{"id":439,"date":"2019-03-19T20:11:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T20:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/?p=439"},"modified":"2019-03-19T20:12:02","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T20:12:02","slug":"439","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/2019\/03\/19\/439\/","title":{"rendered":"Literature and Science to Understand Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h2 class=\"entry-title\">Literature and Science to Understand Climate Change<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Professor Dimock from Yale presented on the importance of literature in the face of understanding and dealing with current environmental issues. This talk was similar to the talk given by Professor Hensley a few weeks back. Both speakers support and advocate for literature to be the means to understanding environmental issues in a wholistic way. \u00a0Professor Dimock used works by Elizabeth Bishop and William Blake in an attempt to emphasize that there is a lack of current knowledge on climate change and many other environmentally related issues. This lack of knowledge can be supplemented by reading literature that looks at Climate change and seeks to understand how and why we got to where we are. In the case of the two readers we examined, both poets \u00a0used different approaches to understand the phenomenon. One looked at the future of the environmental as an element that is largely unknown. The other looked at the environment in a \u00a0unchanging, solidified way. The latter opinion is the opinion that is dangerous in the context of environmental thought. If this ideology is able to gain credence in the global sphere, this could lead to further lack of care and awareness of our action on the planet&#8217;s health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>I enjoyed the part of Professor Dimock&#8217;s presentation about vegetarianism because I have converted to vegetarianism in the past for similar reasons that were outline by Peter Singer. Mr. Singer spoke about all of the common ways in which vegetarianism was presented to the general public and all of the usual selling points that were given to people. These selling points would work in some cases, but there were still swathes of people who did not agree with him and his idea that all humans and animals should be held in the same regard. However, Singer presented the idea of approaching vegetarianism through the lens of climate change. The idea behind this was that the consumption of meat largely contributed to the greenhouse gasses that were being released and trapped within the ozone layer. This was an issue that was effecting everyone everywhere so it held a more appealing meaning than the latter methods used to persuade.<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest takeaways from this talk, similar to Professor Henley&#8217;s talk, is the need for us to take literature and science and find a better coexistence between the two. Climate changes is a highly complex issue that should not be approached through only one or two means. Up until this point, we as a global community has made huge strides and bounds in terms of our awareness and understanding of climate change. This trend will need to continue progressing if we want to hopefully bolster our efforts to mitigate climate change. In order to do this, we are going to have to start looking to other sources for understanding, one of which should be literature. Science is important in the context of climate change, however, the jargon used in science makes it difficult for the average consumer to understand and therefore find interest in. By making literature another facet through which average consumers can read and understand climate change, we will be one step closer to ameliorating this issue that is effecting us all. While we stand to improve in many areas pertaining to climate change, literature and science being combined more would definitely be a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Literature and Science to Understand Climate Change Professor Dimock from Yale presented on the importance of literature in the face of understanding and dealing with current environmental issues. This talk was similar to the talk given by Professor Hensley a few weeks back. Both speakers support and advocate for literature to be the means to &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/2019\/03\/19\/439\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Literature and Science to Understand Climate Change&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}