I must begin by saying that I was expecting a different focus for this talk by Nathan. Action After Nature: Climate Crisis & the Force of Literature seemed like a pretty exciting title but I was expecting a typical ES driven talk that looked at anthropogenic effects on climate and our Earth then an outline of how and what we can do to ameliorate this issue. However, to my surprise, Mr. Hensley approached the topic of climate by pairing studies on climate change with literature. I was quite happy with this turnout because I had just taken a ES literature course over Jan Plan and felt like I was perfectly in tune with this pairing.
One of my favorite parallel that Nathan made was with the popular novel “Alice in Wonderland”. He used Alice’s story to identify a similar story going on on Earth. Alice became lost in this whimsical world where she didn’t understand where she was and how things worked…..this is becoming more and more similar to our planet and how we view it. Through the vast amount of land-mass change and resource use that we as a species have caused, we are starting to realize that our surrounding are becoming to look more unfamiliar and the dynamic that we all grew to know so well is changing at a faster and more unpredictable way. This parallel to me was a great way to connect an audience with something that we all know and draw parallels through that mode.
After listening to this talk I realized that literature is an ingenious way to cater to a larger audience, one that may not be as keen on environmentally related issues. Literature provides context and ideology of different times depending on when they are set and published. In this same way, we are able to look at literature from the past and take our knowledge of the ideology at that time to understand the perspective and ideas that were prominent during that era. This is especially important for environmental literature because we are at a point in time where the environment is being disrupted and changed at an alarming rate. This is then causing a cascading effect that has innumerable consequence, some of which we know and some of which we don’t. In order to move forward with effective policy and ideology, we need to look into the past to understand and analyze mistakes so that we do not become worse off than we were in the past. In Wonderland, Alice was confused and disoriented and continued to try to apply the rules that she knew to this new world…it did not work out. This is eerily similar to the situation that we live in. We are past the point where we need to start “raising awareness” on climate change. We are even past the stage of making action. We need to have made substantial action years ago but instead we are stuck making the same mistakes again, trying to fully understand every issue going on before we can act and taking our self interests above the global collective. We now live in a new world than our parents and grandparents. We will probably see this world change time and time again, even if we decide to change our environmental trajectory. Change is just a byproduct of time, but adapting to that change is what is most important to understanding and maintaining life as we know it.