#2 The Perfect Place to Burn Books

Streets filled with earsplitting horns and angry shouts are gone, only to be replaced by the deafening silence filled with nothing but pure white. Through the silence the skyscrapers are buried in snow, like monuments once worshiped for their glory. This is a scene from the apocalyptic disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Unlike most big scale disaster films, instead of running away from the calamity, few of the main characters spend most of their time staying inside the New York Public Library. As horrifyingly boring as it may sound, this movie cannot be complete without the library as its setting, for it holds a certain significance in geography, its character and its implications.

In order to fathom the importance of the New York Public Library’s geographical factor, it is important to understand what kind of a disaster was unleashed in The Day After Tomorrow. In the film, due to Global Warming the polar ice had begun to melt, altering the North Atlantic current. This, in turn, brought abrupt climate changes including a giant tsunami in New York and a snow storm on northern parts of the earth. The storm froze everything in its path, also freezing New York with the flood. This was the start of a new Ice Age for the human race in the film. From here, it is crucial to note that an essential ingredient for large scale movies such as this needs to be bigger and scarier to heighten the apocalypse’s horror. Therefore, it is necessary for the disaster to strike a crowded city with tall buildings and iconic structures, so that the audience can watch their favourite monument fall onto the millions of people running away. In other words, what this American movie needs is a highly populated metropolis in the northern areas of US facing the Atlantic Ocean with a famous tourist attraction. If so, New York City is its perfect fit. The city, with its iconic Statue of Liberty, is currently the most populated city filled with 8.1 million citizens in the US. It is also decorated by skyscrapers that will help the tsunami look even more fearsome in comparison. Fortunately. New York City’s public library happens to be another iconic building in New York, maybe not at the right time but certainly at the right place.

However, one can question why it has to be the New York Public Library out of all the buildings in the city; and that is because of the characteristics the building holds as a library. First of all, in the freezing weather, fire power was the most important factor in survival within the movie. In a modern world without a flood that froze instantaneously, people can easily find heat wherever there is electricity and sunlight, but in this case that was not possible. What those survivors needed were  materials to keep the fireplace burning, and what can be better than books? As the fourth largest library in the world, it is plausible to say that the NYPL had more than enough books to burn. Secondly, with no cellphone service available in the city, the old library building built in the 19^th century had pay phones that gave one of the characters the chance to call for help. Moreover, with its old architecture design, unlike many edifices in the metropolis, it does not have walls made out of windows that loses heat or shatter easily compared to a thick stone wall. In other words, NYPL is a place that has fuel, a phone that works and protection from the cold – all three in one monumental building.

It is clear that the New York Public Building has the suitable geographical element and characteristics, but an even important factor to make this building significant is what it represents. One can say that library has records of the past, present and future of mankind. It tells the history of civilizations; about how they have constantly desired for more and developed as a result. Nevertheless, by scrutinizing the planet for their infinite greed, in the end they brought destruction upon themselves. Thus, in order to save their lives in this man-made catastrophe, they choose to burn the record of knowledge that men acquired through sacrificing the planet. This plays an ironic role in the movie. Men destroying their own history to have a future. In other words, the books in NYPL represents the greed of human beings, while the ritual of burning the books represents what those beings need to do to have a future – they need to put a stop to their selfish acts. It is time for them to start thinking of a way to coexist with the planet. This is whatThe Day After Tomorrow is trying to express to the audience by choosing a library among all the beautiful architectures in the city of New York.

In the motion picture, The Day After Tomorrow, the New York Public Library is not just a place to search for books but a perfect building in the right place, with the right characteristics and with the right significance to start and finish a story. The New York Public Library is no more just a place to read books but burn them – burn them into one’s memory. Read the mistakes to create a better future. It is now time to choose the first book to burn.

#1 As Selfish Beings - on Tourism

Oftentimes mankind is incapable of putting others before themselves even over their littlest comfort. This is especially true when their help brings no immediate changes or directly influences their community. Unfortunately, such ignorant and selfish acts have not only victimized their own kinds but also the world they exist in: the Earth. One of many ways that the human race has devastated the planet is through tourism. In their perspective this may be a means of entertainment acquired through sacrificing a fraction of their wealth, but in actuality they are sacrificing their own natural resources such as water, air and land.

 One might wonder how groups of sightseers on a tour can devastate one of the biggest natural resources, water. In truth, when a mass of population gathers at a single place it is inevitable for their garbage and the necessary accommodations to follow, which will, in turn, ruin the earth’s water supply. These accommodations include transportation. Apart from the amount of human waste sent into the sea that will increase with the number of tourists, transportation such as colossal cruise ships or tour ferries will add to the filth. Ships not only discard human waste but also toxic lubricants. In fact, the topic of water pollution caused by Antarctica tour ships is still an issue at hand. In 2007, because of the Antarctica’s peculiar icy climate, a cruise ship, the MS Explorer, crashed into an ice berg and sank. Inside the Explorer there were about 56,000 gallons of pollutants all together. This not only left the body of water in danger but also the 2,500 penguins who habitats the area. In the case of Antarctica, there were only penguins, but in the cases of thousands of already polluted beaches it is the people who will have to face the consequences. As tourism continues to grow more popular among people, water will no longer be safe or be available for the future generations.

Another natural resource in a dire situation is the air that people breathe in. Not surprisingly, many tourists prefer airplanes as their means of travel, since they are the fastest transportation available to the public. However, as planes burn fuels to fly, carbon dioxide is continuously emitted into the air, which is known to be the main catalyst for the Greenhouse Gas effect, which is regarded to be the cause of the many bizarre climate changes occurring around the world. In fact, the International Civil Aviation Organization stated that the number of international travelers is predicted to rise to 1.6 billion by 2020. In addition, planes are not the only transportation that tourists utilize. They also tend to take cars and buses to journey through cities and clusters of countries. In fact, according to Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, 70 percent of all tourists use cars as transportation, while 40 percent of tourists use airlines. Thus, if such air-polluting tendency in tourism continues without an eco-friendly alternative, the atmosphere will only persist to become polluted along with shortening the life span of the blue planet.

With the downfall of water and air through tourism, the mother earth is also at jeopardy. First of all, in order to create more space for hotels and resorts or to support the growing number of population in the area, many forests are eradicated. Regrettably, as many are aware, vegetation not only plays a vital role in purifying the air but they also hold the soil together, preventing them from drying up and blowing away. However, once the hold is gone the soil is ruined and with a bit of rain or a quake, a natural disaster like a landslide can easily happen. Additionally, a healthy empty terrain can turn into a landfill overnight due to the growing number of populations; and the garbage at the site will take at least 100 years to decompose. Notably, Jeju Island, with its increasing popularity among tourists, it now has 10 landfills to match the incoming waste. In this regard, it is necessary to understand that the toxic waste from the dump locations can easily seep out into the ocean or even into the underground water that people use every day. In other words, the earth spoiled by tourism will eventually lead to influencing other natural resources mentioned previously. This is unavoidable for they are all part of the earth’s eco-system.

At the beginning, it was mentioned that tourists are not just sacrificing their money but also the natural resources – water, air and land. However, it is important to conclude from the points stated above that by being ignorant for the sake of pleasure, mankind is not sacrificing something else but, in fact, themselves. The environment may wind up with scars but it will be the human race that faces its own end. It is as the English author David Mitchell has said - “in an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”