[I was initially trying to decide whether to focus my annual Year in Review series on heavy or light topics, but then I realized this was 2024—we had it all, from the serious to the surreal, the absurd to the awesome. So I’ll start with a couple tough subjects and move toward some happier ones. I’d love your end-of-year reflections as well!]
What is
there to say about the climate crisis in late 2024, you might reasonably ask, other
than a primal scream of sadness and terror and rage and etc. etc. etc.? I
wouldn’t disagree; the critical optimism I highlighted in this August
2021 Saturday Evening Post Considering History column is, shall we say,
trending more and more toward the critical side of that coin. In any case we
can’t and shouldn’t look away, so I couldn’t imagine creating a weeklong 2024
in Review series without including the climate crisis as a subject. But I also
wanted to use today’s post to highlight two prior blog posts to express the two
sides of this defining 21st century issue, at least as far as this AmericanStudier
is concerned:
1)
Asheville:
I haven’t had the chance to visit this famously beautiful North Carolina city
in the state’s mountainous Western region, so that post on native son Thomas Wolfe (and Wolfe’s demanding
and beautiful writings themselves) are my connection to Asheville. But that
didn’t lessen in the slightest my genuine horror and sadness at seeing what hurricane-
and climate crisis-produced flooding did
to that city and region earlier this year. I’m not sure how anyone can see
those stories and not feel compelled to do anything and everything to help
change this trajectory we’re on, and I’ve got one particularly inspiring model
for that work through my older son…
2)
Aidan:
In that Fall semester preview post, I briefly mentioned the Environmental Lit
course that Aidan is taking as part of his first semester at Vanderbilt. He’s
not only kicking as much ass as you would expect, but has enjoyed the course
sufficiently to add a Climate and
Environmental Studies Minor to his Civil Engineering Major. When I think
about the world that we are passing along to folks his (and my younger son Kyle’s)
age, well, the primal scream returns and intensifies. But if the optimism side
of the critical optimism concept has any chance with me these days, it’s
because of what Aidan and Kyle both are doing and fighting for in their educational,
professional, and personal lives and futures. Makes me that much more committed
to doing whatever I can, in whatever time I have left, to fight for that future
by their sides.
Next 2024
reflection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? What stands out from this decades-long year?
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