Brinda Srinivasan is a rising high school senior in San Diego, who has a passion for painting still life.
Global Warming’s Gilded Age
You’ve likely heard the gist of climate change’s menace. You almost certainly are disturbed. If I were you, I might’ve even swiped away, under the impression that this is another climate horror story. So politicians, you’re my main target. Unless, of course, the rest of you are courageous enough to digest a mouthful of the future and spread my message.
Thankfully, we aren’t in the inescapable stage of such “horror.”[2] Think of climate change like cancer: it becomes untreatable after a particular stage. We are currently in stage three — on the brink of inevitable disaster. Unlike cancer, however, we diagnosed climate change a much earlier century ago. And yet, we knowingly let it plague our green globe.
During my US History class, I couldn’t help but think about this issue. Each day we are taught to draw parallels and continuities throughout history. After all, the ultimate goal is for history to inform our modern decisions. So I thought of two very different eras: the gilded age and its succeeding progressive era.
The gilded age was marked by political inaction, lacking legislation and measures against excessive corporate power. The government was riddled with corruption, lobbying, and greedy interest. Criticism predictably followed. Henry Adams’ Democracy denounced the government’s lack of involvement and inefficiency.[3] Worse, this passive government has gone down in history as an abomination.
Unfortunately, we may be in global warming’s gilded age. Today’s conservative politicians refuse to help our climate. Their corruption, fueled by lobbying and refusal to rescue a dying climate, could not be more similar to gilded age politics. In 2009, congress dismally failed efforts to reduce emissions.[4] In 2015, Trump withdrew from the Paris Accords, an essential token of global cooperation.[5] And the prospects of the sweeping climate reform in Biden’s Build Back Better Act being passed look bleak.[6] This is looking more and more like the 19th century Congress which couldn’t get anything done.
Conservatives aren’t only at fault — liberals lack the tenacity that climate change begs for. Democrat, Joe Manchin, has consistently weakened the Build Back Better Act provisions, taking the place of his conservative counterparts.[7] Meanwhile, other Democrats have misconstrued The Green New Deal, allowing critics to characterize it as a “socialist” agenda that eliminates America’s adored beef.[8] But broadly, state climate plans have been squeezed by moderation.
Politicians, you have a choice: act now or be remembered as those who passively killed the country. Later will be too late.
No, the “preserving economy” justification will later be laughable when there is barely an economy. Climate change requires trade-offs for the sake of the long-run. Already, wildfires cost North America $415 billion.[9] The future holds temperature extremes that could cost $160 billion in lost wages. Over 7,000 companies could be suffocated by the climate’s consequences.[10] The alternative is subsidizing renewable energy, which itself will prevent such economic damage and generate over $2 trillion in business projects.[11]
Like I said before, an optimistic, green future would remind me of the progressive era. This juncture, praised by historians and politicians alike, fixed a failing society. Tools included reform, regulation, and repair. Progressivism set the stage for the new deal, the economic plan to revive the strangled economy, championed by FDR. Such unprecedented legislation gave FDR and his congress a legendary status. Legislators dream of achieving such a reputation. Some believe it’s impossible, but it’s not.
The comprehensive Green New Deal could gradually halt the pace of warming. From carbon taxes to grants to energy equality, it will transition our country to be a climate leader.[12] Like the New Deal, its green counterpart would be the first of its kind and a clear-cut opportunity for lawmakers.
Republicans, if not for saving our planet, honor history and cement your legacies by affirming the Green New Deal. After all, corrupt lobbying money can never buy an eternal legacy.
Solving this crisis should be a no-brainer. We only have three to five years until the window to save humanity shuts. The most proactive model is Denmark, where legislation deployed green technologies and invested in its green workers. It is expected to have zero carbon emissions by 2050.[13] Denmark’s politicians are high-fiving each other knowing that they’ve secured a heroic legacy. They will be the saviors that lifted their country out of the warming crisis.
Every era in American history has a name: the gilded age, reconstruction era, and turbulent sixties. Perhaps the next few years will be known as the climate era. One where law-makers either take initiative or lay afloat while watching the meltdown unfold. This era, though, will be one unlike any other. It defines implications for massive populations, reaching centuries later. Congress’s decisions now could directly impact people two hundred years into the future.
If you made it to this end, you’re a real trooper. Global warming is difficult to think about, nonetheless, read about. But to politicians: you took an oath to address every difficult problem — don’t break it. The reason to cool an overheating world should be self-evident and moral. Many of you clearly don’t understand this. So instead, you must understand that you will go down in history books, cited as the cause of catastrophe. That is, of course, assuming that there are any people left to read them.
Ashwin Telang is a junior in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, and writing intern for the Borgen Project. He is passionate about politics, and hopes to spread change across different communities.
Work Cited:
1: Greshko, Michael, and National Geographic Staff. “Mass Extinction Facts and Information from National Geographic.” Science, National Geographic, 3 May 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mass-extinction
2: Hertsgaard, Mark, et al. “Perspective | How a Little-Discussed Revision of Climate Science Could Help Avert Doom.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 25 Feb. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/02/23/warming-timeline-carbon-budget-climate-science/.
3: Meacham, Jon. “Henry Adams’s 1880 Novel, ‘Democracy,’ Resonates Now More than Ever.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 Sept. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/books/review/henry-adams-democracy-.html.
4: Pierre, Jeffrey, and Scott Neuman. “How Decades of Disinformation about Fossil Fuels Halted U.S. Climate Policy.” NPR, NPR, 27 Oct. 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1047583610/once-again-the-u-s-has-failed-to-take-sweeping-climate-action-heres-why.
5: Zhang, Yong-Xiang, et al. “The Withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and Its Impact on Global Climate Change Governance.” Advances in Climate Change Research, Elsevier, 31 Aug. 2017, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674927817300849.
6: Pramuk, Jacob. “Democrats Are Unlikely to Pass Biden’s Social Spending Plan This Year – Here’s What It Means.” CNBC, CNBC, 16 Dec. 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/15/build-back-better-act-democrats-unlikely-to-pass-biden-social-spending-plan.html.
7: Ludden, Jennifer. “Manchin Says Build Back Better’s Climate Measures Are Risky. That’s Not True.” NPR, NPR, 19 Dec. 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/12/19/1065665886/manchin-says-build-back-betters-climate-measures-are-risky-thats-not-true.
8: Houck, Brenna. “Why Conservatives Won’t Stop Talking about Burgers.” Eater, Eater, 1 Mar. 2019, https://www.eater.com/2019/3/1/18246220/aoc-green-deal-burgers-backlash-creepshot.
9,10,11: Padilla, Jazmine. “How Climate Change Impacts the Economy.” State of the Planet, 20 June 2019, https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/06/20/climate-change-economy-impacts/.
12: Friedman, Lisa. “What Is the Green New Deal? A Climate Proposal, Explained.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/climate/green-new-deal-questions-answers.html.
13: Searchinger, Tim, et al. “A Pathway to Carbon Neutral Agriculture in Denmark.” World Resources Institute, 5 July 2021, https://www.wri.org/research/pathway-carbon-neutral-agriculture-denmark.
Reach Out
in support of Ukraine
i.
reach bone, reach drooling eyes
reach the sternums of streets that fail
to crack. reach life that caresses
the mourners, reach guns that fire
diagonal to the dead. reach missing and
missing and found, reach under
the black mattress of a miracle. reach
the wilting body. reach tattered wrists
ii.
reach shameless, reach vulnerable
and nude. reach bare arms
that cannot bear love. reach into
humanity without
looking and finding
the missing pieces. reach away,
then reach back. reach anyone
on the train of a breath
any delicate stare, any hurt
construction of a child.
iii.
reach send
reach those who fly
reach those who lift gravity
and souls to pass the time
reach brow
reach wrinkle and terrified hips
that shackle a body
reach blood that runs gray
reach mouth that runs straight
reach angel
reach divine
and dangerous mercy
reach bless
reach severely gentle!
reach on to those tender people
on the other side waiting
to never be called
reach them
iv.
with their hands
only full of open and empty. reach
out
to your children. reach out, just
enough
to hold them in your arms
Kendall Cooper is a rising high school senior based in Houston, Texas. She is an alumna of the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop and is a 2022 Adroit Journal Mentee. Kendall has won numerous Scholastic Awards for her poetry and was a semi-finalist for Houston Youth Poet Laureate. Currently, she works as a literary apprentice for Breakbread Magazine.
Small Town Survival
Imagine being born into a world that bites back
Thrown here with no stepping stones
The clatter of flag poles; the chatter of fallen leaves
—this is home and hell.
Cold carcasses carried in the arms of Small Town,
Puppeteering inert skin with heartstrings,
Collecting taxes or cemetery-addressed love letters or me.
Muffled chirps and benches left barren
Hooked on minority famine.
But these eulogies are not compulsory
Because sometimes escape is recovery
So as new-home warmth overwhelms
And the fiery frigidity subsides
We are finally granted a goodbye
Jaxon Farmer (he/him) is a seventeen-year old student from Ohio who values language as the vehicle for reflection and advocacy. This comes to fruition most often within the Speech & Debate sphere. He attempts to craft his works as a patchwork of the beautiful incongruity of identity.
Crumpling
Do you think we will grow old
In a way that doesn’t hurt
I feel I hold a hundred years
And am not an infant yet
My skin is stretched and then it folds
What are the church bells ringing for?
Will my eyes close and then go blind
Before I get used to the light?
Livia von Gossler is a seventeen-year-old high school student. She is currently living in British Columbia, Canada. A goal of hers is to study English at university. Always interested in literature, she’s been writing poetry for years and participated in multiple poetry events. She loves poetry and how it can turn complex emotions into art. In writing she found way to cope and express her own sentiments.
Step One
Someday
I am going to be a kick-ass grandmother.
Just wait. I’ll have grown-up mojo over 9000
I’ll say whatever the hell I want to
Because someday
There won’t be anyone older to complain.
Someday I will tell all those awful stories about “flip phones”
and “BuzzFeed”
and “bluetooth”
and when I run out of memories about snail mail and VHS tapes and walking uphill to school
both ways
barefoot
in the snow
Because in the end I think there are some things that never change.
Someday I am going to be a middle-aged woman.
Wean teeny children into teenagers on the teddy bears of the future–
Someday I will be a new mother.
Meet my partner’s eyes over a knee-high ball of perfect and fall exhausted into an unmade bed
Place my hands over a rounded stomach and feel new life pulse inside of me
And get up to go to the bathroom one more time
but
Before that (I promise) I will be a college student
Throw off the mantle of my loving/hated parents and then reach backwards to lift it ill-fittingly
on
Squish the memories down when I pack my bags so they fit inside a standard carry-on
And find them flattened smooth like pressed flowers when the contents may have shifted during
flight
Well.
It’s early, still.
Mom always did say I jump into things;
I suppose that’s more than enough dreaming before dinner.
Jocelyn Olum is a writer, a student, and a circus performer. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was awarded both Gold and Silver Keys from the Regional Scholastic Writing Awards for Poetry. Her work has been featured in Red Eft Review and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review.