Creation Corner Column, November 2019
"There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places." Wendell Berry.
Book Titles and Authors of Potential Interest To You.
Action versus Contemplation: Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters. Jennifer Summit and Blakey Vermeule.
The Art of the Bird: The History of Ornithological Art through Forty Artists. Roger J. Lederer.
As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial (graphic novel, satire). Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan. 2007.
Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice. Belden C. Lane.
A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future. Daniel C. Esty.
Between God and Green: How Evangelicals are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change. Katharine Wilkinson.
Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. Rachel Maddow.
Breaking the Oil Spell: The Gulf Falcons' Path to Diversification. Reda Cherif, Fuad Hasanov, and Min Zhu.
A Brief History of Creation: Science and the Search for the Origin of Life. Bill Mesler & H. James Cleaves II.
The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Adam Rome.
The Case for the Green New Deal. Ann Pettifor.
Changing Tides: An Ecologist's Journey to Make Peace with the Anthropocene. Alejandro Frid.
Climate Machines, Fascist Drives, and Truth. William E. Connolly.
Cool Cities: Urban Sovereignty and the Fix for Global Warming. Benjamin R. Barber.
Darwin's Most Wonderful Plants: A Tour of His Botanical Legacy. Ken Thompson.
Death on Earth: Adventures in Evolution and Mortality. Jules Howard.
The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life. Paul Davies.
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. Kate Raworth.
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Paul Hawken, editor. Katharine Wilkinson, senior writer.
The Drowning of Money Island: A Forgotten Community's Fight Against the Rising Seas Forever Changing Coastal America. Andrew S. Lewis.
Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. Vandana Shiva.
Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of Our Changing World. Fred Pearce.
The End of Hunger: Renewed Hope for Feeding the World. Jenny Eaton Dyer and Cathleen Falsani, editors.
End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World. Bryan Walsh.
Endangered Economies: How the Neglect of Nature Threatens Our Prosperity. Geoffrey Heal.
Engage, Connect, Protect: Empowering Diverse Youth as Environmental Leaders. Angelou Ezeilo with Nick.
Chiles.
Everybody Knows: Climate Emergency in the New Age of Inequality. Tom Athanasiou.
Everything Is Connected: Towards a Globalization with a Human Face and an Integral Ecology. Joseph Ogbonnaya and Lucas Briola, editors. re: a follow-up to Laudato si' by Pope Francis.
Extreme Conservation: Life at the Edges of the World. Joel Berger.
Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. Bathsheba Demuth.
Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons. David Bollier and Silke Helfrick.
The Future of Conservation in America: A Chart for Rough Water. Gary E. Machlis and Jonathan B. Jarvis. Foreword by Terry Tempest Williams.
The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey. Brian D. McLaren.
Gandhi's Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind. Nico Slate.
The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America's Coasts. Gilbert M. Gaul.
God, Creation and Climate Change: Spiritual and Ethical Perspectives. Rev. Dr. Karen L. Bloomquist, editor, 2009.
Golden Rice: The Imperiled Birth of a GMO Superfood. Ed Regis.
The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul. Belden C. Lane.
Green Capitalism: Why It Can't Work. Daniel Tanuro. 2013.
Of Green Leaf, Bird and Flower: Artists' Books and the Natural World. Elizabeth Fairman.
Greening the Alliance: The Diplomacy of NATO's Science and Environmental Initiatives. Simone Turchetti.
Ground Truth: A Guide to Tracking Climate Change at Home. Mark L. Hineline.
Here: Poems for the Planet. Elizabeth J. Coleman, editor. Foreword from the Dalai Lama; a guide to activism from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
How to Grow a Human: Adventures in How We Are Made and Who We Are. Philip Ball.
Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You have. Tatiana Schlossberg.
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Nir Eyal (re: one's mental environment)
Inside Animal Hearts and Minds. Belinda Recio.
This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West. Christopher Ketcham.
This Land is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth. Jedediah Purdy.
Landmarks. Robert Macfarlane.
Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners. James B. Nardi.
Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care. Giorgos Kallis.
Meathooked: The History and Science of our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat. Marta Zaraska.
Melting Away: A Ten-Year Journey Through Our Endangered Polar Regions. Camille Seaman.
The Myth of Human Supremacy. Derrick Jensen.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. Amory and Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken. 1999.
Natural Histories: Extraordinary Rare Book Selections from the American Museum of Natural History Library. Tom Balone, editor.
A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year. Jane McMorland Hunter, editor.
Nature's Fabric: Leaves in Science and Culture. David Lee.
The (New) Farm Vegetarian (Vegan) Cookbook. Louise Hagler. 1975.
New York 2140. Kim Stanley Robinson.
Nitinikiau Innusi: I Keep the Land Alive. Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue. (re: Labrador Innu).
No Easy Way: Climate Emergency, Internationalism, and the New Age of Inequality (forthcoming). Tom Athanasiou.
No One is Too Small to Make a Difference. Greta Thunberg.
North By Nuuk. Denis Defibaugh. re: Greenland.
The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be. J.B. MacKinnon.
Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does. Philip Ball.
A Philosophy of Dirt. Olli Lagerspetz.
Poisonous Skies: Acid Rain and the Globalization of Pollution. Rachel Emma Rothschild.
The Political Economy of Resource Regulation. Edited by Andreas R.D. Sanders, Pal Thonstad Sandvik and Espen Storli.
This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent. Daegan Miller.
Reconceiving Nature: Ecofeminism in Late Victorian Women's Poetry. Patricia Murphy.
Remarkable Trees. Christina Harrison and Tony Kirkham.
Rescuing Ladybugs: Inspirational Encounters with Animals That Changed the World. Jennifer Skiff.
RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR: In Search of the Soul of the Sea. Philip Hoare.
Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage. Rev. Dr. Dianne Glave.
Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis. Rev. Dr. Leah Schade and Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, editors.
Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change. Sherri Mitchell.
Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World. Jarius Victor Grove.
Savior of the World: A Theology of the Universal Gospel. Carlos Raul Sosa Siliezar.
Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science. Union of Concerned Scientists. 2004.
The Season of Creation: A Preaching Commentary. Edited by David Rhoads, Norman C. Habel, and H. Paul Santmire.
The Sexual Politics of Meat---25th anniversary edition: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. Carol J. Adams.
Shift: A New Mindset for Sustainable Execution (re: energy management). M. Kathryn Brohman, Eileen Brown, Jim McSheffrey.
The State of Science in the Trump Era: Damage Done, Lessons Learned, and a Path to Progress. Center for Science and Democracy.
Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security. Todd Miller.
Stranded Assets: A Climate Risk Challenge. Ben Caldicott et al.
Sun Moon Earth: The History of Solar Eclipses from Omens of Doom to Einstein and Exoplanets. Tyler Nordgren.
A Swarm, A Flock, A Host: A Compendium of Creatures (silhouettes and poems). Mark Doty and Darren Waterston.
System Change, Not Climate Change. Martin Empson.
Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing Planet. Partha Dasgupta.
True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy. Juliet B. Schor. 2011.
The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World. Jeff Goodell.
Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unraveled the Mysteries of Our Oceans, Atmosphere, and Ice Sheets and Made the Planet Whole. Sarah Day.
We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast. Jonathan Safran Foer.
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Miscellaneous Entries
The Great Acceleration definition: refers to the dramatic continual and roughly simultaneous surge in growth rate across a large range of measures of human activity, first recorded in mid-20th century and continuing to this day.
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"On the Fate of the Earth" Jonathan Schell Memorial Lecture, Tuesday Nov. 12, 2019 will be a talk by Arundhati Roy, followed by a conversation with Naomi Klein. Streamed live at facebook.com/jacobinmag .
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Web Site Worth Your Consideration is that of the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform:
Go to ajustclimate.org .
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One slogan of the grassroots climate movement: System Change, Not Climate Change.
Another is: The way things are. Is not the way they have to be. Hope is Power!
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Various climate change movement names:
Extinction Rebellion
Sunrise Movement
Student Climate Strike
Peoples' Climate Movement
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For the Gender, Equity, and Environment Program of the Sierra Club, go to sierraclub.org/gender .
For the Sierra Club web site on heat waves, go to sc.org/heat-waves .
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Film: 1991 Shell public information film Climate of Concern acknowledges there is a "possibility of change faster than at anytime since the end of the ice age, change too fast, perhaps, for life to adapt without severe dislocation."
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Mike Ochs finds common ground between religion and politics in his concern for the environment.
Politically he self-published the first "Greens Bibliography" of the English-language literature on the international Green Party movement (1989), the project for his Master of Liberal Arts in International Studies degree at Lock Haven (PA) University. He also helped plant the seeds for the Green Party of PA at that time, and remains a cyber-activist with it.
For a monthly newsletter of the ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County (PA), he has written the "Creation Corner Column" since 1997. It became a blog in 2011 at
He received a B.A. degree from Gettysburg College in 1965.
