For the people of the Marshall Islands, the impact of climate change on rising sea levels is no longer an “unknown threat” but “a fact that is happening.”
The Last Generation tells the story of the Marshall Islands. These islands have to face being submerged by the sea, strong winds, and floods every day. The people who live here are full of love for their hometown, but they don’t know if one day they need to be forced to leave the place where they live and then go to a new place to start a new life. The story contains a lot of very short documentaries. Through these videos, I see that the sea level sometimes may around people’s knees, and the sea is full of rubbish. What makes me sad is that a child said he started to talk himself, “Is this kind of tide happen because we are bad people?”
As I watched three series of stories: , , , A large amount of carbon dioxide emissions and the atomic bomb test both made me very heartbroken. Especially I discovered that most of our problems with excessive carbon dioxide emissions and sea-level rise problems began after the industrial period. Obviously, in the early stages of industrial development, people did not consider natural resources, or they thought that nature has a powerful ability to digest the pollution by itself. But the fact is that our planet cannot be overloaded. It is like a cycle; whatever we have done, nature will “repay” us with the same thing. Take BIKINI as one example. To test the atomic bomb, BIKINI was heavily polluted. The residents from BIKINI were forced to move to other places to live. The world lost BIKINI forever!!! Is this sacrifice worth it? For me, this exchange is not equal or fair at all.
The whole story is told from the children’s perspective because children will describe their real thoughts, which will make people feel compassionate. I like the way the author narrates the story. The whole story includes interviews, real environmental records, and data sorting, which enhance the entire story’s persuasiveness. Our world has lost many islands; some islands are gradually disappearing. What we can do is to let more people know the seriousness of climate change because saving sea level rise requires everyone’s efforts.
Shiyun Li (Sharon) 