Global Climate Change and Sea Turtle Conservation

Or…The Dragon wonders where the turtles will nest

As a participating blogger in Blog Action Day 2009, I get to write on whatever global climate change topic comes to mind. For me, that hits on conservation issues. Recycling and reusing products cuts down on fossil fuel consumption and original materials being removed from the environment. Easy equation.

Despite our collective best efforts, I’m pretty sure Planet Earth is doomed to repeat a cycle that some scientists believe she’s been going through since her birth. Ice age—thaw—ice age—thaw. You get the picture. Personally, I don’t think the earth is as old as those carbon-dating scientists claim it is, but that’s another argument for another day. What we have here is this idea that the earth has, for millions of years, gone through a cycle that humans would be pretty doggone arrogant to assume they can up-n-change. We should recognize that our industrial revolution has added to the rate of temperature-rise in the past few decades, but we shouldn’t lose track of the fact that the temperature-rise was in effect because it’s part of the planet’s lifecycle.

So let’s say ice melts, polar bears drown, and waters rise. Where do the sea turtles go to build their nests? I’m assuming Florida will go under (as mentioned in my short story info posted below/earlier this week). Various islands where sea turtles nest will go under. Because sea turtles are near and dear to my heart, this is where my worries rest. In the images posted today, you see a couple of hatchling loggerhead sea turtles making a dry-run for the Gulf of Mexico. We waited until dark to do the real thing so fish out in the water were less likely to snack on them. But these little turtles (if they’re girls and if they survive the insane odds stacked against them) will return to Bonita Beach in 20 or so years looking for a place to lay their eggs. What will they find? What will their offspring find 20 years after that?

(For information on sea turtle nesting behavior and hatchling releases, please visit www.turtletime.org.)

“Some days, you just want the dragon to win.”

Tags: Blog Action Day, global climate change, polar bears, sea turtles, Gulf of Mexico

Global Climate Change in My Fiction

Or…The Dragon preps for Thursday’s blog action day

I don’t make big sweeping political statements in my fantasy fiction. My stories are meant to take you OUT of reality and off to some place more enjoyable where your worries are out of your mind. (I encourage you to check out the book descriptions of Choices Meant for Gods and Choices Meant for Kings on Amazon to see what I mean.)

In preparation for Oct. 15th’s Blog Action Day 2009 concerning Global Climate Change, in which I’ll be participating, I wanted to talk about one short story where I did include a wee bit of real-world worries. But, true to form, I put a fantasy twist on them. I decided to pretend the world’s global temperature had risen higher than scientists predicted and the ocean waters had engulfed more landmass than even our best conspiracy theorists and paranoid schizophrenics dreamt. I envisioned Florida and New Zealand completely under water. (Most of Hawaii and Japan as well, of course.) You get the picture.

What’s rather silly is I put this concept in what we editors refer to as an “info-dump” that the editor of Winter’s Night magazine rightfully deleted from the beginning of my story “A Legacy Protected.” Oops. So the sweeping generalization that we’re doomed got removed from my fiction even when I had finally included it. Funny. Probably saved me from myself. Richard Bray, Editor Extraordinaire, I bow.

So here’s the beginning/opening paragraphs to “A Legacy Protected” in all their backstory/info-dumping glory. I hope you enjoy their paranoid feel and pick up your copy of Winter’s Night magazine where the remainder of the story, sans global warming concept, is published.
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A Legacy Protected (deleted graphs)
By Sandy Lender

His family’s money came from a boy’s idea at the beach. Jack Gantry the First had looked up at his nanny during a summer vacation and asked, “What’s going to happen to these buildings when the water rises?”

“What do you mean, dear?”

“When the water rises,” he gestured to the Atlantic Ocean creeping up the shoreline toward them, “all the buildings will be under it. Someone should move them.”

Jack’s exotic nanny bestowed on him the special smile that moms know how to bless their sons with. It was the kind of smile that inspires one little boy to become an astronaut while inspiring another to seek a cure for cancer. In young Jack’s case, the curve of her chocolate lips inspired him to figure out how much weight a pulley could hold.

“Tell me about that,” Nanny Lyddy encouraged him.

She started him thinking about booms and lifts and cranes until he came up with the idea that would revolutionize the beachfronts of the world—wherever they formed in the future. It took a decade after he’d graduated from a technical school to get the first prototype built, and another decade to get the scientists, developers, and media analysts all singing from the same sheet of music. When everything came together, his idea won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jack Gantry the First had stood on a stage in Oslo wishing he’d kept in touch with his nanny. He believed the teacher and protector who had fed the idea should’ve been in the audience to see him accept the award, and, when his great grandson John was old enough to appreciate the whole story, he told him so.

The odd twist in the Gantry story hit when something as simple as a co-ed threatening John with sexual harassment accusations, which could be neither proved nor disproved, put the family’s fortune in jeopardy in the early 2090s. The Gantries had weathered that storm with the help of a rising young legal aid who now served as the CEO’s administrative assistant.

John Gantry the Fourth stood in his overly metallic office contemplating his great grand-dad, the family fortune, and the eleventh hour savior on the afternoon before his wedding. He always thought it strange the way Ms. Tesker had given up a blossoming legal career to become, essentially, his secretary. Sure, Gantry Family Ltd. was huge and the position wasn’t one to sneeze at, but, still, there was a certain level of prestige in being a lawyer in New Tampa. What was the attraction to being a secretary, whether it was for the Gantry Family or not?

The buzzer on his phone let him know Ms. Tesker needed his attention.

He turned from the picture window overlooking the imaginary line above the Florida Shelf where the Atlantic Ocean met the Gulf of Mexico. What a lovely image he turned from. Inside his office, almost everything was sterile and gray recycled metal with monitors and panels and functional bits. Almost everything—he was young and brash enough to include a warm brown leather couch and a wood-paneled liquor cabinet. They stood out like neon signs of youth. They seemed to announce: “This CEO is too young to be in charge. He’s only 35. Feel free to take advantage of him and his company.” Staying on task, he pressed a green button that flashed at him from the glass top of his desk.
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Again, if you’d like to read the rest of the story, without this history part, grab your inaugural edition of Winter’s Night magazine. There are 84 pages of excellently edited and well-written fantasy shorts waiting for you. And please visit here Thursday to comment on Blog Action Day 2009’s theme of Global Climate Change.
“Some days, you just want the dragon to win.”
Tags: Climate Change, Winter’s Night, Fantasy, Richard Bray, Blog Action Day

Writing Exercise for Blog Action Day's Focus on Poverty
Or…The Dragon has a challenge for blog visitors
By Fantasy Author Sandy Lender

Several of the inspirational topics discussed at Today the Dragon Wins have served the purpose of getting writers writing. Today's global discussion on poverty will be no different. I invite you to get out your pen and paper and think not just of how you address this social and economic issue in your fiction, in your world-building, in your creations, but also of how you solve it. What solutions do you work into your characters' actions? And could those solutions be of use to us in the real world?

When I built the fantasy land of Onweald for my Choices trilogy, I did so over many years. Each character has a family tree and history that doesn't necessarily have a place in the published books you can find at Barnes & Noble, but does have a place in the development of the world I created. Poverty and the struggle for basic survival held sway over many characters' lives. But "being poor" isn't usually limited to just one family or just one neighborhood. Depressed areas grow like a fibrous tumor when there's drought, famine, economic uncertainty, etc. Consider outside forces that affect transportation, and thus commerce. Consider the lack of education in an area that keeps its youth from forming the ideas and breakthroughs that would make farming, mercantile, science, and health care progress into new careers, new foods, new technologies, or new mindsets.

In the first novel of my trilogy, Choices Meant for Gods, I brush the surface of a story from the world's past when poverty was widespread in the southeast corner of Onweald. An enterprising gentleman's foresight and willingness to fix the shipping problems at the nearest harbor gave way to safe, efficient trade and gave the people of the area a slow climb into development and less struggle. It's that type of solution to poverty that a fiction writer gets to put into motion with just the wave of the magic pen. One person makes all the difference. One person takes a stand and says, "I'm willing to make a change."

Sometimes global change can start with one person doing a kind act. In that same novel, an orphan on the run from a madman arrives penniless, homeless, and injured at a great estate. The master of that estate sees her as a danger—could the madman follow her and threaten his family? But the lady of the estate looks on her with compassion. The lady of the estate sees her as a human being suffering from poverty and lack. The lady of the estate is just one person who performs the kind act of taking her in, healing her, feeding her, clothing her, and offering her shelter from the evil outside their walls. In turn, the lady learns that she has saved the life of the most important figure in her society.

Maybe the real-life actions we take to help those who suffer in our real-world society look small to us at times. We're just people. But consider the effect a kindness has on the person receiving it. Put that kindness in your writing exercise today and see what real-life solutions you might reveal for poverty.

"Some days, I just want the dragon to win."
Tags: blog action day, poverty