Chapter 4 — History in Transition

A serial novel in the form of correspondence among a family while the world as we know it collapses around us. I recommend you start at the Introduction:

https://medium.com/climate-for-change/climate-for-change-introduction-5331d5ab9313

But you can start anywhere you want.

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Chapter 4:

Email from Benji:

Dear Grandpa,

I can’t believe I have been home from the farm for two weeks already. I miss you and Grandma. I wish I didn’t have to go back to school.

I have been thinking a lot about history and climate change. Melody calls me a history nerd, but it is just about certain history that I get really nerdy. When I think about all of the changes that happened during the years of World War II, I get a sense of what people can do in a short period of time. Everything changed. All of society re-organized around the war. I think we need that same sort of transformation to stop climate change.

I am impatient for people to wake up. Wake up! Wake up! What would happen if we all woke up to the climate crisis in front of us?

Yesterday I was watching the People’s Encyclopedia pages about World War I and World War II. I say “watching” because they were literally changing in front of my eyes. The World War I page changed from talking about the war being caused by a rise of nationalism to blaming the war on entangling networks of alliances…