Climate Change Monologue Project

First Impact -The London Smog

Dear Jonathan,

Perhaps asking how you are doing might be a little horribly ironic under the present circumstances, but I it is necessary to ask, because I need to know that everyone is OK. I have already sent a letter to Daniel, with no response, so I need to ask, so once you get this letter, please send me a response immediately. Please let me know that you’re fine, because right now not only am I scared for you, and Daniel, and Mama and Pop, I’m scared for myself, and this entire city.

I’m not entirely sure when this smog rolled in. I awoke on the 5th like any other day, and how I reacted to what I saw outside the window, I imagine was similar to yours. Do you remember that smog in 1892 when the three of us were boys, the one that blanketed the streets so completely that you could hardly see the other side of the street? You remember, Mom boarded up the windows and we nearly lost Daniel on the way to school? We had to give on that though, it was too hard to see, and we couldn’t even stop for sweets on the way home because “Donielli’s” was closed.

This isn’t like that smog though. This is so much more thick and choking, when I stepped outside to go to work this morning I couldn't even see the street in front me, and I nearly got run over by a damn cab. I didn't try much after that to go to work, not like I’m that eager anyway, especially after the recent lay-offs….

You hear what the people on the radio are saying? This smog is killing people, they’re just lying in the streets. Not that I’d be able to see them until I tripped over them in the streets, but when you see these shapes in the fog, you aren’t able to tell whether it’s a bench or body... I’ve been coughing up blood since I went outside on the 5th, and my lungs feel like gravel, so if you’re thinking of going outside, just don’t, and don’t let Mary or little Emily move either. Just stay inside, please, and reply when you get this letter, if you d assuming I can find the mailbox in this damn fog.

-Sincerly, Taylor

London, December 6th, 1952

Second Impact -Nyos “Volcano”

Journal Entry 12#

Lake Nyos Disaster Investigation

Dr. Geitnier Armistead

September 3, 1987

Arriving on the scene now about a year ago, as I may have made the prominent focus view of my last entry, was a day that rendered me perturbed and perhaps, for the first time in my scientific career, positively dumbfounded. But that day was rather exciting as well, because I had a chance as a scientist to discover the secrets behind one of the strangest disasters of recent memory, one that will be warning sign for the future, and a a sort of foreboding landmark when looked back on decades from now. As you can imagine, every country aware of the impending situation has sent their “best” scientists, and during those first few days, as I recapped in my first journal ,we needed to find out what mysterious anomaly had killed nearly 1,800 people in the village of Nyos, Cameroon, practically overnight, and vanished without a trace. There wasn’t much to go on, the victims had all apparently fell and over and died for all intensive purposes, with no head trauma or bleeding found, but our major clue was that the number of fatalities seemed to be larger around Lake Nyos, a lake that the inhabitants of the surrounding area seem to think holds some, supernatural power of spirits or ghosts(which is of course is porposterous) . Now, over the course of this past year, we have finally solved this mystery, and in this journal, I wil take all the data we have found and form a hypothesis. The first clue to go on was upon testing the waters of this lake, we found some interesting discoveries. It appears the lake holds an abnormal amount of CO2, levels that only climbed steadily higher, only to quite literally off the charts and burst our test tubes once the depth of the lake reached 600ft. Now of course, all lakes contain some amounts of CO2, that is unavoidable considering the amount now in the atmosphere, but water is usually able to churn out the gas due to constant movement of waves, but in Lake Nyos’s case, it is almost the stillest in the entire world, due to several variables like the hills surrounding it and Cameroon’s consistently painfully hot weather. This allows the CO2 to accumulate and when triggered with a catalyst which could be as something as small as a tree falling into the lake or a landslide, releases all that decade-worth of CO2 in one moment, and, well, you can imagine the rest… Some of the other French scientists are discussing with the Americans whether we can harness this CO2 for other purposes, but I’m personally going to be moving out soon enough. Let them do what they will with all this extra gas.

Third Impact - The Disaster

“Hello world leaders of this summit, I am Hamza Jensen, representative from His Majesty of Belgium, who hasn’t had any dealing with the issue of climate change in the past but in light of… recent events, has sent me in his place. His Majesty firmly believes that any world leader available to attend this summit with knowledge of how this past week has come to pass, absolutely should, if nothing but for sending their deepest, most sincere condolences for the people of Australia, Chile, and Finland and the other countries who have been affected. With this in mind, His Majesty would like to thank President Gavino Acciaio of Italy for volunteering his country at such short notice for the location of this summit, and I would personally like to thank President Johnson for that powerful speech only moments ago. I won’t be talking too long, since I know the president of Ireland wishes to speak about a potential disaster relief plan that could start to undo the damage of something this global and grave, but His Majesty… and I, have a few things we must talk about. Nothing will be held back, if the last week as taught us anything, the time of civil and polite little conversation around a table is truly over, and action is the only course to take in order to now potentially save our countries and planet. I will be as critical as I need to be....

What must be talked about first is our own blindness. Climate change has been a world issue for many, many decades, not even discreetly so. The signs have been there for a long time, the London Smog of 1952, the Lake Nyos disaster in 1987, the several hurricanes in the Philippines and other countries from 2014 to 2016. Yet despite all this, no real action has been taken by any of us. Perhaps it was always a distant threat, a thing that would happen in the future, not important when compared with what ever present problems our countries were facing, whether it be petty war, a faulty economy, or recovering from natural disaster that were usually a direct byproduct of climate change. Well, I hope we can agree it isn’t anywhere close to being distant anymore. The death tolls of this disaster are still being calculated around the world, but currently we are close to passing the seven and a half million mark, but no, that’s not all, since the number are still coming in, I’ve been told we might be adding a third of that number by the end of the month… Excuse me… It’s important to remember that I… His Majesty isn’t going to blame any particular person, or even faction or country. The responsibility of causing this disaster is on all of our shoulders, whether it be because you were directly responsible for polluting and taking the planet for granted, or simply yelling from across the planet for them to stop but not actually doing anything…

I remember back in 2019 when we held a similar summit about addressing the increasingly dire problems caused by climate change. You were there President Acciaio, and you Emperor Jinjo, and I’m sure you remember that we sat around the same table for two days, but without the motivation of millions of people’s lives on the line, we agreed on absolutely nothing. We were all focusing on our own selfish goals, and not concentrating on the very real threats, that we ultimately overlook.

And now I’m tired of disagreements and stupid politicians and lack of action, by everyone, including His Majesty. I fully realize I’m probably going to be fired after this because of my outbursts, but I hope that from this terrible, terrible day, we can all at least learn from this incident. No. We need to learn from this. The world is changed forever, and I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if the world continues on like nothing has happened. Thank you. You’re up Prime Minister.

Monologue 1#(Video)