The Cost of Breathing

By: Stephanie Linke
Supervisor: Dr. Gesa Lüdecke

Climate change is a problem that will affect everyone sooner or later. Not only is it scientifically proven, it is also known in large parts of the population. However, there is still a big gap in the common knowledge of what exactly climate change will change in the future, if we continue to behave the way we do. I wanted to address part of this in my final project, specifically: problems that arise for environmental 'resources' such as clean water or breathable air in a market economy where those resources are not considered property of any one market participant ('public goods'). Because of this, air is often overlooked in economic calculations and thus polluted.

Considering a future where the market economy is not altered or overcome while forests (as natural resources) get used up, it can be expected that after a certain time, the amount of clean air will become so small that it needs to be filtered for use – which offers possibilities for firms to exploit air as a good that is produced through their filtering systems. In my final project, I tried to imagine such a future in a short novel of 7 short chapters (plus epilogue). In the story the protagonist 'Alex' (they/them) gets to experience the disadvantages that minorities face in the market economy, in this case especially people with a lung disease that are in need of more oxygen than the average. While Alex tries to cope with the high prices of additional air by constructing a (illegal) small filter themselves, this is considered theft of the technology of the filters and finally, Alex is forced out of the domes into the ‘real’, and barely inhabitable planet Earth.

Even though the overall genre of the story can be considered dystopic, this (open) ending was important to me also as a potential point of (long-term) hope, as I wanted to make clear that we all have to try and live with the real planet Earth in the end.

While writing, I encountered some struggles, such as the use of the pronoun "they" which made the text confusing to German readers at times, as well as the novel duology Breathe by Sarah Crossan which describes a very similar future situation and setting. However, both struggles were possible to resolve through my editing phase.