of her shoulders. Throughout the conversation Akitla had called everyone below the Arctic Circle, Southerners. What indeed were the Southerners doing?
When she got back to her room, Greta got out her Rt. 66 or Bust journal. She started by writing this.
April 10, 2064
Today I am sad at being a Southerner….
Then she wrote down the best she could what she learned about the Arctic from Akitla.
Greta was in line to get on the bus and soon was boarding and sat next to a woman who appeared to be a bit younger than she and from the Pacific Islands, if she had to guess. She, as well as a few other people on the bus, had badges on which said P.S. Gathering,April 10-14.
Greta wondered if she should talk to her, which she did not really want to do, or just get out her journal and start writing. She had no choice, the woman spoke to her.
“Are you traveling far?” She asked.
“Yes, for me. I’m going to the land where my family lived in Illinois a long time ago, but I’ve never been there.”
Greta gave the brief version about Central Illinois and ancestors who were farmers and wanting to see the land they farmed and Rt. 66. Then she looked at the young woman and noted she seemed somewhat misty-eyed.
“I wish I could do such a thing,” She seemed noticeably choked up and then continued, “I should be use to this, and I better get use it for the next few days (pointing to her badge, but not explaining it), but when someone talks about doing what you are doing, thoughts flood over me. Excuse me.”
“Excuse you?” Greta queried.
The passenger asked, “Have you heard of Kiribati?”
Greta shook her head yes. It was a part of history most people knew of the 2030’s when the this Pacific Island nation, first had no fresh water, and then went almost totally undersea. A population of 200,000 had to relocate. Now in the 2060’s the former island chain was not even visible in the Pacific Ocean anymore. Greta was sitting next to someone connected to a place she had only read and heard about in school, the canary in the coal mine in the Pacific for climate change as it became known in the 2020’s.
The woman’s story unfolded over the next hour and Greta interspersed her own story of ancestors. Then the talk stopped, for now, as her seat mate started to take a nap saying she was very tired.
Greta, though, got out the journal designed specifically for this trip and decided it was time to start recording her adventure. What a beginning, she thought, as she got out her pen, opened the book, which had Rt. 66 or Bust on it, and started to write.
Rt. 66 or Bust
April 9, 2064
My seatmate right now is from Kiribati, or at least her relatives were from there. Her name is Anota. She was named after the former President of Kiribati, Anote Tong. What a story she is telling me. I told her about my great grandparents and she told me her great grandfather chose to stay on their Pacific island atoll rather than leave in the 2030’s when the seas came in and flooded their island earlier than the world expected. Lack of freshwater was the big issue Anota said. People had to rely on rainwater, as the underground water was too salty. No water, no life.
Anota’s great grandfather remained, but family understood why he decided to stay rather than leave. For him it was too late to change his lifestyle. Her grandparents became climate refugees and initially moved to Fiji as the President had purchased the rights for land for them to move there in the 2010‘s. The President tried to move the people systemically over many years, keeping their dignity as people in the best way possible. He developed training programs in skills other countries would desire. It worked sort of, some went to Australia and New Zealand with marketable skills, but the world was not ready, or did not want, to absorb all of them as climate changed. Climate justice at its worse.
After Fiji, Anota’s parents emigrated again, and finally Anota ended up in Canada without any family. She knew life in Kiribati only from what her grandparents told her. Her parents were too young to remember much of the islands as they left there before age 5. Anota told stories of her grandparents describing fishing life, what were called king tides that inundated the island, close family and communal ties, very religious people, and a cultural heritage going back 4000 years on the island. Abota did not describe an idyllic life on the atolls, but one of poverty and disease, but nonetheless it was devastating for all to have to leave for a problem they did not really cause, that is, carbon dioxide and other gases in the air.
______________
That was all that Greta wanted to write now. She put down her pen and considered the emotions going around in her head. No sense of place. Family dispersed. No history remaining. She had written only the bare facts, but what were the emotions behind the facts for Anota.
Now Greta wanted Anota to wake up and talk with her again, and ask what her badge meant. Where was she going. So much more to talk about and now she hoped Anota wanted to say more. Greta had questions, but what was appropriate to ask?
Another hour passed before Anota woke up, clearly she had not slept for a while before this trip started.
Greta straightened herself up and then asked Anota, “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your life and ancestors?”
Anota shook her head no, and turned the ball back to Greta, “Do you still feel like you are a Kiribati person even though you have never been there?”
Anota returned the question with a question, “Do you still feel like a Midwest person thought you have never been there?”
Greta understood immediately that the answer for both of them was “Yes” and shook her head yes. She got it.
Greta then was ready to ask, “What is the badge and what is the Gathering that starts tomorrow?”
Anota began to explain she was attending a Gathering that highlighted Past Stories being kept alive. The P.S. had a double meaning as the people attending had been considered a P.S., a mere post script of disruption, during the worse times. The P.S. people were the most deeply affected; the least listened to; and the most dispersed in the many climate diasporas. They were attending from all over Canada and they all had in common being climate refugees and wanting to share and save past stories of their various cultures.
Greta now looked around the bus and looked at each P.S. Badge. She wanted to know these stories and said, “Do you know everyone on the bus with a badge?”
“No, but I will in the next few days? The ones that are on this bus are meeting tonight for the first time before we travel on together tomorrow. Would you like to come this evening to meet some of them with me. You are a climate refugee as well and you are trying to preserve your family stories before The Big Change happened. Maybe you are are a P.S.er at heart.”
Greta could not believe this first day of travel. What kind of world have we developed in the the 21st century? She did not know how to answer that question, except she knew the answer lay in the 19th and 20th centuries and the response, or lack of response, to reacting to scientific information in a timely fashion. She knew more people died as a result of climate change than in World War II. And the number of people relocated and refuges was staggering, over 700 million. Absolutely staggering and still going on now.
Greta wondered how she would be different as a result of this trip and who and what she might encounter.
She was ready for the bus to stop for the day and meet some of the rest of the P.S. people.
Margaret, everyone called her Greta except for a few older relatives, surveyed the room and its scattered contents. It looked like this when she was preparing to go someplace, but this was a bigger trip than usual. This trip would take her into the past of her ancestors, a time that looked better than the present, or at least that is how she saw it now. Greta wondered if her relatives felt the same way when they were her age. Perhaps it was just how it was at young adulthood, being the skeptic and realist that she was.
Most people stopped traveling in the 2030’s when it was clear the change to renewable sources was not going as well as hoped, at least for transportation. Gas cars no longer existed, and the alternatives did not allow for long trips. Greta remembered gas cars, but just vaguely. They were outlawed when she was 2, in 2038. Public transportation had not lived up to its promises, and everyone saved their ICS (Individual Carbon Scheme) points for important things.
This was important, at least to Greta.
At 28, she wanted to see the places her mother and grandmother described. This could be her only chance as it took so long to build up ICS points to do anything. The trip would take a few days to get to Illinois.
The last several months Greta reviewed all the material she could gather about family in Illinois; how they lived; where they lived; and trying to understand the history from 1850’s until most of them left the area in the 2030’s.
Her family had long and varied roots in the central U.S. which started with migration from Europe to the Midwest. The end destination would be around Rt. 66 in Central Illinois, the road and the land surrounding it had a long history. Her ancestors were a part of all of it. Even now when you mentioned Rt. 66 people knew vaguely where it had been even if highways were viewed skeptically because of their influence in encouraging travel during the Fossil Fuel Frenzy time as she now called it.
Her family migrated from the U.S. north to Canada after the events of the 2020’s and 2030’s. Several hurricanes in Gulf Coast and others on the U.S. East Coast, moved people up from the South and over from the East. The Midwest grew faster than other regions at that time. The white population, as predicted, was becoming a minority. The landscape was changing in many ways. A major earthquake, long expected, happened in the Pacific Northwest, but most of those people made a different life staying in the NW to renew and rebuild. For the NW people options to move elsewhere in the U.S. did not look appealing, very understandable with how the world looked at the time.
One of ‘Big Heats,’ as they were called, is what finally convinced many of Greta’s relatives in Illinois to consider moving. Her father’s grandfather died in one of the major heat summers when the energy grid collapsed and the renewable energy existing at the time could not produce enough power to keep people cool for the extended time needed. After that and with all the movement of people from the South and East and the continuing unrelenting summers, the family decided to go North. The floods had been frequent and awful, but in the end, it was the heat and allergies that clinched the family decision to move. Greta’s sister’s allergies were horrible five months out of the year in Illinois.
Her family became a part of the climate diaspora in the 2040’s when she was preteen. It was happening everywhere at the time.
Greta had a desire to travel and know the world. That had been true since she was very young and imagined she was going to all the places she read about in history, a favorite subject for her. She delved into history of all eras and places and sought particularly to understand where her ancestors had lived. She wanted to go to all of those places. That was out of the question, she knew it. No one went that far from home anymore. Most travel took place by 3-D glasses being put on and a partner in the hosting country having on their 3-D glasses and you had a virtual trip complete with a guide. In time she wanted to ‘3-D’ to Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Bosnia and many other places as well.
But now it was going to Illinois for ‘real’. Real travel in real time. Greta prepared for the trip by reading stories saved by her grandmother. In old times ebooks were the way to share stories. How quaint. Her grandmother had printed out all the stories as few people now had a device which could read the old stories on those original devices. Paper had lasted as the way for posterity.
Yesterday Greta read her great, great, great grandfather Ripley’s words during the last week of his life, written by his daughter. She knew the farm described was adjacent to Rt. 66. Here is what she read.
“Dad dropped out of school after the ninth grade to help his father farm. All in all, Dad had been chief steward of our 200 acres for 46 years. I learned early that to be able to say, ‘the crops are in’ was to report the greatest accomplishment possible. After each field was harvested, the family tradition held that Dad would stand at the end rows and give his ‘vast acres’ speech. This amounted to a wide, opening gesture of both arms at shoulder height and saying something about the grandness of this particular field. For all of us it was the exclamation mark that acknowledged the work was done, and we had done it together.
“Dad brought in his last set of crops in the fall of 1976. His health had not been good for years. A heart attack 25 years before started the decline that was exacerbated by having Parkinson’s disease for 15 years. It was the shaking tremors of Parkinson’s, more than aging, that forced him to change his farming style. A man with a shuffling gait and shaky hands has great difficulty operating farm machinery and doing the many necessary tasks required of farmers. Simple chores like changing implements behind the tractor had become difficult. My mother and brother took up some slack, but it was always very clear who was in charge. Dad.
“By my assessment 1977 is a year better forgotten. By year’s end both my father and mother were dead, neither one of them seeing the crops in. Now, more than two decades later, the events of 1977 are beginning to be history and a bit blurred as far as sequence, but not in overall impact.
“Dad’s more rapid decline began in January 1977. By the end of June I made the 2000-mile trip home twice during Dad’s 3 or 4 hospital stays, 2 short-term nursing stays, one surgery, and several minor strokes. Family hopes ran up and down like a roller coaster. A hopeful time was at the end of May when Dad left the hospital and the outlook was brighter. He rode out of the hospital in a wheelchair sporting his farm cap and told the nurse he was going home to supervise the rest of the spring planting, and he planned to be ready for the fall harvest.
“June followed with more minor strokes, surgery, and another nursing home stay. The next time I saw my dad he was thin, unable to move by himself. His speech was slurred. It was during that visit that Dad looked at me and said, ‘No more corn or beans.’ He died within the week.
“That was July. In August my mother died in a house fire. That left my brother in charge of getting in the crops, a seemingly overwhelming task now. As often happens in rural communities, the neighbors came through. In a surprise two-day blitz, dozens of neighbors came with their own equipment and helped. As I heard the news 2000 miles away, all I could do was cry. It was over, my dad’s vast acres could rest for another year.”
Greta thought it seemed like the soil and crops were in his soul. Ironic, she thought, how prophetic he was, not only about his own time as it was ending, but what the so-called Corn Belt of old would no longer hold. ‘No more corn or beans’ was now true for the entire area. Initially crops had more yields with climate change, but eventually it was just too hot, or too wet to count on a crop. The soil further north, even though the weather conditions were better, could not raise these crops. The soil was everything. Everything. The Corn Belt now was not even a Corn Bracelet.
But Greta wanted to see what remained…of the land, buildings, and even Rt. 66.
She continued packing and preparing for the upcoming trip.
This post has two themes: family history and environment.
I have been interested in family history and genealogy for over 50 years. As a amateur genealogist I gathered information from older family members; requested certificates and records before the internet facilitated such things; preserved those stories by writing and giving them to family; and more recently, epublishing them. I wanted the stories of my ancestors, that I struggled to understand, last longer than I did.
My record on being an environmentalist is more rocky. If you count being raised on an Illinois farm adjacent to Rt. 66; being an avid 4-Her; and watching as my family were good stewards of the soil, I look better. Between my parents and brothers’ tenant farms they worked a total of 360 acres. I, though, wanted to leave Illinois and see a wider world and let others watch and tend the soil. Now I understand they had the lifestyle which was sustainable, not the one I chose to live.
I recall a former college roommate from Indiana University urging my involvement in the first Earth Day in 1970. I was by then more distant from the Midwest. I was a Ph.D. candidate at University of Oregon, but I said ‘sure’ and then did little. Communes were popular in Oregon at the time, but I felt I’d been there, done that, and wanted something different from going back to the earth. I read Al Gore’s The Earth in Balance when it came out in 1992 and thought he seems to be right on. At the time we were living in new digs just outside of Portland and after 2 years we thought it needed air-conditioning.
When we build in Portland in 1990 we believed we did not need air-conditioning. Who needs air conditioning in Oregon’s Willamette Valley? Both being former long-time Oregon residents we knew we would not need it.
The Portland stint was preceded by living for two years in Tucson, Arizona, in another new house which had air conditioning. During the Tucson period I read about water, as we did drip landscaping, and thinking maybe the future would have water wars.
My years went from farm living to urban living and having the opportunity to visit six continents and also the homeland areas of ancestors from Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. They eventually all landed in Illinois, even if some went farther afield in the U.S. later. Their stories inspired me. How could they do what they did, not knowing what the future would hold, even if their current circumstances in the ‘old country’ went from bad to dire and motivated the move across the ocean.
Personal losses accrued in my own life. By 2014 I turned 70 and my nuclear family and husband were deceased. But I was still here in 2014 and breathing even if each breathe was over 400 ppm of CO2 which is not the sustainable 350 ppm. Globally we were at the highest CO2 level in over 800,000 years and rising.
So, I thought, if I am still here, what was next.
A new interest emerged, which had been there before, but now I had the time to pursue it in more earnest as I struggled with what to do after another major loss.
The year 2013 ended with asking young friends to participate in writing an ebook about the year 2050 and what they thought would be true for them and their world by then. After initial enthusiasm, the project sank without a ripple, except that it encouraged my own thinking about 2050, which I had done in prior years for classes I taught at the University of Oregon. At that time I had used all of the State of the World reports of the Worldwatch Institute since the mid 80’s plus other similar materials. I knew about all of this. How did I let my eye get off the ball for a few years. Life intervened, for a poor excuse.
In early 2014 I watched over 200 videos on climate change; read many nonfiction sources; wrote checks to organizations that addressed the issues; encouraged my homeowner’s association to develop solar panel guidelines; looked at my own fossil fuel investments in mutual funds; and attended meetings of local climate activist groups. I believed climate change was real, caused by us, that it is bad, but that there was still hope if we acted now.
I began to carry around a stuffed duck mascot of our university, thinking who can be threatened by an older woman carrying a stuffed duck. It was a nerd-looking duck with large glasses whom I labeled Scholar Duck. He tried his hand at seeing and telling the world as it is regarding climate issues. I don’t know if many people took note, but I kept at it and continued to post on social media with Scholar Duck as my foil.
I discovered the genre of climate fiction (cli-fi) and in the summer of 2014 started reading cli-fi novels. Could I write such a thing? Could I combine two of my interests, genealogy and environment? In doing so, I would ponder life not of my ancestors as I had done in the past, but my descendants. Almost every video encouraged one to think of what their children and grandchildren will think of them for doing so little when we had time to mitigate and adapt.
This story is set in 2064. The protagonist is my great, great, great niece, Margaret (Greta for short) who sets out to discover what her ancestors were doing not only in the 19th and 20th century, but in the early 21st century when we had clear evidence of what was happening in the world. It reminds me of a piece I wrote set in the 1600’s with the main fictional character Wind-in-the-Grass who was a member of the Illinek Native Americans who lived on the land that would become Illinois. Wind-in-the-Grass moved seasonally with her tribe but as the Europeans came, life changed forever for her and her descendants. My relatives and others came to the Illinek area and cut the prairie grass and became coal miners and farmers.
Now Greta (born 2036) returns to Illinois to see this land is as she remembers from stories told by her mother Tessa (born 2011), grandmother (born 1984), and great grandmother (born 1959), and from writings of other ancestors of how the land used to be, but will never be again.
