Fiction: Setting the Stage

by Michelle Lasley

Michelle Lasley is a mother, wife in Pacific Northwest learning to balance green dreams with budget realities.

March 29, 2011

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Polar bears on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean...

Image via Wikipedia

So much was the same, yet so much different. Technology still whizzed by and people always had a hard time getting used to it. Not unlike with the introduction of cars to iPads and smaller phones and personal computers. The older generations always thought it was moving to fast, and the younger generations embraced it until they turned into the older the generation and wanted it to slow down too.

In America, it was still Right vs. Left. In Europe, social taxes were still higher. There was a new blend of third world countries with whom to pawn of the labor the richer countries didn’t want to complete. There was still waste. There was still overconsumption. There were problems of years before that technology couldn’t solve because they got worse, out of hand, or it wasn’t time yet. There were problems of the past, though that technology could (like the never ending cycle of waste to nuclear energy, that surprised most everyone).

The polar ice caps were simply a sea now.The Amazon Forest was burned 20 years ago for one final farm-land push. Earthquakes had shaken parts of California loose where Los Angeles and San Fransisco were now islands. Florida was half the size it used to be along with the rest of the Eastern Seaboard. The Netherlands receded in-land. Italy was half its size. South Africa was no more.

Polar Bears had been extinct for 30 years. Most “tropical” birds died out before the Amazon Burn.

New species were born to take their place. We had new trees, new “natives” as they had been dubbed. As the climate changed, so did the surrounding environment. Desertification hit strange areas and caught people by surprise. No one expected the Great Lakes to dry up, but they did. With most of the belts around the equator looking more dessert and less tropical, and the seas where the polar ice caps used to be looking more tropical and less frigid – life certainly changed.

The neigh-sayers forgot that all creatures are resilient in their own way. They wanted to put so much fear in the hearts of men to change, they simply forgot that we can survive and we need to embrace our knowledge in order to do so. What they wanted though, was simple recognition that we must be stewards of this place we call home. That recognition came with the Amazon Burn.

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