Christmas, the day after, in 2004, following the presidential re-election of George W. Bush.

    With each generation comes a new set of important issues to change.  In the twenty first century, one of the main issues is environmental change or climate change.  Noami Orekes and Erik M. Conway’s “The Collapse of Western Civilization” and Derrick Jenson and Stephanie McMillan’s “As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial” speak to the environmental issues but in slightly different ways.  Both novels while they get across their point of the impact of humans of the environment but do so in different ways that impacts its accessibility to readers. “As the World Burns” cartoonish mockery of a America’s corrupt government and the unreasonable assumptions of the impact of small changes activists advocate.

A keyword stood out to me: “A type 1 error is often considered to be more serious, and therefore more important to avoid, than a type2 error.” Actually, I held the same view before when learned the concept of error types in AP Psychology. But now I realize type 2 error can lead to a serious outcome as well, not because the error it self, but its concept which will give people a delusion that anything could be false. “So while the pattern of weather events was clearly changing, many scientists insisted that these events could not yet be attributed with certainty to anthropogenic climate change.” And thus it caused human being missed the most important opportunity to save the earth.

After reading As The World Burns written by Jensen and Mcmillan to page 150, I get the similar feeling of reading The Collapse of Western Civilization, but in a more comic and hilarious way. Because The Collapse of Western Civilization(“The Collapse" for short) is constructed as a historical review from the future aspects, gathered a great amount of datas and details, however, As The World Burns is more like a narrative story that hides its meanings behind its exaggerated characters in a humorous way. But both reflect the reality that human is consuming the earth resources and destroying the place where we live in. The ideology is pretty similar in the two books, which can be compared in the following way.

“Every man for himself and God for us all.” This is my definition for the era we are living in. I welcome you to the 20^th century where everyone wants to be competitive. Where nobody wants to be considered ‘less’ by the ever-judging society. Where everyone strives for the survival and benefit for his or her own good and doesn’t care about the external costs they impose on others. “Japanese genetic engineer Akari Ishikawa developed a form of lichenized fungus in which the photosynthetic partner consumed atmospheric CO2 much more efficiently than existing forms, and was able to grow in a wide diversity of environmental conditions… In public pronouncements, the Japanese government has maintained that Ishikawa acted alone, and cast her as a criminal renegade.

Oreskes and Conway’s “The Collapse of Western Civilization” and Jensen and McMillan’s “As the World Burns” both explore environmental disaster due to factors such as ignorance and an unwillingness to change people’s  damaging ways of life. Despite the fact that these works both focus on environmental destruction these works left me with different feelings. After reading “The Collapse of Western Civilization” I was left with a feeling of dejectedness and an acceptance that these events would inevitably unfold. On the other hand after reading the beginning of “As the Worlds Burns” I felt frustrated that the majority of the world’s attitudes about their way of living and values are ignorant of the environment.

• Both novels use future apocalyptic framing as a starting point to
  • Promote discussion?
  • Foster change?
  • Start a ‘wake-up’ call for the inactive masses?
• Collapse of Western Civilization
  • Frames the world in the future
    • Takes a much more realistic way to examine the future consequences of our actions
      • Occasional exaggerated points
      • Darker themes because of the similarities to the current scenario
      • Not too far into the future, but still far away – plausible scenario
  • The government needs to take action?
    • Countries like the United States are creating problems
    • Central governments like China fared much better
    • Does the solution come with heavier government restrictions?