11/22 CCC Hopeful Books, Children's Titles, Eviro Titles, Pandemic Books,

                                       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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CCC, 10/22. Secular Books, Quotes, COP 27, ELCA invitation

                                        October 2022 Creation Corner Column

   Environmental and Pandemic Books, Recent Quotes, COP 27, ELCA Climate Care Proposal

SECULAR BOOK TITLES ON THE ENVIRONMENT

At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth.  Madeline Ostrander.

Border and Rules: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism.  Harsha Walia.

The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructure of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau.  Erika Marie Bsumek.

The Future Is Degrowth: A Guide fo a World Beyond Capitalism.  Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan.

The Green New Deal and the Future of Work.  Craig Calhoun and Benjamin Y. Fong, editors.

Greenhouse Planet: How Rising CO2 Changes Plants and Life As We Know It.  Lewis H. Ziska.

The Hidden Universe: Adventures in Biodiversity.  Alexandre Antonelli.

Methuselah's Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Healthier Lives.  Steven Austad.

Mobilize Food!  Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today.  Eleanor Boyle.

National Parks Forever: Fifty Years of Fighting and a Case for Independence. Jonathan B. Jarvis and T. Destry Jarvis

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.  Michael Mann.

Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World.  Gaia Vince.

Nowhere Left to Go:  How Climate Change is Driving Species to the Ends of the Earth.  Benjamin von Brackel.

Planet in Peril: Humanity's Four Greatest Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them.  Michael D. Bess.

The Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Nature.  Charlie Hailey.

Portraits of Earth Justice: Americans Who Tell The Truth.  Robert Shetterly et al.

Regenesis:  Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet.  George Monbiot.

Tuzo: The Unlikely Revolutionary of Plate Tectonics.  Nick Eyles.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey.  Robert Macfarlane.

We Are All Whalers:  The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility.  Michael J. Moore.

What Would Nature Do:  A Guide for Our Uncertain Times.  Ruth DeFries.

Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis.  Edited by Bruce  Clarke and Sebastien Dutreuil.

PANDEMIC BOOK TITLES 

COVID and Gender in the Middle East.  Edited by Rita Stephan.

Preexisting Conditions: Recounting the Plague.  Samuel Weber.

The Social and Political Impact of COVID-19 in the United States.  Beth Redbird, Laurel Harbridge-Yong, and Rachel Davis Mersey, editors.

States of Plague: /Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic.  Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris.

Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague.  Robert Zaretsky.

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide.  Steven W. Thrasher.

What World Is This?  A Pandemic Phenomenology.   Judith Butler.

QUOTABLE BAD NEWS:  "UN chief: World is in 'life-or-death struggle' for survival."  Associated Press headline, Oct. 4, 2022.  (note: the reason or cause is that "climate chaos gallops ahead".).

QUOTABLE GOOD NEWS: "Biden administration launches environmental justice office."  Associated Press headline, September 26, 2022.

TWO UPCOMING EVENTS:

1.  NEXT  U.N. WORLD CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE:  Congress of Parties 27 (COP 27), November, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

2.  AN ELCA INVITATION to participate in the drafting of a social statement on climate care has been issued.  To comment prior to December 2, go to elca.org/climatecare. 

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9/22 CCC: Books, Nature Therapy, Incineration, Quotes

                                           9/22 Creation Corner Column

                          Books, Nature Therapy, Incineration, Quotations

BOOK TITLES

Animalkind.  Ingrid Newkirk and Gene Stone.

The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens.  Philip Hall.

EcoActivist Testament: Explorations of Faith and Nature for Fellow Travelers.  H. Paul Santmire.

How To Sell A Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT.  Elena Conis.

Is Science Enough?: Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice.  Aviva Chomsky

The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival.  Chris Begley.

Plagues in the Nation: How Epidemics Shaped America.  Polly J. Price.

Science for a Green New Deal: Connecting Climate, Economics and Social Justice.  Eric A. Davidson.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.  David Quammen

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide.  Steven Thrasher.

Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge.  Erica Gies.

FREE E-BOOK FOR A GREENER, FAIRER FUTURE

Resilience Matters: Opportunities for Action to Strengthen Communities.  Laurie Mazur, editor.  Available on-line at no cost, visit Islandpress.org/progressive.  A publication from the Urban Resilience Project.

BOOKS re: EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM, see William MacAskill

BOOKS re: HISTORY OF FOSSIL FUEL USE, see Andreas Malm

NATURE THERAPY, AN "EVERGREEN SOLUTION".  Free passes for patients to visit national parks are provided by some healthcare providers in four Canadian provinces.  Prescribing nature to help people, the touted benefits include increased energy, decreased anxiety, pain reduction, reduced stress and improved heart health. Source: "This therapy is out there" article in  Aug/Sep issue of Men's Health magazine.

TOXIC BURN PITS AND BACKYARD BURNER  BARREL BURNING

A recently passed U.S. bill to aid veterans exposed to toxic burn pits might spur municipalities that permit backyard burner barrel burning to reconsider, and ban the practice. 

With burn pits and burner barrels  being used to dispose of trash, batteries, chemicals, cans, tires, petroleum products, plastics, human waste (used diapers), etc., and evidence linking the toxic chemical fume pollution and particulate matter from such incineration to some respiratory illnesses (asthma, bronchitis), certain cancers, skin and cardiovascular problems, migraines, some neurological conditions, etc., it could be argued that it is time for municipalities that permit the practice to "clear the air" and ban backyard burner barrel burning as an ounce of prevention to prevent any further exposure to such air-borne pollution.

QUOTABLE

"The distrust between faith and science is not just an unfortunate circumstance.  It's actually costing lives."  Francis Collins.

"The apocalypse is here, it's just not evenly distributed." Gregory Hays.

"Big climate bill: Spending green bucks to spur green energy." Associated Press headline, Aug. 12, 2022.

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Note: This column from Michael Ochs began 25 years ago, issued in the monthly print newsletter of the ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County (UCLC), Williamsport, PA.  He is a member of the UCLC Christian Social Concerns Committee.

8/22 CCC: Summer Books, etc., II

 8/22 Creation Corner Column:  Summer Books, etc. II

BOOKS

The Anthropocene as a Geological Time.  Jan Zalasiewicz.

Carbon Democracy.  Timothy Mitchell.

Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith: How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval.  Philip Jenkins.

Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation.  Sarah E. Vaughn.

Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet.  John W. Reid and Thomas E. Lovejoy.

Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Beth Schaefer Caniglia et al, editors

How Climate Change Affects Surgery.  Joseph Wayne Smith and Guy Maddern.

How the World Breaks: Life in Catastrophe's Path, from the Caribbean to Siberia.  Stan and Paul Cox.

IPCC, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.  Working Group III Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

Literature for a Changing Planet.  Martin Puchner.

Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change.  Nathaniel Rich.

The Ministry for the Future.  Kim Stanley Robinson.

The Nature of Tomorrow: A History of the Environmental Future.  Michael Rawson.

The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.  Amitav Ghosh.

Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World.  Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Profits and Power: Navigating the Politics and Geopolitics of Oil.  David Detomasi.

The Sociology of Survival: Social Problems of Growth.  Charles H. Anderson.

The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth.  Ben Rawlence.

The Understory: A Female Environmentalist In The Land Of The Midnight Sun.  M.E. Schuman.

White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism.  Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective.

GRAPHIC NOVELS

The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, revised edition.  Brady Klein and Yoram Bauman.

The Most Important Comic Book on Earth: Stories to Save the World.  Paul Goodenough and Rewriting Extinction.

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An August 2022 headline: "Chances of climate catastrophe are ignored, scientists say", 8/2/22 news article by Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein.

August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans.

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7/22 CCC: Summer Books (Earth, Pandemic, etc.)

 July 2022 Creation Corner Column:  Summer Reading Suggestions

BOOKS ON THE ENVIRONMENT, NATURE, CREATION, EARTH, ECOLOGY

Above Sea Level (novel).  Douglas E. Congdon.

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau.  Edited by Bill McKibben.  Foreword by Al Gore.

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction.  Michelle Nijhuis.

Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience.  Jeremy Mynott.

The Book of Green Quotations.  James Daley, editor.

Chimpanzee Memoirs: Stories of Studying and Saving Our Closest Living Relatives.  Edited by Stephen Ross and Lydia Hopper..

The Coal Trap: How West Virginia Was Left Behind in the Clean Energy Revolution.  James M. Van Nostrand.

The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves.  J. B. MacKinnon.

Earthlings: Imaginative Encounters with the Natural World.  Adrian Parr.

Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough.  Holly Jean Buck.

The High /Sierra: A Love Story.  Kim Stanley Robinson.

The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World.  Oliver Milman.

The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet.  Leah Thomas.

Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change.  Thane Gustafson.

On Earth as in Heaven: Daily Wisdom for Twenty-First Century Christians.  N. T. Wright.

Passions for Birds: Science, Sentiment, and Sport.  Sean Nixon.

Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations Are Fueling the Ecological Crisis and What We Can Do About It.  Alice Hah.

Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control Over Others.  Lee Alan Dugatkin.

Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste.  By Committee on the United States Contribution to Global Ocean Waste; The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Requiem for America's best Idea: National Parks in the Era of Climate Change.  Michael J. Yochim.

Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America.  Megan Kate Nelson.

Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade.  Nathaniel Rich.

Sex in City Plants, Animals, Fungi, and More:  A Guide to Reproductive Diversity.  Kenneth D. Frank.

Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse.  Dave Goulson.

Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks and What It Can Teach Us.  Kim Haines-Eitzen.

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less.  Leidy Klotz.

Surveying the Anthropocene: Art and Photography Now.  Patricia Macdonald.

Thoughts on People, Planet & Profit.  Amy Domini.

Urban Climate Insurgency (An issue of Social Text, 150).  Editors: Ashley Dawson, Marco Armiero, Ethemcan Turhan and Roberta Biasillo.

Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret.  Catherin Coleman Flowers.

Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluges.  Erica Gies.

Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals.  Gary L. Francione.

Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World.  Emma Marris.

PANDEMIC LITERATURE

Dear Vaccine:  Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic (poetry). Naomi Shihab Nye, David Hassler and Tyler Meier.

Natural Immunity and Covid-19: What it is and How it Can Save Your Life.  William A. Haseltine and Josephine Gurch.

Next Time  There's a Pandemic.  Vivek Shraya.

Omicron: From Pandemic to Epidemic.  The Future of Covid-19.  William A. Haseltine and Griffin McCombs.  An on-line e-Book updated regularly.

Plagues & Pencils: A Year of Pandemic Sketches.  Edward Carey.

Variants: The Shape-Shifting Challenge of Covid-19.  William A. Haseltine.  An e-book updated regularly.

Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague.  Robert Zaretsky.

The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe.  James Belich.

6/2022 CCC: Rights of Nature Movement

                                          June 2022 Creation Corner Column 

                                            The Rights of Nature Movement

"Learn to Love Our Planet the Way God Does" is a description of a new book,  A Christian's Guide to Planet Earth: Why It Matters and How To Care For It, by Betsy Painter.

God has a covenant with his creation; what is our covenant with God's creation?   The Green Bible (2008) helps us understand the Bible's powerful message for the earth, and we can look to the secular rights of nature movement to discern how we might try to express our responsibility, as God's agents, to care for the integrity of God's creation.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is one example of such an effort.  Founded by Thomas Linzey (full disclosure, my acquaintance with him dates to the 1990s), a recent article by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker of April 18, 2022, "Testing the Waters: Should the natural world have rights?" is an interesting overview of CELDF's history and attempts to fulfill its mission.

Also noted therein is a law review article and book profiling the efforts of Christopher Stone, "Should Trees Have Standing?---Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects".

Worth mentioning too is the recent special issue on the environment published by The Progressive magazine of  April/May 2022, wherein one finds the "Vox Populist" column by Jim Hightower, "Protecting the Rights of Nature",  that surveys worldwide enactment of enforceable Rights of Nature provisions.

As Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org) notes in his June 2022 "Deep Economy" column article, "The Greatest Dereliction of Duty", in Sojourners magazine, we've "...long known that we needed to do something about climate change---after all, the Arctic is melting, which seems like the kind of sign that doesn't require much interpretation."

Further, as the McKibben article "pull-quote" emphasizes, "We must take evil seriously when it arises, not putting it off in the hope that someone else will take it on."

One example  of climate change deniers and doubters is profiled in a new PBS Frontline docuseries, "The Power of Big Oil".

Finally, as the motivating description of reasons for reading the new book by Martin Puchner, Literature for a Changing Planet, puts it: "Why we must learn to tell new new stories about our relationship with the earth if we are to avoid climate  catastrophe."

That sentence expresses, in my estimation, what the purpose of  Lutherans Restoring Creation is.

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5/22 CCC: Reasons for Hope

                                   5/22 Creation Corner Column: Reasons for Hope.

Hope is a discipline.  Our job is to cultivate hope.   Mariame Kaba.

THIRD ACT: Our Time is Now!  A new organization, Third Act, is mobilizing the generation (Boomers, born 1946-1964) with the most political and economic influence to fight for a working climate, among other priorities.  Such "experienced Americans", some seventy Americans over the age of 60 are being encouraged by environmentalist and United Methodist layman Bill McKibben to help stabilize the climate.  See their home page.

RESTRAINT OF GLOBAL HEATING IS POSSIBLE IF ALL MEASURES TAKEN.

For the first time, the world is in a position to limit global heating below 2C, according to the first in-depth analysis of the net zero pledges made by nations at the UN COP26 climate summit in December.

Before these pledges, a temperature rise above 2C was almost inevitable, bringing more severe effects for billions of people.  Now it is more likely that the peak rise will be about 1.9C.  However, the researchers said this depended on all nations implementing their pledges on time and in full, and warned that the policies to do that were not in place.  The pledges include some that developing countries have said will happen only with more financial and technical support.  (Source: The Guardian Weekly, 22 April 2022.)

RECENT TITLES

Climates, Habitats, Environments.  Edited by Ute Meta Bauer.

From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis.  Marco Grasso.

Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space.  Matthew Gandy.

Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention.  Wake Smith.

The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now.  Henry Shue.

Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery, The Illustrated Edition.  Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe.

Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret.  Catherine Coleman Flowers.

From the "Earth, Inc." cover story of TIME magazine for April 28/May 2, 2022:

ESG refers to  prioritizing environmental, social, and corporate governance concerns in investing.

COP26 Coalition: a climate-justice group.

"Ecopreneurs" are environmentally focused entrepreneurs taking risks for the critical work of fossil-fuel reduction and increased awareness.  Such individuals, innovators and businesses around the world help promote technical and nature-based projects, develop new energy sources, and support climate-vulnerable communities around the world.

Examples of climate terminology in corporate 10-K SEC filings:

Climate change references include broad climate terms (climate change, global warming, climate crisis); climate effects (sea levels, biodiversity, wildfires, extreme weather); climate causes (greenhouse gases, CO2, carbon emissions, methane).

Corporate ideals include sustainable principles (ESG, closed loop and other sustainability-jargon terms); climate goals (net zero, carbon-neutral, decarbonize); social responsibility (fair trade, social impact, shared value).

Corporate actions include energy transition (clean energy, renewables, energy efficiency); climate measurement (assessment terms such as carbon footprint, Scope 3, SASB or the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board); Offsets (compensating references for emissions, such as carbon capture, carbon pricing).

TIME Magazine has a 2030 committee project that will mark this decade's progress toward a better world and offer solutions for change.

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