Concerns of environment change from Kolbert to Oreskes Draft

Environment change is the definitely the hotspot of the world today. In recent years, major countries hold a lot of conferences discussing the environment and climate issues.  More and more people are paying attention to environmental issues. Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway show their concerns about climate changes and the environment problems human are facing in their books “The Sixth Extinction” and “The Collapse of Western Civilization”. The authors write in different ways and convey different concerns while both states that human actions are the main factors of the climate change.

In these two books, the reasons of the climate and environment changes are the main point that the authors discuss but they are interpreted in different ways. Kolbert writes a non-fiction book which tells readers facts and some research experiences in a present perspective. She uses the example of the extinction of frogs to induce her concerns of the sixth extinction, which is that human, unnoticeably, have a large impact on the creations in the world. The experiences and researches take place in present, which is a contradictory to what’s in Oreskes’ and Conway’s book. Oreskes and Conway create a science fiction by looking from the future, viewing present as a history, and uses both history facts and made-up facts. Kolberts’ method to tell the stories, which is a formal one, provides some crucial facts that human do harm to the environment. This method reveals some issues happening right now that humans need to recognize to prevent things going worse, especially in the environmental protection; the method of Oreskes and Conway is more like using future perspective to give a warning ahead of bad results come out.

Another difference between Kolbert’s writing and Oreskes’s writing is that they illustrate and explain the damage of human actions in different views. In “The Sixth Extinction”, Kolbert writes about the environmental issues by looking at specific species and organisms, such as fogs, rats and plants. The author focus more on the effects of species of animals and humans’ action directly to the nature. For example, people are trying to save the golden fogs but accidently found that they are the carriers of the fungus that kill the fogs. In contrast, Oreskes and Conway focus more on the overall aspects of human actions—not only the actions directly to the nature but also people’s actions on politics, economics and climate. They talk about different politics impact to the climate change and how does the policy of economics influence a country’s policy to climate. In general, Kolbert’s writing is more like a research report specific in science field while Oreskes’ and Conway’s writing is more like a history textbook telling people events that happened in different field of the society which affect the climate and environment.

When we discussed in class, in terms of the style of each books, people have different preference. Kolbert is more like telling stories, which is easier for people who like reading novel to read; Oreskes and Conway are like real scientists writing a scientific scholarship, with great seriousness, which is preferred by such people that like science magazine or love historical articles.  However, the amount of readers decides the effectiveness of these books because they are both purposed to aware people of the issues of climate and environment. Then combining those two kinds of writing may be a better way for readers to read. Kolbert can write more issues that close to people’s daily life because most of the people receive information better when they are reading about the politics and economics that happens around them rather than reading science. Oreskes and Conway, in contrast, creating a science-fiction novel with vivid characters would be a better choice because many people prefer to read novel than a text book.

In terms of the view of these authors, Kolbert’s writing seems more objective, which includes different views from different people. Fo example, in her book, some people insist that humanity will always be a harm while others think people can do efforts to prevent the extinction. Compared with the diversity of opinions in Kolbert’s writing, Oreskes and Conway may seem bias. However, in my opinion, one can feel more tense in protecting our planet when reading “The Collapse of Western Civilization” because the authors statement is clear. There is no wrong for authors to just state one perspective that they support and ignore other opinions though sometimes showing different perspective and argue with it makes the thesis stronger.

In conclusion, although Kolbert, Oreskes and Conway are trying to convey the same idea that human do harm to the climate and environment, they use totally different methods to show their perspectives. While thinking about whose writing is more effective in persuading readers, as readers, we should ask ourselves whether we are moved by the writings and decide to act to prevent the “sixth extinction” and the climate change?