Climate Unit: The Politics

I'm interested in focusing on the Politics of Climate because I want to know why it is such a decisive topic in the United States and whether this phenomena occurs world wide. I'm a lover of debates and open discussions and I'd like to see what other people think about climate and why they think it is such a controversial issue. It's very interesting to see what other people have to say about the issue and what other, new ideas they bring to the table especially with Climate being such a large topic of interest right now in the world, like the summit just held in Paris over climate change.

What I Think When I Hear: Climate

Earth
global-warming
climate-change
Conservation
National-Parks

When I hear climate I think of the controversy of the global warming issues and how they just held a summit and passed an act/law that commits all the countries to lessening their carbon-footprint. I also thought of conservation and national parks because these two words go along with the need to protect the little green space we still have in the United States.

Besides instituting protection of green space and shrinking our carbon footprint, what can we as citizens of the world do to keep our climate in better health? How can citizens of the world come together to keep the environment healthier and safer?

Reading Questions about the 1930s

Read about the Great Depression. According to this article, what was wrong with President Hoover's response? Why did people blame themselves when things went wrong, and how valid or invalid was this response?

• President Hoover took the issue too lightly, calling it a  "passing incident". And he did not take action to help stabilize the economy or banking system. Instead he instigated a trickle-down policy to help finance businesses and banks. Because of the American mindset "success was earned and if failure occurred it was deserved" it made many American's blamed themselves for the failing economy and loss of jobs. This rationale was not very rational since the failure was on the part of over production and too rapid of an increase in the market.

Read about Black Sunday.How would you have felt if you'd been there on that day? What kinds of fears, concerns, or questions would be going through your mind during, and after, the event described?

• Had I been there during Black Sunday I think I would have been terrified. To be surrounded by utter darkness for hours on end with no light in sight would be smothering and I can get claustrophobic. If I were a farmer I would worry what my crop outcomes would be or whether my stock animals had survived, and I would worry for everyone else around me and hope that they had found themselves a safe place. I would wonder if this would be my death. 

Read about The Drought. What areas were affected by it?  What caused it.  The author ends this article with a pithy quote. Do you agree or disagree with this historian's perspective? Why or why not?

• The western third of Kansas, Southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, and northeastern New Mexico. The dust bowl was caused by overuse and over grazing, and the fine silt that had been held by the grass was free to float out on the wind and drown the area in dust. I think the author was correct in doing so because it related to the over production of goods and the lack of regulation on the economy that lead to the Great Depression.

Read about Mass Exodus from the Plains. Were does the migration of people out of the Dust Bowl rank in terms of other migrations in US History? What made life hard for people once they arrived in California?

• It is the biggest migration within the US. It hard for people to assimilate because there were so many moving in that it also became very hard for them to find employment in CA as well. Farming was a corporate job rather than small, personal farmers. These people were also facing harassment from Californians.

Speech Reflections

I think Ward did a wonderful job of looking about and speaking clearly and Carson did a really nice job of doing voice inflection and sounding excited/passionate about what he was saying. Everyone at least tried to have an air of confidence and kept pushing on even when they messed up a word.

I think the speeches went really well, everyone definitely knew what their speaking on.

Doing these speeches made me definitely think about my control and nervousness. I was being more conscious of the way I sounded and looked to everyone else.

The Politics of Radio

Radio - a new source of media that crisscrossed the entirety of the United States. In the 1930's radios were in almost every household in America. And presidents like FDR took full advantage of this opportunity. And one of the first major political casts on the radio was of President Coolidge's inaugural speech  and one of the most well known radio broadcasts was President Roosevelt's Fireside chats. These talk shows consisted of Roosevelt talking "one-on-one" with the American people about concepts and problems in the US like The New Deal and soldiers fighting in WWII. Besides having just direct connections to presidents it gave America the chance to hear about everything in a more personable way. Political life became more personal and it became a source for presidential candidates to open themselves up to the American public. The parties (Republican and Democratic) began to broadcast their candidates across their own stations and across public ones as Radio became more and more accessible.

Five Point Speech

It’s the roaring twenties, the time of everyone’s life. Amid the raging parties and Gatsbyesque lifestyles was the tumultuous over turn of the fundamentalist Klu Klux Klan, the desertion of the disenchanted, the rise of consumerism, the creation of the “Flapper”, and the idea of professional women.  This decade was a melting pot of ideas that clashed against each other ideals, but more than that these five points in the twenties fed the creation of each other. One could not have happened without the other and the society of the 21^st century would not be what it is without the nascent of these five points.

The Klu Klux Klan – a long standing congregation of fundamentalists most well known for their fight to cleanse America of ‘alien’ groups they saw as racially impure. African Americans were a target in the first part of their history, but when the Klan came back in the twenties they began to boycott not only blacks, but also Catholic, Jewish and other minority groups. The Klan is seen as a blight on history, but look at them in the context of being able to change with the time period. The Klan remains a practicing group in the US and that shows resilience and a form of flexibility to bend to the time period. This flexibility and resilience can also be attributed to consumerism. Besides creating a wide spread cultural phenomena of buying for pleasure, Consumerism also helped widen the gap between ideals, which helped create the disenchanted. I think it is important to note the uninvolved and darker sides of American society because it was those groups that helped push for a betterment of society as a whole. These artists helped the United States to maintain a form of individualism in the world of consumerism. And in its own right, Consumerism created a cultural norm that still exists well into the twenty-first century.

To end on a more positive note the twenties introduced the “Flapper” – a woman who lost the rigidity of the Victorian ideals and fell into loose morals, wore seductive clothing and makeup. For the first time the women were starting to gain a social standing without a man on their arm. And if a lady had enough ambition she could find herself in a profession. There began to be the occasional success story of a woman doctor or woman lawyer. These two types of women were important to American history because this would be one of the first steps towards equality of genders. These are two separate, important parts because they allowed any woman to become what she wanted. There was not just the “Flappers” or professional women, it was a wide variety and some who even balanced both. But the important take away from this is that even when surrounded by conflict and disruption American culture and mindset kept pushing to better its self.

Editorial Reviews on Mini Books

In Prohibition: "A War" the author Carson Hall portrays the conflict that arises among the average US citizen and the empire of illegal  alcohol cartels. Blaze Butler, the protagonist and one of the only survivors of his band of transporters, paints a picture of the back-woods lifestyle that many of the bootleggers seemed to live. And also relays the struggles of competing with an empire and city boss like Al Capone. Through his struggles there is a high point, but it the end the repeal of Prohibition is too late to save many lives that were lost in the fight. Hall's use of the 1920's slang shows his grasp on the era, but still keeps a simple, straight forward plot line.


The Life of Robert Williams, by Austin Lu, portrays the hard life that Americans suffered through but also the grand rise out poverty that was the 1920's. We meet Robert a tween heading into adolescence, the years that will formally become known as the teen years. Lu uses his grasp of the rise in economy and of the creation of the teenager to formulate a well written story about a boy who understands hardship and hard work.

The Mini-Book about the 1920's

My mini book, Professional Women & The "Flapper": Image vs. Reality, is a small story about woman, Ms. Evelyn, who finds herself amidst the reality of being a flapper and what the reality was for most women as seen in her friends life, Betty Sue. With a use of slang terms and a modern view point this story shows the journey through the twenties with a twist.