A Collection of Stories about the Opioid Crisis, Climate Change, and the People Working to Fix them

Abstract

The opioid crisis touches millions. Many families, including my own, have been affected by addiction to opioids. The first half of this collection of stories examines how addiction works in the brain, naloxone distribution, and medication assisted treatment. The second half focuses on climate change, a problem that will affect all living creatures over the next several decades. These stories look at the health of pollinators, air pollution, wind power, and carbon emissions from marine shipping. In both parts of this thesis, people from various backgrounds work passionately to solve these two important problems facing humans in the future. These two stories also illustrate the inevitable human flaw of simultaneously inventing new technologies and medicines while failing to predict their negative consequences. Eventually, people must repair these human-caused problems.