MOTIVATION AND REASONING
I knew from the start of class when the project was introduced to us that I wanted to do something that had to do with environmental devastation, and more specifically, climate change. Environmental issues are a passion of mine and have been for several years. My cousin was one of the delegates from the Marshall Islands at the Paris Climate Accords, and she instilled in me a strong sense of environmental justice. That enthusiasm for the environment is why I chose to write my thesis on international environmental law, and I wanted to further that interest within this class. From there, it was a question of what other topic I wanted to synthesize with environmental devastation. Social inequality was an obvious choice, as the readings for that week tied directly into climate change, and there was a wide field of research to study and use to prove my points. Furthermore, my passion for social justice was something I had not had the chance to explore and indulge in an academic setting before.
I decided to do an op-ed for my format as it would allow me to take a stance, and my passion for these topics could shine. If I had done a research paper, I would have had to stay carefully neutral, and I knew this to be very difficult after writing my thesis. Furthermore, an op-ed would allow me to present possible solutions without having done a huge research project that the time constraints of a single quarter would not have allowed for. Finally, I had never written an op-ed before, and I wanted to use an assignment where we had such vast creative liberties to try something I had never done before. I did not want to just turn in another research paper because that was within my comfort zone. However, I know writing to be my strong suit, and so I wanted to play into that strength given this was my final project – not just for this class, but for graduate school as a whole!
THE OP-ED FORMAT
According to the sources I consulted, op-ed pieces are usually around 750 words and no more than 800 [1, 2]. However, I felt that this was incredibly short for a final project worth almost half of our final grade. A project of that length is barely more than the memos we did each week, and I felt it inadequate to turn in something that short for my very last assignment in graduate school. However, I did not want to write a research paper and turn it in under the guise of being an op-ed piece, so I tried to keep it short enough to reasonably pass as something that could be published in the Opinion section of a newspaper or online news blog. It is for these reasons that the op-ed I am submitting is just over 1,400 words.
True to the op-ed format, I hyperlinked many of the articles that I referenced. When reading op-eds online to get a feel for how they flow and the tone I should be striving to emulate, I noticed that authors would link to the articles they are referencing when they bring them up for the first time. To make this feel more like an authentic op-ed, I linked to all the ones I could. The class materials are not hyperlinked simply because the link tried to go to the Canvas site and broke each time.
Finally, the op-eds that I wrote had an interesting title and started with a hook that I tried to recreate in my piece. This was another thing that the guides I read had mentioned. Unlike a research paper where an author might start by stating an argument or the purpose for the paper, an op-ed author starts by drawing the reader in and making them want to read the rest of their work. This is why I include what might seem like an oddly placed reference to multitasking and whether or not it exists. I thought this to be a creative and engaging way to start the piece and kept it from sounding too academic in nature. I picked the title for two reasons. First, I felt the idiom accurately represented the argument I made in my piece while not giving everything away in just the headline. Second, I was reminded of how Senator Bernie Sanders had spoken about Democrats needing to walk and chew gum at the same time. Given that this idiom is already in use in policymaking, I thought it appropriate to use it here.
SYNTHESIZING CLASS MATERIAL
In this project, I sought to synthesize two class topics: environmental devastation and social inequality. I broadened social inequality to include economic inequality, as many studies completed on those topics combined the two in one paper. I thought it important to accurately represent the field of research that I was using to back up my argument by expanding on what inequalities I was talking about in my op-ed. Climate change and inequality paired well together. As I explain in my op-ed, though climate change is a global issue, we cannot assume all regions of the world will be affected in the same ways and at the same level of severity.
I referenced a few of the readings from our weeks speaking about environmental devastation and social inequality. However, I wanted to do outside research and back up my arguments with a plethora of sources that were not just the ones we read in class. Simply put, I allowed the class material to guide my outside research, which is the focus of the op-ed. I felt this was a better method for a final project where we are supposed to demonstrate our cumulative knowledge of a subject. I consulted every source from those weeks but picked out a few to reference in my project. Not all materials appear in my bibliography, as I did not include a source if I did not actively integrate it into my project.
The first material from class that I cited was from our class on environmental devastation: the Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers [3]. I used this source to demonstrate the inherent inequalities in how climate change will affect different regions of the globe. I argued that for the reasons laid out in that report, we must address climate change and inequality simultaneously. The second material from class was the article by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, and the third was the article by Dipesh Chakrabarty [4, 5]. These were both from our week on social inequality. I used these to further demonstrate the connections between climate change and social inequalities, driving my point home about how inextricably linked they are and how it is necessary to address them together. Finally, I cited Elizabeth Kolbert’s article in the New Yorker [6]. By referencing her three futures, I made a compelling case for tackling these two issues in tandem rather than separately.
To better support the argument made in my op-ed, I used a plethora of articles I found by doing outside research. I broadened the topic of inequality to include economics because of the sheer number of articles I found that focused on that aspect as well as social aspects. I consider the outside research to be the backbone of my op-ed – the class material opened the door for a flood of new information. Each article was deliberately chosen because it demonstrated how climate change and inequality are so closely tied together. Every piece that I reference ties these two issues together, helping me synthesize the topics and present a coherent argument that accurately reflects the nature of these issues.
IMPLICATIONS
Although my op-ed will likely never be seen by anyone outside this class, the ideas in it could be important for policymakers to consider. Policymakers and scientists are developing solutions to handle the climate crisis, get emissions under control, and mitigate the already-present effects of this global problem. As I lay out in my op-ed, there are many reasons to spend more time creating equitable solutions that target specific problems rather than suggesting broad solutions that solve some problems but leave some half-finished. This op-ed could have easily been a research paper with just how many studies have been done proving that climate change and global inequality (whether it be economic or social) are inextricably linked. Policymakers need to reach the same conclusions I did in the process of writing this op-ed, or their solutions to these problems may be inadequate.
I do not mean to sound entirely pessimistic about any solution that does not correctly address climate change and global inequalities. My fear is simply that if we are not careful and deliberate in implementing policy, then our progress on either or both of these two issues will backslide. This is why I think my op-ed is so important, as it proves with research that those fears are not completely unfounded and could very well become a reality. If enough policymakers were to read my op-ed, I would hope they would see the validity of my arguments and work to develop equitable solutions and not just equal ones.
Bibliography
[1] Harvard University Kennedy School. (n.d.). How to Write an Op-Ed or Column. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hks-communications-program/files/new_seglin_how_to_write_an_oped_1_25_17_7.pdf.
[2] Shipley, D. (2004, February 1). And Now a Word From Op-Ed. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/opinion/and-now-a-word-from-op-ed.html.
[3] Sanders, B. [@BernieSanders]. (2021, January 13). In this unprecedented moment, the new Democratic majority must show that we can walk and chew bubble gum at the [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1349432258067881985
[4] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2014). Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf.
[5] Agarwal, A., & Narain, S. (1991). Global Warming in an Unequal World. New Delhi; Centre for Science and Environment.
[6] Chakrabarty, D. (2018). Planetary Crises and the Difficulty of Being Modern. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 46(3), 259–282. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818771277.
[7] Kolbert, E. (2020, October 5). Three Scenarios for the Future of Climate Change. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/three-scenarios-for-the-future-of-climate-change.