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Vivian O’Bannon

Jody Cohen

Emily Balch Seminar – Changing Our Story

December 6, 2016

Agency Does Not Cancel Out

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(“The Collapse" for short), but in a more comic and hilarious way. Because The Collapse 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. The collapse is a scientific novel while ATWB is a graphic novel. But both books reflect the reality that human is consuming the earth resources and destroying the place where we live in.

Two summer’s ago, between eleventh and twelfth grade, I held an internship in a malaria vaccine research lab. The vaccine the laboratory was testing was a self-assembling protein nanoparticle, and my job for eight weeks, as told to me by the lab’s principal investigator in an email, was to “characterize the protein.” At that point, I knew how to analyze the characterization of Lady Macbeth, Huck Finn, and Nick Carraway but I had no idea what it meant to characterize a protein. Was I to determine its personality? And how did the researchers not know the personality and nature of the protein if they so specifically engineered it?

“As The World Burns” and “The Collapse of Western Civilization” both portray semi-apocalyptic futures brought about by environmental degradation. But, despite some central similarities, the two stories are different in key ways. In the The Collapse Oreskes and Conway relate a “fictional” historical account of how rising sea levels and Market Failure led to widespread death and the restructuring of world politics. Jensen and McMillans graphic novel,  a light satire centered around an invasion of planet eating robotic aliens, urges a collective overthrow of the system to stop climate change, for which green lifestyles are inadequate.

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” –Audre Lorde

How can individuals in society make change? With conflicting ideals and a constant race for profit, it seems implausible for us to work together for a common goal. Even with the facts laid out for many, some choose to ignore the dire state that the world is in. Throughout literature it becomes a common theme for people to realize how there is a severe lack of cooperation between governments, corporations, and individuals when attempting to create solutions. Namely, it becomes strikingly obvious in both Collapse of Western Civilization and As the World Burns that the world is taking a severe downturn in terms of environmental health. Yet, even with this apocalyptic framing, we see that the future holds an undesirable system where the government takes all control.

Two weeks ago, we had a very juicy discussion in class about whether we can stop the changes occurring to the planet’s climatic system or not. I was mesmerised by the views that were aired by my fellow colleagues. One against twelve (exclusive of our fabulous professor, of course) is what I would term the then position of the held discussion. Unfortunately, I was the crazy one-the misfit-the round peg in a square hole. I must say that, it was such a quirky feeling at first but it became interesting as the discussion unfolded. My other intellects talked of how we can change global warming and other climatic issues. However, my stand remains engraved in the fact that global warming is irreversible, and we can do nothing at all to change that.

Kate Weiler

Re-evaluating Remedies: Treatment as a Loss of Agency

       “Do we take plants’ rights into full account?”

Princess Jefferson

I Don’t Want Any Pills