When writing about the upcoming Trump administration, many journalists have picked their copies of "1984" back up and looked to Orwell for guidance on what a thin-skinned president with the federal government at his command could do. I’ve turned to "Slaughterhouse-Five" instead, as I think we’re witnessing something more akin to a massacre than a government.
But as I re-read it, I noticed that one quote in particular hasn’t held up well. It comes in the semi-autobiographical first chapter, where Kurt Vonnegut describes a meeting with his publisher and tells him he’s writing an anti-war book. The publisher responds:
“Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?”
Vonnegut then narrates, “What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too.”
Science has progressed a bit since the 1960s. It turns out that it is very easy to melt glaciers and many people will die because of it. So it goes.
The science behind climate change has been summarized many times by writers far better and more informed than myself. International committees have put out several, if you can use Google and have an interest in learning.
Of course, you in all likelihood will not suffer the full force of climate change. There might be famine, yes, but the United States is already a wealthy and well-fed country. If you don’t give any thought to when or how you’ll eat now, you probably won’t in the future. There will be droughts that will hit some parts of the United States badly, but the country as a whole has large freshwater reserves in the Great Lakes and Mississippi River system. Some countries and regions will see wars over water, but there are no military powers capable of rivaling America nearby. And since Columbia is nowhere near the coast, you won’t be flooded out of your home. If anything, you’ll just be closer to the beach.
That’s not to say that climate change won’t be horrific for some people. Just probably not for you. Unless you already struggle to afford food, in which case your life is only going to get worse. Or if you’re reading this in Charleston and don’t have the money or desire to relocate. Or if you plan on moving out west after college, in which case water shortages will probably be a major part of your future.
In a nutshell, that’s one of America’s biggest problems with climate change. The country as a whole will suffer less than most others, and the people who face the brunt of it tend to be impoverished or living on the coast. Both groups routinely vote for the party that isn’t nominating the Exxon CEO to the cabinet and appointing a climate change denier to head the Interior and Energy departments. So there’s not much more they can do.
So in that regard, climate change is emblematic of the problems in America caused by a narrow majority of typically white, typically middle-class or higher Americans in the interior voting against the interests of literally everyone else. They (and probably you) won’t suffer that much, but almost everyone else on the planet will pay the price.