Save The Whales, Screw The Shrimp: The Issue of Climate Change

Ever since my freshman year of high school I wondered why the debate about climate change being real or not was even a debate. Us humans have seen climate change happen throughout the years because we are the cause of it, so what’s there to debate? Climate change is real, and action must be done.

After reading Joy Williams essay Save The Whales, Screw the Shrimp, Williams uses rhetorical strategies to catch the reader’s attention on an important issue, she uses repetition “you just want, and want, and want” to get the reader to have the word “want” in their head and writes in second person “it’s not my fault that nature is a mess, it’s yours” to get the reader to know that she is specifically talking to you. Williams is trying to inform and persuade us readers to be more aware of our environment and what we should do to help improve our environment. Williams explains that’s “Nature becomes a scenery, a prop” because we build on the environment around us for our own benefit, not thinking about the consequences and risks that can affect us years later. In Williams essay she is so blunt on her opinion that people “don’t even take pleasure in looking at nature” because when people look at photos and say they feel sad or bad, there is no actual emotion evoked. Williams believes that humans don’t appreciate nature as it should be. We don’t take action in trying to fix what we see, instead we state the problem and that’s it. Williams also argues that ecological crises are not “resolved” by politics but “by culture and character and a deep change in personal consciousness is needed” politics cannot solve this issue, because its not a political issue, it’s a worldwide issue that is meant for everyone on Earth who cares about the issue to help improve the environment we live in.

Relating to Williams wanting to take action on improving the environment, a video about climate change called Why Humans are so Bad at Thinking About Climate Change by director Andy Murdock, Murdock features a Visiting Researcher from UCLA, M. Sanjayan that pointed out something that really stands out for anyone who believes climate change is an issue that need to be fixed. Sanjayan at (0:33) states that “we need to change the way we talk about climate change”. He believes that people who talk about how bad climate change is should step up and take action on fixing the problem rather than only talking about it and not really doing anything to help. In a study from UCLA they found that “social pressure encourages consumers to save energy”. UCLA researchers stated that it has been effective because in 2016 “Opower was able to generate equivalent of 2 terawatt-hours of electricity”. Proving that taking action in the problem actually helps, in this case consumers were able to decrease the amount of energy they use at home. Too much energy is bad for our environment because of the burning fossil fuels causing tons of CO2 in our atmosphere.

Earth contributes to our lives everyday giving us humans a place to live, food, air, and basically everything we need to survive. In order for us to survive we need those things, so in return both Murdock and Williams want us to focus on the importance of nature. Help the environment and appreciate it every day and take care of it to keep those things to survive.

Works Cited

1. Murdock, Andy. April 19, 2017. Why Humans Are So Bad at Thinking About Climate Change. University of California. Link: https://youtu.be/Z9gQLELtbhg
2. Williams, Joy. 2001. Save The Whales, Screw the Shrimp