Horgan Seminar Blog

       "My mom said that the government made up climate change for money," my first-grade best friend Molly remarked to me, standing in front of her living room TV, staring unknowingly at Fox news. "God would never really let something like that happen." She was confident in her words. I, however, was not. While lucky enough that my parents relied on news outlets other than Fox, I didn't have the luxury of a religious upbringing, so I was unable to wield conservative media's blind faith shield against anxieties of the world ending in a big ball of fire- that's what I thought global warming was as a child, that one day everything would get too hot and simply combust, flames engulfing me and everything I loved. Once I was dead, I would spend an eternity surrounded by even more fire. Molly also taught me that. She recommended I start sleeping over every Saturday so I could easily accompany her to church every Sunday… 'or else.' She was a really kind...

  “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. The world is doomed and climate change is going to kill us all,” he said, his words poorly enunciated between bites of his Happy Meal. We were at a debate tournament, the topic was covering whether the US should sign some foreign policy treaty on the law of the sea. So much time had been spent constructing elaborate cases for both sides of the topic, but roughly we ended up with profits on one side and stopping deep sea drilling on the other. After hours of arguing everywhere from “the United States will destroy the ocean with overfishing” all the way to “well actually, oil fracking isn’t that bad,” and back to “we can’t fight climate change without money!,”  we were left with the scraps of what truth we might actually hold. When you are forced to look at both sides, and not only look, but go between believing each side enough for an hour and change in order to win a round, you end up with not much personal preference left....

Krishant Putrevu If you find yourself on social media as often as people my age have, you might find yourself constantly coming across the term “doom scrolling”. We scroll and scroll through pessimistic pieces of media that do nothing but feed a downward spiral into hopelessness. “Doom Scrolling” encapsulates that spiral, being defined as a constant scrolling through articles and media that hold bleak futures for the human race. Posts whizz past us painting a landscape of wars, poverty, disease, for posterity but none of these things are necessarily set in stone. The interesting thing to note is that with the many volatile events going on in the world today, much of the news that conveys objective information ultimately comes to bleak conclusions. Physical oceanographer Professor Phil Orton  brings to my attention the absolute prevalence of this pessimistic outlook on the way we report on climate change as a whole. And that gets me thinking: how does the overly pessimistic view o...

Armen Berenson Professor John Horgan HST-401 March 22, 2023                            Image produced with assistance from the program DALLE-Mini Should we be Losing our Heads Over Climate Change? We live in the golden age of information with uninterrupted access to media and communication. The internet and social media have revolutionized life in the developed world. Still, they have also put us in an unsavory position where we are perpetually exposed to news, good or bad.  Harmful practices take place all around us, from individuals driving cars to industries burning tons of coal to medical facilities using thousands of watts day and night, though. Some of these harmful practices are also necessary. Practices like commuting a long way for work only became possible with the invention of the automobile, which runs on fossil fuels and emits carbon dioxide (and in the recent past, lead...

  Richael Lamendola  Professor Horgan  HST 401  22 March 2023 When Motion Picture Becomes Real World From 2012 to Twister to The Day after Tomorrow , the movie industry has kept you running back to theaters time and time again for your fair share of end-of-the-world natural disaster thrillers. Maybe you find comfort knowing that our world is safe and sound, while the fictional Earth goes up in flames on the cinema screen in front of you. Or maybe you like the sense of control of being able to experience a natural disaster without actually experiencing a natural disaster. But how would your enjoyment transform if I told you that the end of the world might not be very different from the fictional catastrophe unfolding in theaters? Within the last 50 years, the number of weather-related natural disasters has increased by a factor of five. As reported by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), “a disaster  related to a weather, climate or water hazard occ...