Winter Reading: Creation Corner Column, January 2021.
"You can't save a place you don't love. You can't love a place you don't know. And you can't know a place you haven't learned." Watershed theologian Ched Myers' paraphrasing Baba Dioum, a Senegalese environmentalist.
"Read. Think. Do. Repeat." Phrase often used by The Christian Century.
"To pursue the ongoing clarification of thought": phrase expressing the purpose of Friday Night Meetings among The Catholic Worker movement houses.
Climate Crisis and Environment Book Titles
American Birds: A Literary Companion. edited by Andrew Rubenfeld and Terry Tempest Williams.
An Almost Zero Waste Life: Learning How to Embrace Less to Live More. Megean Weldon.
Another End of the World is Possible: Living the Collapse (and Not Merely Surviving It). Pablo Servigne, Raphael Stevens and Gauthier Chapelle.
Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Rethinking Capitalism. Christopher Marquis. ("B" businesses meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose).
Birds: A Smithsonian Coloring Book, Rachel Curtis. available 3/2021.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale's Lost Manuscript. American Museum of Natural History.
The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals. Patrick Barkham.
Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Do What They Do. Marc Bekoff.
Cataclysms: An Environmental History of Humanity. Laurent Testot
The Disappearance of Butterflies. Josef H. Reichholf.
Earth From Above, Updated Edition. Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
Earth Vote, Frank Lingo. Novel (read free excerpt at EarthVote.world .
The Edible Ecosystem Solution: Growing Biodiversity in Your Backyard and Beyond. Zack Loeks.
Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato. Rebecca Earle.
Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers. Jessica Roux.
Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles: The Future of Europe's Last Primeval Forest. Eunice Blavascunas.
Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat. Robert N. Spengler III.
The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making. Joseph Masco.
Future Sea: How to Rescue and Protect the World's Oceans. Deborah Rowan Wright.
The Genesis Quest: The Geniuses and Eccentrics on a Journey to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth. Michael Marshall.
The Green Good News: Christ's Path to Sustainable and Joyful Life. T. Wilson Dickinson.
Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit. Alex Edmans.
A Guide to EU Environmental Law. Josephine van Zeben and Arden Rowell.
Humanity's Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe. Mark Schuller.
Intervolution: Smart Bodies, Smart Things. Mark C. Taylor.
Katrina: A History, 1915-2015. Andy Horowitz.
Latin for Bird Lovers: Over 3,000 Bird Names Explored and Explained. Roger Lederer and Carol Burt.
Living Lightly on the Earth: Building an Ark for Prince Edward Island, 1974-76.
The Ministry for the Future (climate crisis, "cli-fi", fiction). Kim Stanley Robinson.
National Parks Conservation Association: A Century of Impact.
The New Wilderness. Diane Cook. ("cli-fi" novel).
The Next Great Migration: The Story of Movement on a Changing Planet. Sonia Shah.
Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West. Lauren Redness.
Our Only Home: A Climate Appeal to the World. The Dalai Lama and Franz Alt.
Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism. Martin Arboleda.
Refuge: America's Wildest Places. Ian Shive. Photographs of America's National Wildlife Refuges.
Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. Rebecca Henderson.
Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People. Charles C. Camosy.
Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale. Adam Minter.
Seen: True Stories of Marginalized Trailblazers: Rachel Carson. Graphic Novel. Birdie Willis and Rii Abrego. Forthcoming.
A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You. Sean B. Carroll.
Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death. Jenny Kleeman.
Stewardship of Eden: What Scripture Says About the Environment and Why It Matters. Sandra L. Richter.
Tales From the Ant World. Edward O. Wilson.
To Show Another Way: How to Learn, Heal, and Serve at a Time of Crisis on Planet Earth. Susan S. Trout.
Trees: Between Heaven and Earth. Art Wolfe, Gregory MacNamee; Wade Davis, intro.
The Truth About Nature: Environmentalism in the Era of Post-truth Politics and Platform Capitalism. Bram Buscher.
Vesper Flights. Helen Macdonald. Essays.
What Is a Bird? An Exploration of Anatomy, Physiology, Behavior, and Ecology. edited by Tony D. Williams.
What Would Nature Do? A Guide for Our Uncertain Times. Ruth DeFries.
Work, Mate, Marry, Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. Debora L. Spar.
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Pandemic Issues Books
Covid Chronicles: A Comics Anthology. Graphic Novel (GN).
Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds. Ebola and the Ravages of History. Paul Farmer.
More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War. Kenneth C. Davis.
The Plague: How Trump Bungled America's Coronavirus Response. Special issue publication from motherjones.com/plague .
"Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents" (Obama administration).
The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics, or Itself. Richard D. Wolff.
"Totally Under Control", 123 minute documentary, released Oct. 13, re: Trump administration response to Covid-19.
Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them. Seema Yasmin.
Audio Titles
Humankind: A Hopeful History. Roger Bregman. Hachette Audio, 11.5 hours.
2021 Anniversaries
Sixty years since Dr. Jane Goodall arrived at Gombe National Park to study chimpanzees. See the Jane Goodall Institute.
Hints for Further Reading
Book publishers often allow you to search by topic. To take one example, Oxford University Press has listings categorized, and here is an example for each:
Environmental History
Make It a Green Peace: The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism
Sustainability
Hydraulic Fracturing: Environmental Issues
The Environment and US
Navigating Environmental Attitudes
Environmental Politics
Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse
Ecology & Conservation
Green Equilibrium: The Vital Balance of Humans and Nature
NEW CONCEPTS
Climate Grief refers to personal depression, anxiety, and mourning over a sense of loss due to climate change effects.
The Pyrocene Age, according to fire historian Stephen J. Pyne, is upon us, an era of wildfires that are bigger, fiercer, and deadlier. Consider a lyric from an old spiritual song: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, nor more water but the fire next time."
------------------------------------------------30--------------------------------------------------
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.
