Brody W.

Topic: Ocean pollution's effect on fish

I’m a scavenger. I don’t even know my own name, my origin, my family, nothing. Some call me Rune, so I’ve decided to go with that. Today is October 27th, 2168. We have insane technology that can power almost anything. But instead of using our tech for good, we use it on weapons such as firearms, bombs, armor, aircrafts, and ships. The Earth is changing. There is massive pollution, no one throws their trash in the trash can anymore; they just dump it in the ocean, and they’ve been doing that since 2078. I can’t even remember the last time anyone was able to swim in the oceans. There has been so much war and chaos, over this tech. Thousands of species of fish are becoming extinct because of bomb test radiation and dumping trash in the oceans, and no one really cares about it, but I do.

I found some tech under a scrapyard, and I’m trying to use it to get rid of the pollution in the oceans. I have had many failed experiments; one resulted in my arm getting blasted off. Luckily, I made a prosthetic. (I’m a pretty good engineer myself.) Anyway, I’m currently working on some fixes to my machine, and it just might work! According to my calculations, this machine will melt pollution into thin air, without harming any of the sea life. Hopefully, when I’m done, I and everyone else will enjoy the ocean like we used to.

The sun is rising, my edits are complete, and my machine is fully functional. Time to test it. I hop in my speeder and drive to the beach. I park 1000 feet from the entrance, get out of my speeder, and sneak past the guards. These guards were put here recently, about 10 years ago, because too many people were breaking in to swim after the tragedy. I make it to shore.

This is it! I think to myself. I turn on the machine and use it on a plastic bottle, and it melts until it disappears. It works! I use it on all sorts of trash and I melt so much that I can step in the water; it’s cold. This is amazing, I think. I see a fish, and I zap it. No effect. It actually works! I go into the water deeper until it reaches my knees. Luckily, I made my machine water-proof (I already tested that before and it works). Now, to test its full potential, I activate the Turbo switch. Hopefully now every water molecule will be cleansed. It blasts and the entire ocean glows, and then it stops. I can see the bottom of the ocean. It’s so clear. Waves are starting to form. Waves! I didn’t know they existed; I thought they were a myth. I don’t know how to react, and they swallow me up. I see a fish, and I have this feeling inside me that I have never felt before. I feel... good, like I just changed the world. Life is so much better now.

The guard notices me, but does not pursue me. He justs stares in confusion. As I step towards him, knowing that I will be arrested, he justs looks at me and confusingly asks, “What did you do?”

Anxiously, I respond with, “I removed the pollution, sir.”

“How?” he asks.

“With this.” I show him my machine. He looks at my machine, and back at the ocean. I look too. And I see something that I have only seen in paintings, heard in stories, and imagined in dreams. I notice that the sun is up, and the ocean is glistening as the sun reflects and sparkles off the water. We just stare as we hear the waves crashing. It feels so refreshing. The guard takes off his helmet, and he just stares at the ocean. He sees what I’m seeing. As we stare into the ocean, I start to wonder: who would ever want this to go away?

Tor G.

Topic: Cattle farming's effect on global warming

As I swam up to my iceberg I had two things on my mind: seals and sleep.

As the world gets hotter, it doesn’t only get worse near the cattle farms, but also in other areas like Antarctica with this polar bear. With all the cows burping and farting (methane gas), it just makes matters worse than they already are.

As I swam up to my iceberg on the second day, I noticed that it was smaller than it had been the day before. When I surfaced, I saw that all the other icebergs were almost all gone. What was happening? I was so worried that I went to my friend to check on him, and when I got there he was sitting on a sorry excuse for iceberg. I asked what was happening, and he said, “The ice is melting and we need to move, but we won’t be able to hunt seals if we do.” As I swam away from his iceberg I had two things on my mind: sleep and food.

However, this story is not over: All over the world people are frantically trying to cut down on CO2 emissions: not using cars, not burning fossil fuels, and reducing their carbon footprint. Even after all of this work and all this effort, they still don’t see that the BIGGER problem is cow burps and farts that hold 23 times more heat than CO2 does. You might be wondering what's so bad about CO2 and methane. Well, let me educate you. Methane and CO2 are both greenhouse gases. That means that they trap heat, and if that is in the atmosphere, that's making the world hotter and hotter every day. This leads to melting the ice. Polar bears and many other animals need ice, and if it isn’t there they will die.

Here I was, swimming away from my home, no idea where I was going and not to mention I don’t know if I will be able to catch enough food. I might even have to swim back to sea to hunt seals when I can’t catch land prey. As I stepped out of the water, oblivious of what was happening to the world, I went to the usual place we go when we go to land.

But polar bears will just adapt, right? No. In winter, polar bears migrate to the sea ice to hunt seals so they can gain weight so that in spring they can make up for the amount of prey they don’t catch. If they can’t, they will die. This is all the effect of cows and the fact that people can't live without meat. All of this can be solved by a methane tax that would make you have to pay more to have livestock.

As I was swimming back to the sea I had only one thing on my mind: Where did my iceberg go?

Josh S.

Topic: Global warming

Remember. Come on, come on. Remember. Where am I? Who am I? All the things that escaped my memory. There was a heavy, painful throbbing in my head. Why? Why was my head hurting? Did I fall? So dark. So cold. I shivered and started to feel around. Suddenly there was a cold metallic feeling at the tips of my fingers. The cold was almost painful, kind of like a frozen knife. Felt like a metal workspace, though. I slid my hand around and touched slimy cold oil. Just then, memories came flooding back to me like a wave at sea. Some kind of flashback, I thought. Oil building, coworkers, and family.

A thought appeared: “Your name is Adam, and you were contributing to something very bad. It’s called global warming.” What had just happened? That wasn’t my thought! As I tried to calm down, I noticed the air change from freezing to humid. Why? Just a moment ago it had been freezing, so why was it hot now? There must be an exit somewhere. Like maybe a trapdoor. So let’s try to find the key.

I started to walk on all fours. A couple of steps, and the third step on my hand was a key. I knew it was a key because one of the pegs stabbed me in the hand. I tightened my grip on the key. Now I just needed to find the trapdoor. It probably has a ladder below it, so I’d better find it. I started walking and what do you know, I hit a wooden ladder. Found a rung and started climbing. All of a sudden, bam! My head hit the lock for the trapdoor. The pain in my head worsened. I pulled the key out and put it in the keyhole. Heard the sweet “click” of the lock, for I had turned the key. Pushed the trapdoor up, and light came flooding in. I looked back into the previously dark room. It was a bunker. Looked like someone had been there with me, caring for me, and it looked like maybe I had been in a coma. I climbed out. Didn’t want to think about where the person that was caring for me was now.

I looked to the right. It was a desert. I looked to the left. I spotted a city and started walking towards it. For a while I kept a good pace, but I started to get thirsty. I was two thirds of the way there when I got a little light headed. When I got to the city, I was stumbling.

“I needed water and fast,” I thought to myself. I looked around. Almost half the city was flooded, there were no animals in sight, and the city looked as though it had been hit by the biggest earthquake ever.

“I’d better find a food place,” I thought. I stumbled away to a nearby Burger King. When I got there, my legs started walking on their own. I reached behind the counter and grabbed a plastic water cup. I walked to the water dispenser and got some water. My hand raised the cup to my mouth, and the frosty water poured in my mouth. I walked out.

“I want to see what happened to the city, so I should get to a high building,” I thought. I spotted a tall building and went into it. I started to climb the stairs. When I got to the top, I saw what had happened. There were almost no plants, and even though half the city was flooded, the city still looked so dry somehow.

Suddenly the building started to shake, and I thought, “It was an earthquake!” As the building started to collapse, I was thinking, “That voice from the thought was right. Global warming did this. And I contributed to this. I was an oil worker. We could have prevented this by shutting the companies that contributed to global warming, so why didn’t we? Why didn’t we?” I hit the ground, and I was gone.

Jon C. & JP T.

Topic: Global warming

Today, as I was walking over to my company to do some work, I stopped to watch the cars zoom by, and for the first time in years, I noticed the smell of carbon that these cars emit every day. I thought about what the world would look like if we put taxes on businesses that emit carbon, in order to make those carbon emitting monsters disappear. If we don’t act soon, the consequences will be horrendous.

When I finally got out of my carbon-caused trance, the only thing that was left on my mind is how the world would be in a couple of years. When I finally made it to my job, I put all my work aside and just thought about how much this world has changed since it started being destroyed by all of these people with no remorse for their actions.

Our world has gone from a hospitable place to a place so dangerous and wet that it is hard to live in because of all that dangerous gas and the way it's destroying the habitat and polar ice caps. We are going to be part of this cycle, and our homes are going to be destroyed because of carbon, and carbon is going to make the polar bears’ habitat be lost, which means there will be more flooding around places in the world that are located near the ocean.   

I went into my lab to think of a way to stop global warming. I couldn't start on an empty stomach, so I went to a 99¢ store and bought a mixed green salad with arugula. I used to eat meat until I found out how much cows damage our world by being transported all over the world in large trucks, because that is one more thing that is bringing carbon into our atmosphere.

When I was finished with my salad, I went back to my office at Exxon. I’ve got to destroy my company from the inside, and I know exactly how to do that…