Any topic (writer’s choice)

Choose one of the following questions or topics. Address the topic coherently and
intelligently. Choose carefully. Remember that the best essays are those written by students who
care about their topics. Demonstrate your knowledge of the subject, but don’t digress into areas
that are only vaguely relevant to the topic. Be clear and organized. Give yourself enough time to
work on this paper. Before you start, read the topic you choose several times. Avoid
contradictions and uncertainty at all cost. Relax. Show me what you’ve learned. Demonstrate the
results of your intellectual curiosity and savvy. Always support your arguments and analyses with
sufficient evidence.
Address the topic honestly and critically. Present a main idea and develop it. Don’t turn
in this assignment without proofreading it. Make sure your essay consists of a unified whole, with
a clear opener, middle, and closure. Your thesis or main idea (purpose) must be provocative and
intriguing, both to you and your reader. Demonstrate your intellectual curiosity and your love of
the written word. Be thorough and honest.
While you may not need notes, the textbook, or the photocopied material to write this
essay, youre free to use them during your writing time. But be careful: time spent re-reading an
essay is time not spent writing. If you use information or ideas found elsewhere, you must cite
their origins.
This weeks readings are an assortment of brief essays dealing with race, mental health,
reading, and our current pandemic. The oldest one dates to 1940; the most recent to earlier this
year. They mostly rely on narration, description, and cause and effect writing, but all of them are
personal statements in one way or the other.
Your essay should be typed, 3-5 pages in length, double spaced with one-inch margins.
(Three pages means just that: if you turn in a paper with two full pages and two or three lines in
the third page, you probably havent fully explored your topic.) You should include your name,
course and section number (Eng 131.xx), and date you finished it. In addition, you should
include Essay #1, but please dont use that as a title for your work (Essay #2 is not a title any
more than Boy #3 is a good name for your third son). All this information can be in the top right
or left corner of the first page of your essay.
When youre done, upload your work in the section titled Assignment Depository.
There will be a space labeled Essay #2 where you can easily turn in your work. If you have
problems submitting your essay via Moodle, you can always send it to me directly via email (see
my email address above) as an attachment. Please use your hawkmail account to send work, and
please dont use Google Docs as too many students in the past have neglected to give me access
to their work. Remember: I will give priority to essays turned in via Moddle and on time.
Remember to choose only one topic. If youre interested in more than one topic, be
aware that some of these topics can be used for our final research assignment.
2
1. Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus has nothing to do with climate change,
but it presents an interesting philosophy: in the face of an impossible (or near
impossible) task, hope is irrelevant. It ultimately doesnt matter if we have hope
or not in accomplishing a goal (in Camus specific case, it was defeating Nazis
during World War II) because meaning is in the doing. We dont act, suggests
Camus, because we hope to win, but because action gives our lives meaning. Thus
the absurd hero, who works without stopping to accomplish something he or
she has no hope of accomplishing. For this essay, explain how Camus ideas may
or may not be helpful or relevant when considering action to alleviate climate
change.
2. Pick two of the authors in the climate change folder (Solnit, Buckley, Franzen)
and compare and/or contrast their ideas of hope in regards to climate change.
3. Todd May, who currently teaches philosophy at Clemson University, wrote a
book titled A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us. In it, theres a chapter in
which he argues that we have a moral obligation towards people who are not even
born yet, and thus we have to act now to protect the environment: not because its
good for us, but because itll be good for people who are not even born yet and
will not even be born for several years or decades. Do you agree with his view?
For this essay, first argue whether we do, in fact, have a moral obligation towards
those in future generations. Then compare and/or contrast our obligations
towards others in the future with our obligations to those who are alive today.
4. In October of 2018, the United Nations released a report from the worlds leading
climate scientists warning that we (human beings) have only twelve years to
dramatically slow the pace of climate change if we want to avoid environmental
catastrophe: flooding of coastal cities, wildfires, violent storms and weather
extremes, extinction of many species, dwindling food supplies, uninhabitable
land, etc. The problem is very serious and will require people around the globe to
accept changes to their current lifestyle. For this essay, consider your part in this
crisis. What are the ways in which your life contributes to greenhouse gases?
And what could you do to reduce your carbon footprint? What are you
willing to do, and why? If you were to answer those three interrelated questions
in a single carefully worded sentence, you would have a thesis for your paper, one
that could even suggest a structure for your essay. (This topic comes courtesy of
my colleague Dr. John Rietz.)
5. As Ive mentioned elsewhere, we all need to understand the cultural, political, and
economic shifts that are going on right now in our lives: a global pandemic, an
economic collapse, and a revolt against racial injustice, and political leaders who
purposely are trying to muddle the voting process during this election cycle. In the
context of all this and more, how would you argue that it is still important to
discuss climate change? Does the fight against climate change have any relevance
to current social movements?

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