Barry Sanders was a judge, fall 2017, for a climate-change themed essay contest sponsored by the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, at Portland State University, and run by Paul Lask, English Instructor. The winner was Karen Grey for her essay, “A State of Change.”

“Because they are a moral crisis, global warming and extinction are also a crisis of the imagination. The world can’t fight its way out of this. We have to think our way out. This will require as great an exercise of the human imagination as the world has ever seen.” —Nature essayist and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore.

The Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University sponsored a “climate-themed” essay contest titled “Thinking Our Way Forward: Climate Change.”   

Science tells us we are at a tipping point—that if we continue with business as usual global temperatures will rise to catastrophic levels in the next three decades, bringing widespread drought, heat waves, food and water shortages, flooding, and social unrest. 

Three decades. Not a century or two. So what can we as writers do about this? It might mean reimagining the traditional good life; it might mean explaining how we as global citizens can prevent the harm our children will inherit; it might mean showing us how an economy that doesn’t wreck the world functions. We are looking for writing that is vivid, beautiful, and bold. Show us. 

Deadline is December 1, 2017
https://www.pdx.edu/sustainability/writing-contest