11/22 Creation Corner Column
Hopeful Books, Children's Titles, Enviro Titles, Pandemic Books, a Headline, an Upcoming Event
HOPEFUL BOOKS
Better Than We Found It: Conversations to Help Save the World. Frederick Joseph & Porsche Joseph.
Beyond Climate Breakdown: Envisioning New Stories of Radical Hope. Peter Friedrici. Foreword by Kathleen Dean Moore.
Bright Hope: Discovering Resilient, Sustainable Ways of Living Through Even the Darkest Times. Ted Brackman. Foreword by Jim Wallis.
Care-Centered Politics: From the Home to the Planet. Robert Gottlieb.
Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith. Philip Jenkins.
Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity (A Report to the Club of Rome). Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Ghosh, Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockstrom, Per Espen Stoknes.
The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions. Neta C. Crawford.
Unsettling: Surviving Extinction Together. Elizabeth Weinberg.
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. Thich Nhat Hanh.
CHILDREN'S TITLES, suitable for elementary schoolers
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer (picture book edition).
Climate Change, The Choice Is Ours: The Facts, Our Future, And Why There's Hope! David Miles with illustrations.
The Lorax. Dr. Seuss.
Polar Bear, Why Is Your World Melting? Robert E. Wells.
Thank You, Earth: A Love Letter To Our Planet. April Pulley Sayre.
We Are Water Protectors. Carole Lindstrom, illustrated.
Note: These titles are from an abridged list provided by TIME magazine on-line at their web site (TIME.com/kids-climate-books) as noted in their print edition of October 24/October 31, 2022.
OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL TITLES
The Chemistry of Fires at the Wildland-Urban Interface. Committee on the Chemistry of Urban Wildfires; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Klimat: Russia In The Age of Climate Change. Thane Gustafson.
Solomon Described Plants: A Botanical Guide to Plant Life in the Bible. Lytton John Musselman.
Vanishing Sands: Losing Beaches to Mining. Orrin H. Pilkey et al.
Women Who Invented the Sixties (includes a chapter on Rachel Carson). Steve Golin.
EPIDEMIC/PANDEMIC TITLES
Beyond the Pandemic: Spiritual and Ecological Challenges. Diarmuid O'Murchu.
The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas. Jennifer Scheper Hughes.
Grounded: Perpetual Flight...and Then the Pandemic. Christiopher Schaberg.
A Letter to Liberals (from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.): Censorship and Covid: An Attack on Science and American Ideals. Children's Health Defense, second edition revised and updated.
Postcolonial Practices of Care: A Project of Togetherness During COVID-19 and Racial Violence. Edited by Hellena Moon and Emmanuel Y. Larty.
RECENT HEADLINE
"Climate Disasters all but inevitable". THE WEEK magazine for Sept. 30, 2022, Health & Science, p. 22.
With that in mind, and also being mindful of the broad definition of climate change being a result of "anthropogenic" causes ("that which is caused by human action"), how might we be aware of what actions we can take to reduce our harmful impact on the earth and its climate? How are we complicit and what can we do to offset such?
NEXT UPCOMING EVENT
December Conference of Parties 15 (COP15) Biodiversity Summit in Canada.
According to the World Wildlife Foundation and Zoological Society of London's biennial Living Planet Report, wildlife populations (birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles) have declined by two-thirds since 1970. Many scientists think this is the largest loss of life on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, and that it is being driven by humans. (Source: The Guardian Weekly, 21 October 2022, "Scientists demand action on animal population decline".)
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