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TylerCharee Chapman-Lopez
Professor Holly Batty
English 114B
25 March 2014
Caring May Very Well Carry the World
It is remarkable that a novel published forty-six years ago, foreshadowing a time seven
years from our time today could be so accurate. As of 2014 the world is greatly faced with the
defamation of the planet due to: extreme pollution, rapid animal extinction, outrageous advances
in technology, and a general lack of empathy for our dying planet. Earth will become inhabitable
if its citizens continue to not take care of it.
In Phillip K. Dicks novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? it is the year 2021, and
the world has been thrown into a radioactive dust cloud due to World War Terminus. Most
residents of earth have relocated to Mars, because the dust killed a lot of the population, and
caused majority of the animals to become extinct. To take care of an animal such as a cow or
goat now shows a high social stature, and because of this electric animals have been
manufactured. Aside from obtaining stature, it is important to show you can care for something.
Very intelligent androids called Nexus-6, originally created to assist the humans on Mars,
escaped to earth, and became dangerous. These androids, look, and talk like actual homo-
sapiens, yet are incapable of showing empathy. It is the protagonist, Rick Deckards, job to
terminate these Androids. Although the novels conflicts are very extreme, our society is on the
brink of such a world. Dicks novel speaks of a dystopia due to many factors gone terribly
wrong, could this be the world we are soon to face or are we already here?
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Pollution is a terrible problem the world has been fighting for decades. Although global
warming is a known epidemic, it is no longer publically acknowledged that our earth is depleting
at an alarming rate.
Climate change is already upon us, melting ice, killing forests and making floods
and heat waves more intense. Meanwhile global emissions of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases continue to increase, promising far worse to come. Even if we stopped
all emissions tomorrow, temperatures would keep rising for decades with potentially
catastrophic consequences ranging from famines to rapid sea-level rise. (Battersby 1)
The earth is slowly, but surely deteriorating, and there is nothing its citizens can do to
stop it, because it has come too far. China is currently experiencing Dicks novels pollution
problem first hand; there is a thick radioactive cloud completely covering the country. Chinese
scientists have been warning China of the dangers of its pollution, yet consequently unsuccessful
in making changes, and are now expected to experience a nuclear winter
1
. Not only is Chinas
pollution affecting its people, it is also affecting its economy, with their countries waters also
polluted; many fish are diseased, causing them to be inedible and illegal to sell. Although it
might be benefitting the worlds marine life that China cannot slaughter as much fish. China is
the worlds second largest sea food exporter, and is greatly contributing to the extinction on
many species of sea creatures.
Besides the aquatic massacres daily in Asia, America also contributes significantly to the
extinction of the worlds animal population. As of 2013 experts have estimated that animals are
dying at a rate of one-thousand to one-hundred thousand times faster than that of the expected
natural extinction rate. Unlike past mass extinctions, caused by events like asteroid strikes,

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Nuclear Winter: a period of abnormal cold and darkness predicted to follow a nuclear war, caused by a layer of
smoke and dust in the atmosphere blocking the suns rays
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volcanic eruptions and natural climate shifts the current crisis is almost entirely caused by us
humans.(Center for Biological Diversity 1). Nearly twenty-thousand species of animals and
plants are currently at high risks for extinction. 85% of which is because of pollution humans
have created. During the time in which the novel was written the extinction of the bald eagle was
greatly feared, because America did not want to be frowned on for being responsible for the
extinction of their national bird. Between the years of 1917 and 1953 at least one-hundred and
twenty-eight thousand bald eagles were wiped out by savage hunters. This might explain why
Dick chose to have the birds die out first in his dystopia and why the protagonist, Rick, ever so
longs to obtain a real one. Another rising fear amongst Americans during the cold war was
extreme advances in technology.
The cold war was a forty-five year period that followed what is known as the greatest
war in history: World War II. World War II was ended by the United States dropping of the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The creation of the Atomic bomb is seen as such a gigantic
breakthrough in modern technology that even the president found nothing wrong with publicly
supporting a device that violently murdered eighty-thousand people, and still ruins the lives of
Japans residents sixty-nine years later:
In his statement on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, President Harry S. Truman
established the connection between divine intervention and the Allies victory in the race
for the new weapon, declaring: It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic
power of the universe. The president then conceded: We may be grateful
to Providence that the Germans got the V-1s and the V-2s late and in
limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic
bomb at all (Text of Statements 1945: 4). (Laucht 2).
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But after seeing the damage it caused Americans became frightened at what technology
could become; this is a fear that has bled across the ages. In todays society we have a device or
mechanism for anything we need. Now that we have nuclear and atomic weapons a more
seemingly acceptable idea of what technology should be is attempting to be produced: robots
others are determined to successfully create robots that walk, talk, and function like humans.
Scientists and Engineers are continuing to make advances in technology, without considering the
possible outcomes. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep the androids have become
dangerous, have killed living beings. There are hundreds of books and movies creating a
forewarning about how technology can go wrong, yet we still strive for it.
Throughout everyday life does one stop to think, am I contributing to the destruction of
the world? Yes, we all are. The issues in the world are dramatically spiraling out of control, with
pollution being practically incontrollable, animals dying at a rate faster than the speed of light,
and technology slowly taking over our lives, what can honestly be left, when Earth has alas given
all that it can give?