Rough Draft of Final Paper

Julie Sweeney

GVPT409Q

Future World

            So I chose to do a fictional world but I am going to back in and tie in more concepts from the readings and from the lecture slides to relate it back to globalization and class. I will also be breaking up the paragraphs more and fixing all the grammar mistakes. My further explanations will include more on environmental degradation, international organizations, and government surveillance.

            “We tried to warn you. We asked for your help. We knew this would happen. But you would not listen to what we had to say. You would not work together to solve this problem. We suffered because everyone was looking out for their own and no one wanted to sacrifice for the greater good. Now my people are without a home. I am a refugee. I am in someone else’s home. I am struggling along with the people of this country to find a safe source of food and water. I dream of going back, back to my old life. But I cannot return home. My home has been destroyed. My land is gone forever. My people’s island is underwater. There is nothing left to do. I am a climate refugee.” I pitched this idea to my editor and he looked at me unimpressed. “Violet, this just is not the story we are looking for. You should stick with covering the local news.” “But these people are out there. It is our journalistic job to report on their struggles and spread the word. This is going to affect us locally and become local news” I fought back. “I do not think this is a story we need to cover” he shot back at me. “These people need their voices heard. The international community is failing them, the need a face and a media outlet. And someone needs to investigate the bubbles. How could communities of rich people be living contained in a certain area and still have plenty of access to food and water? They are so separated from the rest of the population, you have to wonder if the super-rich could help or even care about the rest of us. For the last fifty years the world has been getting worse. And right now you and I are fine but what happens to us as the environmental degradation continues and grows. People are using beyond their means and are not heeding the warnings we’ve seen.” I argued. “The owner of this company lives in one of the bubbles. If you value your job you will not bring the people in the bubbles into this. I will let you write one story about how the local community can come together to aid in environmental disasters but that is it.” He said. I nodded and left his office. I was not letting go of this story that easily. I was convinced there was something more to these bubble communities. I would find out the truth.

The situation in the world is deplorable. It makes me feel obligated to create a more open dialogue and create change. The climate catastrophe has only divided us further. I left my home long ago to pursue my career. My family stayed behind on the island I grew up on. Eventually they were forced to make new arrangements when the agriculture suffered. They could barely afford to eat. The country could no longer produce enough to sustain its people. Prices rose dramatically. The agriculture was not the only thing to suffer. They experienced more extreme weather patterns. The hurricanes and thunderstorms further destroyed the agriculture, the island, and the people’s mood. The sea levels had been slowly rising throughout history. But they were too high now. Nearly the entire island is underwater. And it is not the only island that is suffering and it is not the only one that will experience this problem. Families will be ripped apart. Homes and lives will be destroyed. And no one will be able to return.

To make matters worse, the rest of the world sat there and failed to act. No one could reach an agreement to stop the crisis. Now these states are forced to welcome us in as refugees. Many people on the island refused to give up hope and stayed behind. They did not want to leave their home behind. They waited and waited, hoping the world would reach some major international agreement but that never happened. No country was willing to take responsibility for the climate catastrophe the world was experience. No country was willing to suffer economically in order to help out someone else. States were hesitant to help out because it was in their nature to give up their own resources to preserve the future. My people did all they could to save the island but in the end it was an international problem and it needed an international solution.

The entire international community did not fail these people. The UNEP tried to lobby for their rights. The UNHCR tried to redefine the definition of a refugee. This was not an easy task for them. It is hard enough to get states to see climate change as a legitimate negative actor. They had to change the existing legal connotations of refugee status to include those affected by environmental disaster.[1] After much opposition, they were successful in this. But in last ten years the United Nations has lost much of it international recognition and power in the world. The UN is credited for the outbreak of war in the Middle East. No official reports have been released as to the cause. There is plenty of speculation including nuclear weapons threats, terrorist groups, desertification, and water scarcity. But the cause of the war is not important, what is important is that the international community blamed the UN for failing to stop this dispute and for failing to facilitate international peace. After that incident, many countries stopped supporting the UN and its missions while others simply pulled their delegation.

I gave my spiel to anyone that would listen to what I had to say. I wanted my story to be heard. Sure, people knew the planet was worse off than it used to be but I was determined to give this story a face. I thought it would be harder to ignore if people had to actually see those who suffered. The old man next to me on the bus asked how my day was going. I’m sure he instantly regretted it. He was clearly making polite conversation but I was still annoyed with my editor. We discussed our state and its future. This escalated into me ranting, “If things continue as they are, we will all suffer from this climate disaster. Today, some states are worse than others. We all caused this environmental degradation. And therefore we all need to fix it. There are so many people who could be considered non-traditional refugees. The problem will get worse and more countries will be affected. Anyone might become a climate refugee. A climate refugee is a person who has to cross borders because a secure livelihood can longer be maintained in their traditional homeland because of ecological factors like climate change, desertification, natural disasters, water shortages or any other environmental threats.[2] My goal is to share this story with the world. My goal is to make the world care about something more than the economy. My goal is to speak in front of the United Nations Environment Programme or the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. I want them to do more and urge the international community. At this point the world needs to come together. We need a strong unifying international actor. The situation will only worsen, we need to undo years of damage.” He smiled and nodded at me. He was just being polite. This man was humoring me. We both knew I would never get to speak to the UN. And even if I did it is unlikely they would be able to make a difference.

I spent the next few days interviewing the locals. I wanted to find out how much information the public knew. And I wanted to know if the public cared about the environmental situation. I was incredibly disappointed in my findings. Most people had some idea of the environmental degradation but very few knew the extent of the damage. People here were only seeing the increases in the food and water prices. They were completely unaware of the struggles many people were experiencing in the world today. Most did not know about the sinking of islands, and the real reason for the increases in food prices. The climate catastrophe had led to different effects on agriculture in the different climates across the world. Extreme weather patterns have potential to destroy crop yields. Climate change will cause drier soils, soil erosion,   and limit the time range in which crops can grow which will in turn affect crop yields. [3] Aside from activist groups, it appeared most of these people would only be concerned if it had a major impact in their daily lives. It is not that they did to care but it just was not as important to them as the future of the economy, national security, or crime. I remembered my conversation with my editor Sal. I had to wonder if people here barely knew or cared about the environmental situation, what did people in the bubbles think of all this? I mean they were separated off from the rest of society. Bubbles had their own schools, businesses, and hospitals. They made it so a person would never have to leave if they did not want to. The media would barely cover this story in my town, I could not imagine the version they were getting in the bubbles. I decided it was time I find out. I was going to investigate these bubbles and I was going to do my story.

I set off on my journey to the closet bubbles. These towns were isolated and took me a few days to get there. I continued questioning people. And I found that the further I got from the coast, the less people knew. The isolated rural areas were out of the loop. These people were not experiencing any of the immediate impacts of the climate catastrophe. I could not believe people were unaware of the problem. It was as if someone was purposefully keeping this information from them. (Will explain what exactly these bubbles are like and what their purpose seems to be at this point)

The bubbles had a high tech security system complete with guards who were watching the entrance all hours of the day. The rumors were true it appeared leaving and entering the bubble was not an easy task. I walked up to the entrance and showed the guard my press passes. “What is your official business in bubble 0115?” the guard asked me. I took a deep breath, smiled, and lied “I’m covering a story about maintenance of communities within the bubbles. I am supposed to communicate with local residents in order to write up a report for headquarters. All the bubbles are owned and maintained by the Spiro Corporation. They need an informed report in order to set next year’s budget.” The guard looked at me skeptically. But let me in anyway. Before I was allowed to enter, he pulled out an object that looked like a stamp and pressed it into my right arm. I was not sure exactly what it was but I could tell he had put something in me. I was aware of my surroundings and did not want to draw any more attention to myself. So, I decided to lay low. I did not want to risk being caught. I wanted to uncover whatever they were hiding in the bubble.

I took a few days to observe my new surroundings. I noticed only one car ever exited and entered. It was a food supply truck. It seemed to constantly bring in new food supplies. The stores had an abundance of food and water. There prices seemed artificially low compared to the rest of the world. This made me suspicious. I turned to the woman who was browsing the shelf next to me. “Crazy how these prices have gone down so much” I said to her. She looked confused, “What do you mean they have always been this price?” “Really? I just thought with the world wide agriculture harvest shortage that prices would be high everywhere” I replied. She looked at me even more confused than before. “Are you feeling ok? What agriculture problem are you talking about? We have always had an abundance of food here.” She said. Now I looked confused. The news had been covering the worldwide price increases across the globe. Food shortages were worse in some areas of the world but the repercussions in prices were felt everywhere. As this lady walked away, I could not help but wonder why she had no idea what I was talking about. I made a mental note of this something was just was not adding up here.

I decided to move onto phase two of my investigation. I wanted to talk to the locals more and get their opinions on things. I had to be discreet. This will be further developed but the main character will discover that everyone living inside the bubble has no idea of what is currently going on in the world or what has been happening for the last 50 years or so. Discuss the police state and government surveillance which is represented by the bubble community. Discuss the undermining of the international government and the failure to fix things. Main character will team up with someone else in order to enlighten the people about what has been happening in the world this whole time. This will start the transition in to talking about how the world became what it is today and what exactly the environmentally degradation looks like, and what the lack of a strong international community look like.

I am planning on explaining the issues in the world today that are leading to climate change and how the world failed to come up with an adequate solution to the problem. Problems related to what causes climate change, the failure of the international community, and rise of the bubble communities. (Multiple pages explaining this)

The story will end with a re-established international organization that is hosting a conference in order to work on tackling the environmental issues facing the world. As well as exposing the all the bubble communities to the truth of what has been happening in the world. Relate this back to Conca’s problematique. “The transnational character of so many environmental problems…paves the way for new, inherently transnational identity constructs.  The emergence of global environmental norms challenges the very distinction between what is domestic and what is international”[4]

I will fix my citations to make them all uniform…

                                                 

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[1] 33 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 350 (2009)  Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees; Docherty, Bonnie; Giannini, Tyler

[2] Betsey Hartmann, Rethinking Climate Refugees and Climate Conflict: Rhetoric, Reality and the Politics of Policy Discourse (Massachusetts: Journal of International Development, 2010), 235.

[3] Olesen, Jørgen E., and Marco Bindi. "Consequences of Climate Change for European Agricultural Productivity, Land Use and Policy." European Journal of Agronomy: 239-62. Accessed May 3, 2015.

[4] Ken Conca, Old States in New Bottles? The Hybridizaiton of Authority in Global Environmental Governance