Don't Look, it's Flooding!

 Poor Leo, water is evidently not his friend.

As avid a Titanic fan as my roommate forced me to be (at gunpoint on a Tuesday of her choice in February), I was entirely unaware of Leonardo DiCaprio's commitment to climate change. Much like many of the skeptics at the beginning of the film Before the Flood (which is free to watch on YouTube, FYI), it initially struck me as odd that an actor found himself so entwined with a highly scientific cause.

But the more I thought about it, the more a celebrity spokesperson for the planet made a twisted sort of sense. People follow their favorite media personalities with cult-like loyalty, actors are somehow experts on diet and nutrition, and public presidential candidate endorsements in 2024 soared to an all-time high in attempts to sway voters. 

And the truth - for better or worse - is that it works. The average person believes the average famous person, not the expert scientists. I'm making an assumption here, but I may as well since authority can come from anywhere.

Watching the documentary, the scene that stood out to me the most was the conversation Leo had with Sunita Narain from the Centre for Science and Environment in Dehli, India. The film focuses on climate challenges and solutions on a large, industrialized scale in mostly developed countries, but Leo's trip to India sheds light on the tangible challenges faced by the poor population in India. Millions of people live without power at all, surviving by burning cow dung. To that person, the global harm of fossil fuels is secondary to their day-to-day living necessities. 

Dr. Narain tells it like it is, begging Leo to understand that America must lead the charge to sustainable energy because we have the means to do it. Who in India can afford to invest in alternative energy sources when access to electricity is already sparse? When fields of crops are flooding in a matter of days?

"If it was that easy, I would have really liked the U.S. to move toward solar, but you haven't. So, let's put our money where our mouth is... Your consumption is really going to put a hole in the planet. We need to put the issue of lifestyle and consumption at the center of climate negotiations," Dr. Narain shares with Leo. He's eager to agree with her. 

Later in the film, Leo chats with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who essentially reveals that 100 Tesla-style gigafactories producing power-storing batteries could effectively transition the entire world to solar energy. Tesla currently has three completed gigafactories in Nevada, Austin, and Berlin, with a plan to start construction on a fourth in Nuevo León, Mexico, in 2026. The gigafactories range in construction costs from $4 billion to $10 billion. With a humble net worth of $402 billion, the one thing Musk can't afford is to build the remaining 96 gigafactories on his own dime in the next few years. 

He could, however, easily fund at least a few gigafactories each year. But he's quick to defer construction responsibilities to other developed countries and large industrial companies. Because as Dr. Narain pointed out, just because we can, in theory, do something, that doesn't necessarily mean that we will. 

Anyway, this whole film gets me thinking about another movie DiCaprio starred in back in 2021, a Netflix creation called Don't Look Up. 

The basic premise, if you haven't seen it, is that a planet-killing comet is headed toward Earth. DiCaprio and Lawrence are scientists who point out this unfortunate fact and embark on a sort of media campaign to inform the public and urge the government into action.

The film is an obvious satire on the crises of the world and the inaction of the American government. Spoilers, but the people in power learn that this asteroid has trillions of dollars in mineable resources, and instead of blowing it up to save the planet, they opt to risk worldwide destruction to harvest the comet's materials. 

It doesn't end well.

The truth can be terrifying and debilitating, especially when it's entirely our own fault. Humans hide from shame. We avoid the dark parts of our own personal lives, so it's only following pattern for legislators to avoid owning up to their own climate-centric mistakes, bribes, and corruption. 

Films and documentaries like these shove our heads underwater and force us to recognize the major consequences of our reality. We either swim or we choke, and at the rate our cities are becoming oceans, swimming is sounding pretty good.

Week One: FWNC

I have to confess something.

As much as I enjoy the outdoors (in theory), like Abbey and his snakes, I unfortunately possess a deep fear of the wild as well. I'm the first to flinch if I hear a sharp sound and the quickest to freeze when I come face to face with most creatures. 

I'm actually deathly afraid of birds - the longer the neck and larger the beak, the more horrifying (because those are basically dinosaur descendants). I'm allergic to practically everything from oak to cedar to pollen to most kinds of grass. I certainly am not the type to hold a semi-domesticated alligator or usually even one to toss food pellets at a herd of bison. (If you ask me, that fence really needs to be thicker.)

So I knew from the get-go that this course would present a major challenge to me. I'm not a natural adventurer. But last week, during our first trip to the nature center, I promised myself I would commit to whatever task I was given. No fear, just work.

While I threw food over the wire fence in the general direction of the bison, I tried not to imagine all the gory ways the group of us could be trampled by a hoard of them. As we laid sweet potato pieces by the prairie dog burrows, I avoided the thought of the ground crumbling beneath us and exposing the deep tunnels of the earth. Writing it out sounds so dramatic, but I'll call it creative since my mind will conjure disaster anyway.

Oddly enough, I was looking forward to the piercing privet and ability to get moving in the cold. No unknown imaginary danger in a prickly plant. After picking my blade of choice, I began digging into the smaller privet tangles along the inner fence. My fingers were freezing, and some of the vines required more upper body strength than I can flaunt as a soccer player, but somehow the "grunt" work went by entirely too quickly.

For the first time in a while, my mind was quiet. There was no music in my headphones, no phone glowing in my face, no heartbeat ringing in my ears. It was a relief. A relief. 

I found myself incredibly thankful for the blank slate of my brain for that blissful, difficult hour. It's so rare to find quiet moments like that one. We forget to build it into our days. 

It reminded me of this experiment my Communication and Character professor ran on us last year. She had us sit in front of an art piece, something simple and pretty - a nature scene. She set a timer for fifteen minutes and simply demanded, "Look." For all of a minute, the class manages it. Then we begin to fidget. Our bodies shift in our seats, our minds conclude we've seen and processed every detail in the painting, and our thoughts go gallivanting.

People are itching for their phones, for their voices, or even for the mediocrity of the whiteboard behind them. But we look. And look. And look. And eventually, we understand. 

This introductory week was sort of like that experiment. An act under-practiced, a world unappreciated. Adventurer or not, I can put in the work for at least fifteen minutes, until I understand, until it all makes sense, until the fear bleeds into quiet, and the privet piles up behind me.

Five Plant Pics

My attempt at identifying 5 plants in photos...

Dwarf nandina, a foliage found outside of Tandy Hall, seems to be correctly depicted. The browning leaves of the second plant, however, seem to have tricked the app into believing the photo shows Williams rhododendron, a pink flowered bush. That being said, perhaps it will bloom into pink buds.

Call me crazy, but I didn't know this wasn't a plain old palm tree. Turns out, a cabbage tree is not a plant that sprouts cabbage, but is in fact a breed of palm tree. With so much love, I don't think the tree outside of the Bass building is a Socotra dragon tree (which sort of looks like an umbrella). 

The pretty flowers across all the soil beds on campus are known as wild pansies, and one bonus bush with red berries is evidently a Golden St. John's wort. I'm betting against that one personally, since the plant's main characteristic is bright yellow flowers that this bush sorely lacks.

Quick Pictures

 Per our post-class instructions...

1. 

This is my front yard. On the left is my grass, the natural, dying, and weed-filled
yard that suffered a cold winter. On the right is my neighbor's lawn, which has
been ripped out and replaced with turf. The "natural" is not quite as uniform or pretty,
but we joke about the "turf war" on our street, waiting until it
all looks straight out of The Lorax.

2.

Bonus: In theory, someone is supposed to cut our grass.
In actuality, no one does, so little dandelion shoots pop up constantly,
turning from butter yellow to white puffs of good luck wishes.