When you are living in an apartment and your best friend is a rat or a roach the only thing that can possibly influence you is the American dream. However, the American dream varies for everyone. Your social status determines whether or not your American dream is possible. People that struggle to make a living don’t have the chance to live in a three floor house or a fancy vehicle. They would be happy if they had a bike to ride around town. People who live in urban communities struggle everyday to fulfill their American dream. Some people aren’t allowed to choose their American dream because they don’t have enough resources to get to their dream life. Others get their American dream handed to them, and they seem to forget about lower class communities. In the wealthy community poverty isn’t a problem, but in reality its one of the biggest problems around and someone needs to open their eyes and realize that.
Anyone would be happy if they were living the American dream: a Lamborghini, a three floor house, and a two door garage. The foolish thing about it is that not many people know that the American dream comes with consequences. Many people have the opportunity to live in luxuries, but they forget that the “good life” causes one of the biggest conflicts known as global warming. It’s crazy to know that wealthy people have the chance to live in luxuries while people that live in poverty have to live in pain, and suffer while they get the worst of Mother Nature. The American dream has a restricted line that stops the lower class from reaching their dream life.
Every time you mention the American dream you think of the rich. Everyone admires them because they have it all: cars, houses, and a great job. Why can’t people in the lower class think about this? It’s because they have to worry about getting out of their neighborhoods, and into a better apartment or project home. Everywhere they go they would have to travel with their best “friends.” Their best friends are the furry, gray, red eyed, cuddly rats. You could never feel lonely because there is always someone to talk to in lower class communities; it might not be your first choice, but it will always be there to listen to you as long as there’s some type of crumb on the floor. The lower class societies tolerate the worst conditions of living, but that is because they don’t have a choice. No matter how far a low income family travels, they still will have to deal with natural disasters, because lower income communities are known for their struggles with global warming. Furthermore, no matter what happens, people that live in poverty will always receive the devastating part of mankind.
Factories are built in lower class communities and fill the air up with dirty pollution. It seems like the government is careless about what happens to people that can’t even dream about a luxurious life. According to “Detroit Arcadia,” by Rebecca Solnit, Detroit struggles with money. Detroit barely has enough resources to allow anyone to live there without getting sick. Many factories were built there and they each stop Detroit from having a populated city. The only people that will probably stay in Detroit are obviously the people that already live in lower income communities. History seems to repeat itself. Society has allowed minorities and whites to diverge. Solnit states “In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the city was falling apart, spectacularly and violently” (Solnit, p.68). So much violence goes on in lower class societies because many people there know that they could never reach the luxurious life. People fight and kill each other to be on the top of an invisible business. This business is created to help provide “the hood American dream.” The “hood American dream” is to have enough money to provide your family with food and shelter. It is also to have certain products that others don’t have: electronics, sneakers, and clothes. Many people create a drug business because they believe that they can acquire all their necessities, and they believe that they can finally reach their American dream. In reality, they don’t reach it; they just risk getting arrested or killed to be above everyone else. They see people living the American dream, so they do what they can to share that feeling. In some cases, that might mean stealing to get what they want. Society has divided, and the rich will continue to stay rich while the poor will stay poor.
How far are some people willing to go to reach their American dream? I ask myself this question everyday. Not only do the rich play a huge role in climate change, but people that live in lower class communities do too. The rich buy these fancy cars, and get involved with these remarkable jobs because it brings in a lot of money. They are so blinded by the money that they forget about global warming. Every car they have ever driven releases gas, also known as a greenhouse gas, into the air, which impacts climate change. When people in lower class societies do reach their American dream they also get blinded by money. They never had the chance to live in the shoes of a wealthy person, so they spend all of their money on luxuries. However, everything they buy contributes to global warming: cars, houses, and electronics. Moreover, the American dream is like a drug, and it becomes very addictive to people that have never had it. When people from poor neighborhoods reach their American dream they get hooked the first time they taste it because the recipe contains a pile of money. A person that lives in poverty struggles to reach their American dream, and for some of them that American dream turns into an American nightmare. An unprivileged person might reach a stop sign in their life if they are trying to snatch their American dream from someone else. For a lot of people in lower class societies, that is all they know how to do. They grow up believing that sometimes you have to take what you believe is yours, but that is not always true. That results in violence, and usually that violence happens between people of the same race. According to “Dead Cities,” by Mike Davis, history follows a constant pattern. Davis states, “He invites us to reopen that history from that vantage-point of an early visible future when sprawl, garbage, addiction, violence, and simulation will have overwhelmed every vital life-space” (Davis, p.31). Global warming was predicted to happen because there were many signs of it before. Factories that were built contributed to global warming, because all of the gas they released mixed into the air and got trapped in the atmosphere. Sprawl cities were created once these factories came into the world, and people created it to separate social classes. Violence just became an addition to sprawl cities and global warming. Finding the American dream can result in a global impact.
The consequence of following the American dream will be an ecocide of the human species. According to “Ecocide,” by Franz J. Broswimmer, Broswimmer states, “well over 50% of all species on earth will be perished” (Broswimmer, p.2). Does the American dream matter then? It will have to take something like an ecocide for all races to unite, but by that time it will be too late, because everyone will be gone. Society needs to give an equal opportunity to everyone. This way violence in lower class communities will end, and everyone can at least have a chance to reach their American dream.
Society’s divisions are the reasons why the American dream results in global warming. Whites move away to suburban areas where they will have to drive a lot more, which wastes more gas. All of the traveling affects global warming; however, urban communities suffer the most. Everyone sees the American dream as a perfect life; it seems perfect at first, but look at the damage it has done. Climate change is at risk, and if everyone keeps following what they believe is the American dream then I don’t know where this planet will be in a few years. The “poor” will continue to live with their best friends known as the rats and roaches, but not only would they share bedrooms with them, but they also would suffer from toxic poison in a lot of the food that they consume. In the film, “The 11th Hour,” narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, all the garbage and toxic that gets thrown into rivers and other garbage areas, affect people in lower class societies because most of these dumpsters are around the average poor house. All the toxic gets absorbed, and it can poison anyone who happens to be around it. Lower class communities have to suffer while the rich continue their fancy lives. In one way or another, society needs to combine the poor and the rich. According to “The 11th Hour,” one way to do this is by creating photosynthetic cities. This will not happen anytime soon though because everyone is jammed up in this idea of the American dream. The American dream needs to translate into a solution for global warming. Without a solution to global warming, the human species will be annihilated. Then the American Dream wouldn’t matter anymore. How long is it going to take before someone looks through the lens of a struggling person that deals with global warming everyday? Society doesn’t want to witness a struggling person that lives in poverty achieve the American dream.
Citation:
Davis, Mike. Dead Cities and Other Tales. New York: The New Press, 2003
Broswimmer, J., Franz. Ecocide: A Short History of the mass Extinction of species Pluto Press. 2002
Rebecca, Solnit. Detroit Arcadia: Exploror the post American landscape. 2007
“The 11th Hour”. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio DVD.
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