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The village shops in Sara Baume’s novel contain a “surplus of useless clutter”. (TEXT 2) Write a personal essay in which you reflect on the “useless clutter” that is a feature of many aspects of our lives. Paper 1 2016

The term useless clutter can mean different things to different people. However, what everyone can agree on is that over the course of our lives we all amass a “surplus of useless clutter.”

There are seven members of my family, so our family home is quite filled to the brim with an assortment of old and useless belongings that no one has the heart or the time to throw out. From old sport equipment that no longer fits even my youngest sister to school copy books that no one was sure if we were supposed to keep or not, our garage, attic and bedrooms are all overflowing with things we no longer need or use.It’s not hard to understand how the village shops in Sara Baume’s novel ended up filled with their “surplus of useless clutter.”

I’m not a particularly tidy person. I loathe when Saturday morning rolls around and my mother throws me out of bed and drags me around the house to help her tidy. My room is filled with shelves overflowing with old children’s books, drawers so filled up with useless clutter I no longer bother to open them and half my floor space is dedicated to old clothes and pens and toys that I’m too lazy, or too attached to to throw away.

For some people it isn’t very difficult at all to part with their possessions. My mother is a great believer in throwing things. Usually things in her mind we no longer need. She isn’t always on the ball. Where she insists on keeping old clothes and school books for my younger siblings, she is more than happy to get rid of a sock that’s partner will probably appear after the next wash, because what if it doesn’t. Every Monday morning brings with it a surprise, which of my prized possessions had she, over the weekend, decided no longer held a place in our home. It’s usually things I still need. Try explaining to your PE teacher that you haven’t forgotten your hockey kit, your mother just thought you didn’t need that gumshield for Hockey anymore. It isn’t an excuse that tends to stand up very well.

Where my mother loves to throw things away I’m the opposite. When the loathed Saturday rolls around my “surplus of useless clutter” usually gets shoved under my bed, down the bottom of my wardrobe or sometimes, if I have a particular amount of clutter I need shifted, I’ll throw some of it into the bedroom of my older brother. Where it’s safe from my mother’s hands. It isn’t that I object to throwing out my old things, it’s just that as the second eldest of five children I’m so used to inheriting or passing on old clothes, toys and school books that I have grown used to keeping almost everything. When I hear friends talking about selling their old school books, or worse burning them, my stomach begins to twist itself into an anxious knot. What if you need those ‘Lord of the Flies’ notes from second year? Surely you have some use for your fifth year maths copies? But don’t you know someone who might want your old hockey stick? In my house throwing out useful belongings is a sin, second only to wasting food or taking too long in the shower.

I’m not the only one in my friend group who has problems parting with old belongings. Although he is much tidier than I, my best friend Jonathan still has all his old lego sets set up in shelves in his bedroom. The boxes and instructions are tucked away safely in some wardrobe while the structures gather dust. He’s not even particularly partial to them. He is no longer as obsessed with Batman as he was back in third class, or Indiana Jones like in fourth class, or even Star Wars, an obsession that dragged from the time we were in sixth class until the end of third year, just in time for the new movie to be announced. When his own mother gets at him to take down the lego and let his younger brothers play with it, or to box it up where it wouldn’t catch dust, he is obstinately against the idea. Stepping into Jonathan’s room is like stepping into a museum. It isn’t just Lego sets that he’s attached to. Every school project, every picture and every prize he has all have their place. Every activity we ever did together as children is set a shelf in a photo or a trophy or a ticket to the museum or cinema.

Different people are attached to different things. Where most of my surplus clutter are things I worry someone might want or need down the line, Jonathan’s is made up of old toys, photos and treasured items.

The clutter we keep around us can tell a story. When my grandfather died I was eleven years old. We hadn’t had much of a relationship as he and my mother didn’t get along, but the few times we had visited him he had entertained us with tales of his adventures as a young man. How he had studied in the UK, living off tins of beans and scrapings of tin to get by, or how he had seen all sorts of marvels when he had travelled abroad. His adventures covered the world round; India, Turkey, Russia, Peru, Canada and Iceland to name a few. So I was excited to see what treasures he had left behind.

In my mind I pictured wooden carvings, brightly coloured tapestries and other wonderful prizes only found overseas. But when it came to going through all his clutter, left behind in cardboard boxes on high shelves, and in cupboards in rooms that had fallen out of use, there was nothing particularly special. How many different things my grandfather had seen and done, his lifetime of achievements and adventure and all we could find were boring knick knacks and moth bitten clothes. Although I found most of my grandfather’s “surplus clutter” boring and stupid, my father certainly didn’t.

Where I saw what my grandfather had left behind as pointless trash that no one needed or wanted, that told a sad story of a boring old man who had never gone on any exciting adventures, my father saw his own old school reports, a broken bracelet that had once belonged to his grandmother and other personal items that made him feel closer to his dad. Memories of the man who had raised him, the man he would never see again but in the boring old knick knack that made me promise myself that my home would be filled with pictures and trophies and all sorts of interesting things that would tell the most amazing story.

To my father, all of this surplus clutter that meant very little to me was all he had left of his own dad. So, with the help of several metres of sellotape and my grandfather’s collection of old newspapers, we packed up as much as we could and brought it all home. The surplus clutter that had been left over from a life time of boring family activities and work functions are now some of my father’s most treasured possessions. In our kitchen, it was a relief to inherit all of my grandfather’s chipped old mugs as we are a clumsy lot who break dishes on a regular basis. We are now slowly breaking our way through every mug my grandfather owned. In the drawer beside my father’s bed is the broken bracelet that belonged to my great-grandmother that he keeps promising himself he’ll get fixed but never does.All around our house we now have in addition to our own clutter, all of my grandfathers. The items I had once stuck my nose up at have made the shift from my grandfather’s possessions to our own clutter.

As I said before, the term useless clutter can mean different things to different people. One man’s trash can be another man’s treasure. For my father, my grandfather’s trash proved a treasuretrove of memories from his childhood. In my mother’s case, my treasured belongings are trash that we no longer need. Everyone places a different amount of importance on different things. In the end our ‘surplus clutter’ can tell an incredible story, or a really boring one, but that doesn’t really matter as long as you can convince your mother that, yes, you need that screwdriver in the bathroom, and, no, you don’t know why it’s there, but, would she please not move it, you’re sure someone will remember.

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leavingcertnotes · 9 years ago

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Paper I Higher Level 2006 Section C Q 5 “What seems to be the problem…?” Write the speech you would deliver to a group of world leaders in which you persuade them to deal with one or more of the world’s problems.

First time writing a Leaving Cert Speech and Haven’t gotten corrections back. I’ll edit this or re-post it later.

Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to address one of the most pressing problems of the past decade, and no, I’m not talking about terrorism or abortion or any of the stories that seem to be all we read about in the media nowadays. I’m talking about the so called ‘hoax’ climate change.

The first question to address is a simple one. What is climate change? Climate change, quite simply, is a large-scale, shift in the planet's weather or average temperatures. Or, according to google, a change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards. This change in climate patterns is largely attributed to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial era.

Every year our earth grows warmer causing considerable problems both our environment and our economy. Yet the idea of global warming is considered by many either irrelevant or a hoax. What could possibly be the motivation behind this supposed ‘hoax’? Although there is evidence ever day of changing weather patterns and other effects of climate change some still deny it’s existence. Some out of disbelief and for political gain. In a speech on December 15th 2015, American Presidential candidate, Donald Trump said “Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and … A lot of it’s a hoax. It’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money making industry, ok? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.“

If a man as popular and as powerful as Trump, a possible future president of the United States, makes a claim like this many listen. So, although people are becoming better informed on issues such as climate change, it is very easy for someone like Trump to change what people believe. In order to have any positive change on global warming, the support of the public is necessary.

However, how can any actions be taken when there are still those who believe global warming to be a hoax. Conspiracy theorists and nay sayers are not the only opposition to taking preventative measures against climate change. There are still those who believe climate change to be unimportant, irrelevant even. As Kofi Annan. Ex-Secretary-General of the United Nations said, “on climate change, we often don't fully appreciate that it is a problem. We think it is a problem waiting to happen.“

Awareness campaigns funded by governments are much more likely to be seen and believed then those funded by charities and campaigners. The nations of the world and their governments need to take a step in educating their population from a young age on the causes and dangers of climate change.

Those who do not believe in climate change, or it’s importance, should look at the changes happening in the world around them. If climate change is so unimportant why has global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment?

Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner. Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are already occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.

Climate change has serious long term effects. The continuous projected rise in global temperatures over the next century and beyond will become catastrophic. With an increase in drought and heatwaves, stronger and more intense hurricanes and a radical rise in sea level.

Drought and heat waves everywhere are projected to become more intense and longer lasting while cold waves do the opposite. Summer temperatures are projected to keep rising and a reduction in soil moisture is expected for most of the world. By the end of this century what have been once-in-twenty-year extreme heat days in milder parts of the world are projected to occur every two to three years over most nations. Whilst most of us relish the rare warm irish days, the increased risk of skin diseases and heat strokes as well as the detrimental effect regular heat waves will have on our agricultural industry - which accounts for 7.6% of Ireland’s economy-wide GVA, 12% of our total resources and 8.5% of total employment - won’t be as welcome.

The contribution of human activities to the intensity and strength of hurricanes is uncertain. However, since the early 1980s the intensity, frequency and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes as well as the frequency of the strongest hurricanes have all increased since the early 1980s. Whilst we in Ireland are not the victims of regular hurricanes. In fact the last major hurricane of the last few centuries was in January 1839. We are, however, victims of hurricane associated storms. Which along with global rainfall rates, are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.

According to NASA, the global sea level has risen about 8 inches (20 centimetres) since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to continue to rise by about 1 to 4 feet by the end of this century, This will be the result of the melting of the ice caps and the expansion of seawater as it warms. In the next several decades sea level rise combined with storm surges and high tides will further increase flooding worldwide.

The next issue is a more complicated one. What can and should we do about this issue and how do we go about that?

This is not the first time global leaders have discussed climate change. At the Paris climate conference in December of 2015 one hundred and ninety six nations struck a deal that american president Barack Obama called ‘a turning point for the world.’ The deal unanimously agreed by close to two hundred countries does something previous agreements have failed to do, bring together both developed and developing countries in an attempt to save the planet.

At the conference it was agreed that by the year 2100 world nations need to limit global warming to below two degrees above pre-industrial times. These targets are important, but two degrees could already change the world irreversibly. Scientist do not know when the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets will melt, events that could trigger a dangerous sea level rise and cause a fundamental shift in the world’s climate. We do know however that two degrees is cutting it close, cutting it worryingly close for small islands states that could be wiped out by rising sea levels well before we even get to 2 degrees warmer.

Even staying within that temperature limit is something we should be worried about. While the agreement follows through on what leading scientists are saying is needed, for the most part, it does little to ensure that nations will follow through. As leading global warming activist Bill McKibben put it: “The world is a doughy fellow who has promised to drop three suit sizes in time for his wedding, which is now only a month away.” In other words, things don’t look very promising at the moment.

That isn’t to say the conference wasn’t without success. The biggest achievement of the Paris Climate Conference was its success in highlighting how, in CEO Carbon Tracker Initiative, Anthony Hobley’s words the “fossil fuel era is well and truly over.”

The deal at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference is not the first global attempt at finding a solution to the rapidly growing problem of global warming. In December of 1997 the Protocol to the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan. The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that mmis State Parties to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, based upon the premise that global warming exists and that man made emissions have caused it. A promising solution to the problem of global warming.

192 nations ratified the protocol, however in 2001 although the US had previously signed the agreement, they dropped out. What is to stop this happening again? It is no longer acceptable for us to ignore the issue that global warming poses. Standing by, oblivious or unconcerned, while climate change ruins our planet is not an acceptable stance to take.

Suffice to say promises and agreements are no longer satisfactory. Global warming is a pressing issue and we do not have forever to discuss and re-discuss what we need to do and how we’re going to do it. The nations of the world need to prove their dedication to the conservation of our planet by taking preventative measures against global warming.

But how can this be done effectively? There are many measure that can be taken to stall climate change.

With the confirmed end of the “fossil fuel era” nations need to be making efforts to reduce man made emissions from burning fossil fuels. This can be achieved by pursuing renewable and clean forms of energy as well as beginning to phase out the use of fossil fuels. Other possible steps would be boosting energy efficiency, in an effort to use less energy, improving efficiency in all modes of transport and exploring both nuclear energy, a dangerous and expensive alternative with fewer emissions, and natural renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind energy.

Globally we need to manage foresting and agriculture, preventing deforestation and making our food production practices more sustainable is one of the most productive ways to fight global warming as together tropical deforestation and agriculture emissions represent 30% of the world’s heat trapping emissions.

Whilst recent efforts to reduce and prevent global warming are admirable, and positive steps in the right direction, more visible actions need to be taken and soon to prevent the imminent destruction of our planet by the effects of global warming. It is simply not enough to expect this problem to go away on its own, we need to act.

#leaving cert #speech #global warming #climate change #english #essay #exam questions #paper 1 #creative writing

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