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My Environmental Utopia
The year is 2050, the year when so-called unrealistic dreams turned into a proactive reality. After years of controversy, the idea of irreversible climate damage was simply folklore. When I look outside my window, I see no trace of the burdened automobile; I see pedestrians sitting on a slim leather seat with a wheel in the front and back, breezing through the foliage-ridden streets of the suburbs. On top of every home in sight lie solar-paneled shingles, and even some backyards filled with greenhouses. My environmental utopia is no longer a dream.
This new life excites me. I jump out of bed and run to find clothes for the day. I quickly throw on my thrifted jeans and t-shirt and start my venture to the city on this glorious spring day.
What was then Interstate-95 is now a high-speed train, spanning endless miles, taking the New England public from Providence to Boston in less than forty-five minutes.
Coming out of the train station sits a new city of Boston: one of clean air, renewable energy, and a surplus of greenery; a city with no car-honking nor polluted smells. I could finally see the sun-casted glow of the fish in the port waters.
Today, I walk along Newbury street and see a city of the future. As I approach the Bodega positioned on the corner, I see no indication of the once-renowned plastic. I can now purchase a Poland Spring water bottle without fearing how the plastic waste will intrude on an ecosystem, but rather ponder on which recycling facility the new glass bottles will go to. In this new world, citizens worry less about oil changes, but how they should lubricate their bicycle gear chains. What was once the potent and nauseating smell of a petroleum power plant is now the sneeze-inducing kisses of pollen in the air. At once, the arguments over a fracking location turned into the communal desire for a wind-turbine field, emphasizing that a renewable energy-powered society is not a hoax.
Yet, this future could not have been accomplished without the participation of everyone. Before I spent my money on this new Earth, I turned to my community first.
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I chose to add a creative spin to the prompt and turned my response into a short narrative of my vision of a new and environmentally conscious society. I start off my response by waking up and taking the time to notice the foliage and lack of cars in the peaceful suburbs: an ode to reducing auto-mobile manufacturing and instead, turning to cleaner methods of transportation, such as bicycles in short-distance travel.
I then chose to portray the clothing that I hope citizens would embrace: thrifting. I am confident in my words when I say that thrifting is the future of fashion. In a modern-day society of mass consumerism, overproduction, and physical labor, the world needs to open its eyes to the power of second-hand clothing.
After getting ready, I describe my experience of long-distance travel. Society needs to destroy its negative stigmas of public transportation. Once citizens understand the importance and efficiency of public transportation in long-distance travel, we can truly progress environmentally. In my response, the entirety of I-95 was replaced with a train for the public, drastically reducing carbon emissions into the air that millions of cars contribute to.
In the new city, I take time to observe the smaller changes, such as plastic bottles being replaced with glass, which would undermine the magnitude of plastic waste that still exists today after hundreds of years.
The last paragraph concludes with a final statement: putting community agreement first. If I were to put all of my money into this global project, I'd need the population to be on my side: the Earth's side. Because in the end, why would I put all of this time, resources, money, and energy into societal reform if the world doesn't understand the emergency that is the climate crisis? Change begins with unity, and I believe that the first step in making this environmental utopia a reality is being well-informed of global implications.