Environmental Science Short Story: A World of Questions

[Modestcat20]

 

A World of Questions

 

The village of Arrowhead Bay lay between the busy canal of Vancouver and the historical forest of the Indigenous people in Canada. Civilization has been here fore more than 2000 years and the village maintained a rural style of living under the wet climate of the Vancouver Island. Arrowhead Bay is a village in a peninsula surrounded with a lagoon on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west. People here revolved around the cycle of nature, the spring rain nourished the crops, the dry summers promoted the growth of nature, autumn leaves feeding the soil, and the winter snow covered the hills in a white blanket with silence. With a small village population, the people were living in joy and the peaceful life that is thought to be continued. 20 years ago, on a warm morning of July, the village welcome a new member as a fisherman's wife has given birth to a cute boy. His mother named him Harley, and he was embraced with love by the villagers and cared for by everyone in the next few months. The people gave him the best living environment of their ability and treated him well as the villagers believe something they have overheard. It turned out that before the baby was born, a philosopher came to the village and made the statement that one baby in the future would do something extraordinary in the future. Soon after the philosopher left, the ones who believed him had been secreting investigating who the baby was.  

 

As time flew by, the people started to notice something strange with this kid. Yet over the past two decades, the rhythm of the town has shifted. Winters in Arrowhead Bay was long and cold, lasting for months with thick layers of snow. In the recent years, sometimes the lagoon would not be frozen, the first time in hundreds since the Medieval warm period. At the same time, the summers were becoming longer and hotter, and the once-reliable river is now between the state of floods and drought. As a result, the crops began to fail and everyone was wondering if this was a punishment from the creator. The elders of the village hosted a meeting later during the dinner and they were arguing why this is happening to them. Although Harley was not effected by these changes, it inspired him to look deeper into this problem. These concerns puzzled him he wanted to discover more about what is happening. That night, Harley could not fall asleep from what he overheard during the day. Although the small village had other food sources such as crops, salmon still made up a large portion of their diet. The delay or extinction of salmon will create starvation for his people. He thought of alternative options, but none of them will seem to work in the climate of their village in British Columbia. The cold and wet climate in their region made it almost impossible for any feeding crops survive in the winter. The inability to help his people had made him reconsider his existence as the "extraordinary baby". It was unclear what triggered him that night, but Harley decided to go for a walk outside. Slowly making his way out of the longhouse, trying to stop make any sounds for his family. 

 

Once he step foot on the gravel ground, he looked up, amazed by what is above him. In the dark sky thousands of stars are concentrated together in a ring, creating one of the most beautiful moments Harley has seen in his life. 

 

"Wow!" Harley whispered as he starred at the stars for several minutes

In just a few minutes of observation, he has viewed the beauty of the skies and made a wish when a shooting star passed by. Trying not to get distracted by the sky, he headed towards somewhere in the hills, knowing there is somewhere to go. Through the steep hills and deep coastal forests, he saw a rock in the distance on the side of a mountain. It was unclear who or what has guided him there, whether it was destiny or just luck. As Harley climbed up the hill, the huge rock went closer and closer to him, until he was on it. 

On the last step of the climb, he could see what was Vancouver in the distance. A city that he has only heard of from the elders who has went outside of their village. Through stories and poems, Vancouver was described as a city with much more population than the village with people living in a much more difficult and adventurous life. It was not the life Harley wanted at least, so he never decided to see it himself until this day. Looking from the hills, he could see thousands of houses with glooming yellow lights. Not far from the main residential areas, were large factories with smokestacks burning and releasing gases every second. 

 

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven eight…." Harley counted the factories as his eyes reviewed the landscape below him. 

 

When he looked back at his village below the other side of the hill with a dozen houses and several lights, the comparison was beyond comprehension for Harley. With no industrialized factories and pollution, the people of his village lived a great life. He asked himself why the people in Vancouver wanted these loud and disruptive building near their living space. At the same time, the stars that was visible from his village vanished here from all the lights and smoke. From the smokestacks, Harley could see continuous clouds of smoke bursting into the skies, creating dark clouds covering the beauty above it. He could not understand why the people in the cities would want anything such as that and whether if these dark clouds were the ones creating the dark winters and hot summers. Harley decided to investigate himself, by one day going to Vancouver and finding out why the people there would want pollution in their area. 

At the same time, he had answer in his mind. Over the last few decades, the rapid expansion of industrialization in many parts of the world, such as the cities like Vancouver increasing their industrial activity. As a result of this, the use of fossil fuels became more frequent, especially the burning of them to create energy, while the deadly smoke was the byproduct of rapid expansion. Overall leading to the more extreme weathers and warmer climates around the northern hemisphere. However, there was also another idea in his mind. Perhaps industrialization might also be a good thing if everyone seems to support it. It could be that industrialization around the world has bought significant benefit to the people living in urban environments where goods and services produced by the factories are prioritizing them as customers. Meanwhile, the long term effect of industrialization on the environment has bought attention to those who did not benefit from the rapid development, leading to the misconception of people either believing that industrialization is completely unjustified and others thinking it is a beautiful intention brought to human civilization. 

In Harley mind, he believed that both of these statements could be correct. However, there must be one that is more accurate than the other, he thought. 

The crisp summer air with the sweat smell of lumber in the woods triggered Harley to sleep on the rock. After several hours, he woke up not remembering what he has done for a few moments. Unknown for how long he has slept. Harley decided to rush back to the village, his heartbeat was racing as he ran down the hill to only see the quiet village with everyone sleeping. Has he got down the hill, it was almost sunrise and he quickly went back to bed and pretended nothing happened to him. Unconsciously, Harley has embedded a deeper question about the climate of the village in his heart.  

 

"Harley! Wake up now! Or else you won't be getting breakfast today!" Harley's mom started yelling 

"Yes, I will very soon mom." Harley woke up frightened as he saw the sun out and almost over his head. 

On the breakfast table, he came to his parents and asked why the climate was making them stress. Harley's parents could not answer, they have not received enough education in their younger ages. They told Harley that these events were beyond their control and could not be resolved using the power of a single person. Like what the philosopher said many years ago, he wanted to do something extraordinary and create something that would change the village for the better. When he proposed this idea to his mother, he was advised to attend school. So he begged his mother to send him to school in Vancouver. But his mom did not directly answer him, the cost of tuition for a school in Vancouver is far beyond the financial ability of everyone in their village. For a long time, the education system of their people were based on storytelling and verbal education passed down in generations. The richness of oral traditions such as storytelling and practical skills in Indigenous education. Over thousands of years, the people in their village has developed a standard form of verbal teachings. The lack of interconnectedness between the people and the environment was Harley's mother's concern on the westernized Vancouver education system. She did not want him to obtain an education degree but also losing the traditional practices of their people such as fishing, hunting, and handcrafting. 

"You will receive perfect education here, Harley" his mother claimed

"I will never learned the solution to solve what is happening to our climate!" 

There was long pause, the words from Harley seemed to have ignited something in his mother memories. After several moments of silence, Harley's mother decided that it would be a hard decision for his family to make. She informed him that she will think about it for a couple days.

After days of pursuing her, she finally decided to use her life saving and sent Harley to a boarding high school institution in Hastings, Vancouver. Before Harley left, he was told to use this chance wisely as they were essentially bankrupt as most of their saving were used as school tuition. This made Harley believe he must use this opportunity wisely and make the best of this efforts to attend university after middle school. 

On the first day of this boarding school, Harley was introduced by a strange teacher who introduced him to the dorms and classrooms. In school, he told the mandatory courses of English, math, social sciences, sciences, and arts. However, this determination to seeking for change his village's climate did not change. In his first year of studies, Harley was barely passing the course as he did not have the prerequisites other students had in middle and elementary school. As he came home for summer break, his mother informed him that they could not afford him to fail school and it would be his last year in school if he had not achieved a scholarship. The pressure from family and the academics forced him to go back to Vancouver early. Harley decided to lock himself in the school library and achieve a scholarship by the end of next year. The hot Vancouver summer made the library dry and hot. After a whole day of studying, Harley would go on Hastings Ave and search for coke bottles around the street. By reselling them for the deposit fee, he was able to sustain himself by living on the couch of dorm rooms and going to the Catholic Church down the street every Sunday for a good meal. It became one of the best times of his life. During this period of time, he met with someone who would become his lifelong friend. He was also one of the Indigenous students in the grade, who shared many common interests with him. They shared the desire of finding the root cause to the environmental changes in their community and finding methods to overcome them. 

School in Vancouver was much less exciting compared to the traditional classrooms in Arrowhead Bay, where students would learn practical skills from the elders. The same day repeated in the boarding school from class to tests then break. It was repetitive and became less interesting for Harley. However, after the first semester of his second year, Harley was able to achieve perfect scores on all of his science courses and achieve a full scholarship for the next 3 years of his life at the boarding school. Immediately after receiving the scholarship, he spent a dollar on the nearby telephone pole to call his mother. A few seconds later, he heard he voice of his mother and told her the exciting news. Harley is now able to continue his education journey without any financial stress. This allowed to him to focus more on is academics to achieve his dream of becoming a scientist to find a solution to climate change. 

It was another hot summer in the city of Vancouver. Harley had just finished his final exam, anything was going the way he wanted. Later that afternoon, he started to pack up his belonging to leave the boarding school and return to his village until his acceptance into a university. In the past few months, he was able to apply to several local universities with the help of 

 

Later at the University of California, he was able to learn about the impacts of climate change on another region of the world. In California, wildfires has increased at a significant rate from year by year, creating vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a hotter temperature. This cycle has continued from 20 years ago, now the temperature in the summer are no longer safe for people to be outside for more than 1 hour. 

After a lecture class, his professor informed him that California was a beautiful place before all of the industrialization. In the past few decades, energy corporations has start building factories to burn fossil fuels to generate energy and other goods. Although it created employment in the region, the environment was significantly damaged. The pollution from these factories released a toxic chemical called carbon dioxide which is responsible for the higher temperature in the summer. This is because when greenhouse gases, which is a general term to describe gases that absorb heat such as carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it will trap the Sun's heat on the surface of the Earth and eventually causing an increase in temperature. Harley finally understood why the summers at Arrowhead Bay was getting hotter every year. His analysis on the rock many years ago was proven to be correct. The professor explained that it was not just the factories in Vancouver that created the carbon dioxide emissions and changing his village's climate. There are currently more than 4000 factories operating at the moment, creating emission every single minute. At the same time, the Earth's climate would be actually better off currently if it was only the factories that are creating emissions. There are many others sources of emissions, for example transportation after the adoption of personal vehicles. Growing crops and livestock actually create more emission than all of the transportation because of the time consumption and energy used to generate livestock. By now, Harley has realized that his reasoning to climate change in his village was just a small portion of what was to discover in the future, and there are much more problems to solve. 

 

 

 

 

That day he could not sleep, counting the stars from his window. He suddenly heard someone yelling in the distance. It was one of his classmates yelling that the school ordered an evacuation order. It was because a wildfire has been broken in the near forest, spreading at a growing rate as the wind is pushing it towards the school. During the execution, the school was informed that a hurricane was in the path of the fire which extended the speed of the fire towards the school. Harley had quickly packed his necessities and left the school. It was the last time he was able to come back. On the fleeing trip, Harley and his friends stayed at several hotels with not much money with him. The fire has burned the entire to school down, most of the students ended up to transfer to other schools. However, the root cause of this wildfire remained unknown. Although California's wildfire has been an ongoing threat for many years, there has never been a time when the fire has burned down the entire city. All of a sudden Harley nowhere to go. In the next few months, he arrived home by taking rides around the road north to Vancouver. 

On a cold September night, Harley received a mail from the university he was previously attending. After careful deliberation, the school decided to give the top 20% of student the opportunity to study in Geneva, Switzerland. Surprisingly, it happened to be the best environmental science in Europe. Harley was immediately given the opportunity to study at the finest university in the world. During his period in Switzerland, he was able to interact with many other scholars around the world studying climate change. Many of which were amazed by Harley's story of hoping to help rebuilt his community on a remote island. 

As time progressed, his time there came to an end. However, Harley has already developed a deep level of environmental knowledge and investigation skills. He was offered a high paying salary in Europe to help study the climate change effects in the Antarctic for the Swiss Government. He declined the offer to study the climate in his hometown. Many people in the school did not understand his decision, but Harley claimed: "It was my dream to solve the climate problems in my hometown, that is why I came here". 

He began his research by coming back to Arrowhead Bay, where he found Elder Throne, a respected knowledge keep of the local First Nations. He spoke of seasonal shifts on the weather, recounting how winter once brought deep snow and how salmon migrations now arrived weeks late. These phenomenons must have a reason to it, the elder claimed. 

"We believe that everything in the world is interconnected to all forms of life. We interpret the changes in the environment as a consequence of disturbing the balance in nature. We often see ourselves holding the responsibility and stewardship of the environment. At the same time, the wise usage of our natural resources will be critical to the overall wellbeing of the 

Harley understood something that he did not think of before. In the past, he has focused on the scientific perspective of climate change. However, the foundations of this event occurs because of the lack of respect and awareness given to the environment. Many people living in a urban setting enjoys the benefits of industrialization but focuses too little on the fundamental responsibilities of humans on the environment. 

This interaction with Elder Throne left Harley with an answer in his mind. For the next few weeks, he was been conducting research on water sample near Arrowhead Bay as well as other metrics to support his environmental claims. 

During his studies, the cause of climate change has been identified as the increasing greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. Since the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution in Europe started which transformed traditional energy usage of burning bioenergy such as trees to generate energy into the use of chemical or fossil fuel. Since the industrialization of Europe, there has been a significant increase in factories, especially in England, where the Industrial Revolution first begin. Although this revolution might be portrayed as a harm to society, it was actually powered by the discovery of many things. In 1776, James Watt discovered the steam engine, which allowed for the transformation from steam to energy. This not only made England the greatest industrial location but also allowed the discovery of North America lead by Columbus in 1653. Then in the next two hundred years, the discovery of oil and industrialization by John D. Rockefeller led to the wide spread use of this simple resource. 

However, it is not only the burning of fossil fuels that impact the climate. The growth of transportation such as trains, personalized vehicle, and agriculture. In Harley's studies, he discovered that the process of generating energy around the the world is responsible for around 73.2% of the entire global greenhouse gas emissions. Followed by that would actually be agriculture, especially livestock, the meat humans consume is created in an extremely energy inefficient process. As people usually only consume the parts of the meat, the energy used in the growth of bones and other organs are essentially wasted. At the same time, plants is a better alternative because of their feed conversion ratio (FCR), which measures the weight intake by an animal compared to weight grown. At the same time, animals drink almost identical amounts of water compared to a humans, making the efficiency of meat very low. 

In the recent years, the inventions of new methods of mining chemical fuel has increased the production of energy such as oil. In the past few decades, the United States of America has significantly increased its oil production after the mass adoption of shale oil, which is an unconventional type of oil produced from rock fragments and then using chemical procedures such as thermal dissolution to obtain it. 

 Meanwhile, many of the world has realized the harm of greenhouse gases on the climate. Many new forms of generating energy has been discovered. For example, nuclear power, solar, wind, hydro, and wave power. Although the transformation from traditional energy to renewable energy could take up to several decades, the world is slowly changing into a more climate friendly space. At the same time, more agreements regarding slowing down climate change has been made. For example, the Paris Agreement signed in 2016 marked a significant moment as almost every country in the world signed this agreement to control climate change. Following this agreement is the development of electric vehicles, which is aimed to eliminate the greenhouse gases gas-powered cars create. 

In the end, Harley's discovery helped the world become a better place for the future generation of humans by finding solutions to solve climate problems around the world and raising awareness for people to understand the importance of this matter. 

                                                                                                                                THE END

 

[swansont]

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