Environmental Literature

“ One hundred and fifty years ago , the monster began,  this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. Villages grew into towns, towns into cities. And people began to live  on  the earth rather than  within  it. ”  - Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls This showed me how humans became separated from nature.  The monster is a reference to the pollution and how it came to be. The industrialization age brought pollution, disease, consumerism, materialism, egoism, and many more.  It spread through the world like a plague. It kills our planet just as it kills us but the separation that we created gives us the ability to ignore it. People stopped looking at the sky looking away from all the smoke and pollutants that continue to harm us. Instead of living "

"Its not worth thinking about them, Noria. They didn't think about us, either."  - Memory of Water  This quote caught my attention the second I read it. The main character of the book, Noria, was wondering more about humans before the severe climate change. Her best friend, Sanja, tells her not to because we never though of them. This quote reminded me that all of the decisions we make today, affect the people of tomorrow. The consequences of climate change we face in the present are caused by all of the world's decisions leading up to today. I believe our purpose for living is to contribute to society in a way that will create a better future for later generations. The quote made me reflect on all of our decisions and come to the conclusion that we might not be serving our purpose. We have neglected our purpose and replaced it with money. I only hope we don't get to a day when we can feel the climate change severely and won't be able to do anything about

"It was beautiful and still, a wild and lonely place. Through the green and yellow treetops below us I could see the water of one of the ponds sparkling in the sun. I got the idea that my eyes- our eyes- were the first ever to see it. Yet that was not true, for as we descended into the valley, a deer suddenly appeared in the trees ahead and went bounding off down the slope. There were wild animals there, and I wondered if they even suspected that outside these walls of mountains there were cities and roads and people." - Robert C O'Brien Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM It is a nice and simple description of a wild nature scene that made me feel as if nature can be a beautiful unknown world separate from ours. This makes me think about all the numerous instances when humans have conquered nature and destroyed it for their own purposes. All of the environments we have taken down will never be experienced by anyone ever again. It can be good for parts of nature to be undi