Love in the Time of Climate Change (2 page)

E
VERY SEMESTER
, in all of the classes I teach, I start things off the same way:

“Welcome,” I begin. “My name is Casey and I have OCD.”

Then I wait. I count to five in my head, slowly and silently, as students gawk at me.

One … two … three … four … five …

It's a long enough pause to be slightly awkward, long enough to get students thinking to themselves, “What is up with this dude? What the hell am I getting myself into?” but not long enough to give them time to beat a hasty retreat towards the door.

“OCD,” I repeat.

Then I pause again, not quite as long this time, before hitting them with the punch line.

“Obsessive Climate Disorder.”

Most of the students laugh. Most of them get it. Not all of them, but the majority.

I am well aware that I run the risk of offending those
who have that other OCD. God knows, I probably have more folks with acronyms in my class (ADHD, ADD, PTSD) than those without. In no way do I wish to trivialize or belittle anybody's diagnosis; I simply want to be upfront and honest about my own.

I wait every semester for an incensed phone call from my dean advising me that it's best to start things off on a different tack. Surprisingly, no such call has come yet.

As a community college science professor—an awesome teaching gig if there ever was one—I have defined my mission in as succinct a way as possible: Educate my students about the issue of climate change, guide them to the edge of the abyss but not over it and into despair, and inspire them to get off their asses and do something about it.

Not exactly an easy thing to do.

Climate change is a concept so big, so complicated, so fraught with raw emotion and angst that it's easy to be overcome with paralysis. It's the biggest environmental issue of our time, yet the sheer magnitude of its significance tends to overwhelm. Papers should be screaming it daily from their headlines, rather than burying it in the back sections next to celebrity gossip. Politicians, who pontificate about it endlessly, should bring on their legislative A-game. And the general public should turn off their reality TV, if only for one night a week, and confront the real threat that's out there.

The fate of the world is hanging in the balance, yet most folks are perfectly content to go right on fiddling while the earth burns.

For those of us with OCD, this really sucks.

Somehow I've made it to age thirty-two teaching climate change with some shredded remnants of my sanity still marginally intact. I've tied my fate to the mantra: “It's better to be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.” I repeat this every day. It's on a sticky note stuck to
my bathroom mirror, and I read it over and over while I take a dump.

After all, without optimism what's left? The dark side is way too much of a downer. And I truly do believe there is a way out of the hellhole we're tottering towards. It ain't going to be easy, or pretty, but there definitely
is
a way. I'm not quite sure of the direction, and MapQuest is no damn help, but there is a way.

There has to be.

Anyway, back to the first day of class.

I know it's college, and I know it's science, but I begin the semester reading to my students the best environmental book ever written.

No.

Let me rephrase that.

The best
book
ever written.

The Lorax
. By Dr. Seuss.

For a children's book, it lays down a surprisingly dark and destructive tale of environmental devastation caused by greed and short sightedness. Quick recap: Pristine environment destroyed by unfettered capitalism. All that, plus awesome hallucinogenic Dr. Seussian drawings. Who could ask for more?

Best yet, it ends with a wonderful call to environmental action.

I began my reading on this particular opening day by putting on my Cat in the Hat hat, tall and floppy with its signature outlandish red and white stripes. It was a present I had received in middle school and I've cherished it ever since. I figured if I'm going to be weird, why not go all out?

“Catch!” calls the Once-ler
.

He lets something fall
.

“It's a Truffula Seed
.

It's the last one of all!

You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds
.

And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs
.

Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care
.

Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air
.

Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack
.

Then the Lorax

and all of his friends

may come back.”

I have a hard time reading the story and not getting all choked up and teary eyed. But the students love it. Whether you're three or a hundred and three, a good children's book always carries the day.

It sure beats the hell out of introducing the semester by blah, blah, blahing over the damn syllabus and sending students off to Snoozeland.

I feel a twinge of guilt that I've laid it all out for them during the very first class. In fact, I've blown my wad in the first five minutes. The semester might as well be over. I have nothing more relevant to say. But, amazingly, almost all of the students elect to return for the next class.

“
But
now,”
says the Once-ler
,

“now that you're here
,

the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear
.

UNLESS someone like you

cares a whole awful lot
,

nothing is going to get better
.

It's not.”

So that's my goal. That's my mission.

“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not,” I repeat to them.

Despair is not an option. Once there, it's difficult to turn back.

Hey, I know I'm laying down an awfully heavy burden, but I'm pretty confident they're up to the task.

Better to be an optimist and a fool.

O
N THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS
, I ask students to write down the answers to three introductory questions.

Number One: Why are you in this class?

Number Two: What aspects of climate change are you most interested in?

Number Three: What do you think will be the biggest effect of climate change on your life?

I tell them to be honest. If the only reason they're here is because a Tuesday/Thursday afternoon class fits neatly into their schedule and they desperately need the credits to graduate, then say it.

“There's no party line,” I tell them. “Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. I want the honest truth. Spare me the bullshit.”

Students laugh and nudge each other. They think it's funny when I use the word
shit
. I stay away from the F word, but
shit
is fair game. Acknowledging my role as part stand-up comic/entertainer, I say it a lot.

Shit, shit, shit
.

They laugh every time.

Answers to the questions above are sometimes revealing, sometimes not, but I usually get at least a glimpse of the lay of the class.

This semester's Tuesday/Thursday afternoon section promised to be interesting.

Half the class seemed utterly clueless, a few borderline literate. One student, in a barely legible scrawl, answered “don't no” for each question.

Joy and rapture!

Yet the other half seemed thoughtful and insightful, informed on
The
Issue and chomping at the bit to plow full-speed ahead.

In other words, the usual community-college crowd. Brilliant scholar next to slacker airhead.

The boys in the back with their caps on backwards, tilting back their chairs, no book, no paper, no pen, no nothing, trying to make their texting not too obvious.

The girls up front, textbooks open, hanging on every word I say as if it were the Sermon on the Fucking Mount, with lightbulbs brilliantly, blindingly flashing over their heads.

Not to stereotype, but …

I loved it. Both the fore and the aft. I was the captain and this was my ship and damned if we weren't going to run downwind and sail away.

Preaching to the converted was one thing. Getting the word out to the rest of the seething masses, some of whom had already donated their brains to science before they were done with them, was quite another. This was the art of teaching. Keeping those in the crow's nest actively engaged while throwing down the life rafts to save the ones sinking to the bottom.

I like to think I'm good at it. At the very least I think I'm getting better. But every semester I lose students early
on and I worry about what I said or didn't say, did or didn't do, that caused them to disappear and drop off the face of the earth. .

It's one of the many things that keep me up at night.

After the first day of each semester I go home and read highlights to Jesse, my roommate. He and I have been best friends since the end of middle school. We went to college together. We've been in each other's lives, for better or for worse, for the last two decades. He's a great friend and, honestly, I'm not sure what I'd do without him.

Jesse is a computer geek. His three great hobbies are surfing the Net, smoking vast quantities of pot, and chasing after nurses. He works in IT at Franklin County Medical Center, the hospital in the same town in western Massachusetts where I teach.

Frankly, Neo-Luddite as I am, I'm not all that interested in what he does. I know it's good work, but computers are just not my thing. I try to be empathetic when he bitches about the latest medical software and systems going down and moronic doctors who can't input data correctly. But it's pretty much in one ear and out the other. Fortunately, my incomprehension doesn't seem to bother him.

He, on the other hand, can't get enough of my classroom drama. He loves the stories I tell and is a wonderful sounding board for ideas and strategies. Given his certifiable insanity and his perpetually scrambled gray matter, particularly after a toke or two, he's hit-or-miss with his suggestions. So while I often take his input with a grain of salt, I can't complain. He's a wonderful roommate.

I put my Cat in the Hat hat back on and read to him the opening-day highlights.

“No way!” he groaned after one particularly unintelligible response bemoaning climate change's potential impact on the major-league baseball schedule. “Some of the doctors at work can write better than this bullshit! How the hell did this fool graduate from high school?”

“Welcome to my world,” I sighed. “Here's another one: ‘I don't worry about this issue because I know there is a place for me in heaven in the hereafter.'”

“Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? He can't be serious! ‘Hereafter' my ass. He must be yanking your chain.”

“Don't count on it. There are some pretty scary people out there. But hey, check this one out.” I proceeded to read one student's answer to the “how will climate change affect me” question:

It makes me sad. I am a middle-school science teacher and I am sad for my students. Sad that they are growing up in such uncertain and difficult times. Sad that they hear the truth and are frightened. Sad that they look at every storm with questioning eyes. Sad that I'm 29 years old and my generation is handing over to them a world so fraught with the potential for chaos. Sad that we know what to do, that the future is in our hands, and yet we seem to be plummeting pell-mell toward catastrophe. Sad, sad, sad.

“Jesus,” Jesse said, passing me a joint. “That's a buzz-kill. You sure
you
didn't write it?”

“No way!” I said, taking a hit and wondering how the Cat in the Hat, who was able to put a positive spin on everything, would deal with climate change.

I know it is wet

And the sun is not sunny
.

But we can have

Lots of good fun that is funny!

I passed the joint back to Jesse. “A teacher,” he said. “Just give her an A now and be done with it.”

Hands down, her response was my fave. A distant second went to one of the boys in the back who worried that, in a hotter world, he'd sweat too much and scare off the women. At least he was being honest.

Cancelled baseball games, sweaty armpits, tearful children.

Different strokes for different folks. If that's what it takes to get them out of their couches and into the streets, then so be it.

—

The day I began teaching at Pioneer Valley Community College (PVCC) —in fact, before I had even been hired—I was determined to start a student group. Not a discussion group, not a bunch of late-teens/twenty-somethings sitting around twiddling their thumbs and endlessly bitching without
doing
shit, but a group that would actually accomplish things.