Climate Change Book Reviews

Readable, bite-sized nuggets on actions we can all take, from the personal sphere to collective action, in these areas: eating and drinking; making families; staying home; leaving home; saving and spending; and fighting and winning. Some of these ideas have found their way into the climate articles in Gleamings.-  Amanda Franklin, reviewer

Readable, bite-sized nuggets on actions we can all take, from the personal sphere to collective action, in these areas: eating and drinking; making families; staying home; leaving home; saving and spending; and fighting and winning. Some of these ideas have found their way into the climate articles in Gleamings.-  Amanda Franklin, reviewer

Quakers, Creation Care, and Sustainability, edited by Cherice Bock and Stephen Potthoff, a Friends Association for Higher Education Book. Available in the UFM library and from Quaker Books of FGC (quakerbooks.org), Amazon (paperback and Kindle), and other bookstores.

Do Quakers think about caring for our Earth, responding to climate change, and building a more sustainable society? A collection of twenty-four essays plus multiple appendices,

this book is well worth exploring if you want to come up to speed on what is happening among the larger community of Friends. Each essay is a well-written statement on some aspect of Quaker spirituality, Quaker community, and Quaker action relating to Earth care. While the book is some 450 pages long, I found it well worth the read. 

Here are brief descriptions of a few of the essays: The first several essays look back on early Quaker authors. In Mike Heller’s essay “John Woolman’s Environmental Consciousness” (essay 2), John Woolman is quoted as writing that “where the love of God is verily perfected and the true spirit of government watchfully attended to, a tenderness toward all creatures made subject to us will be experienced.” The “made subject to us” phrase expresses how many Quaker’s of Woolman’s time viewed Nature: a reservoir of resources to be utilized (carefully) for human benefit. 

In her essay titled “Quakers and Creation Care: Potential Pitfalls for an Ecotheology of Friends” (essay 5), Cherice Bock explores how Friends relate to Creation, noting that we tend “to spiritualize our faith, disconnecting it from the material world.” Bock feels that “as the context within which all other social justice issues take place, it became clear to me that caring for the planet is the social justice issue of our time.” Bock asks “In relation to care for the planet, what happens when we imagine that of God not only in every one, but also in every thing?”

In “Maragoli Shamanism Marries Quaker Christianity” (essay 8), S. Chagala Ngesa, a fourth-generation Kenyan Quaker, is also a shaman for his Maragoli tribe. Ngesa compares the Quaker idea of “speaking to that of God in every person” with his tribe’s tradition emphasizing “the immanence of God in everything that is, both living and nonliving.” The essay compares the views of different branches of Quakerism with Maragoli traditions and his role in the tribe as a shaman.

The last section of the book has descriptions of Quaker organizations working on climate change, including Quaker Earthcare Witness, Earth Quaker Action Team, Quaker Institute for the Future, and Friends World Committee for Consultation, among others. The book also has an appendix of documents and committee reports from Quaker organizations in the past.

Overall, the book depicts a broad range of efforts by a wide variety of Quakers and Quaker organizations. To this reviewer, the key challenges presented to us are the following:

• Examine our understanding of the Spirit. Is Quakerism just about the relationship between the individual person and the Spirit directly, or are we open to listening for the Spirit in all living things and the Earth itself?

• Connect our wide variety of efforts together to better discern what is needed and what is possible.

• Realize that the challenge of climate change is one we can accept and that we can play a constructive role in this great transition in our civilization.

Rick Ells, reviewer

Climate change is real and it is happening now, affecting the lives of millions of people. We are seeing it in unexpected weather patterns, unusually severe storms and droughts, changes in the oceans and much more.

I have been following the topic of climate change for years, reading lots of articles and books. I recently encountered a book that particularly spoke to me and my Quaker ways. The book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, by Katharine Hayhoe, both provides an overview of what climate change is and describes a pathway to mitigating its effects.

Hayhoe is an accomplished climate scientist who has been working actively for years with a wide range of groups, including military generals, corporate executives, religious organizations, fraternal orders and government officials, to build an understanding of what climate change is and how we can respond to it. Hayhoe strongly advocates talking about climate change NOW. Begin the conversation, the learning, and the discerning of actions and directions. Climate change is something that affects ALL COMMUNITIES. We can’t just stay in our own little groups on this one, we have to work together to build effective, durable change around the world. 

Her advocacy approach involves first establishing connection with a group, such as a Rotary Club in Texas, by encouraging them to share the climate-related experiences they are having personally, relating those experiences to the group’s creed or faith and then working with them to develop their ability to respond meaningfully to the challenge of climate change. She summarizes it as “Bond, Connect, and Inspire.” She emphasizes the value of example. The first person to install solar panels on their house in a neighborhood can catalyze others to take similar actions. A community of people sharing how they are being affected by climate change and the ways they are trying to respond can develop a sense of efficacy—“we can do this!”—mutually supporting each other in learning and acting. The example of such an initiative can inspire other communities to begin their work. I suggest UFM become such a community. I suggest we all obtain this book, read it and use it as a guide in bonding, connecting and inspiring each other. Rick Ells - reviewer

This is a collection of essays from writers around the world (and at least one from the future), sharing disparate yet always-hopeful visions of exactly how badly off we are, and many ways we can change—by engaging our imaginations, our power of community, our political power, and even our humor. In an act of hope, I gave it to a relative who had declared, “It’s too late, and we’re all just screwed.” (The thank-you note has not yet arrived,but the giver has not abandoned hope…) - Amanda Franklin, reviewer

This is a collection of essays from writers around the world (and at least one from the future), sharing disparate yet always-hopeful visions of exactly how badly off we are, and many ways we can change—by engaging our imaginations, our power of community, our political power, and even our humor. In an act of hope, I gave it to a relative who had declared, “It’s too late, and we’re all just screwed.” (The thank-you note has not yet arrived,but the giver has not abandoned hope…) - Amanda Franklin, reviewer

The author I met through her earlier work, Men Explain Things To Me, wrote Hope as a response to George Bush’s election. It has been praised as “one of the best books of the 21st century” (The Guardian) and with “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium” (Bill McKibben). Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, she argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about knowing the future. - Amanda Franklin, reviewer

Long-time Buddhist practitioner and activist Joanna Macy and her British colleague, Chris Johnstone, point out that active hope does not require optimism. They begin with “The Great Unraveling,” which we are now experiencing as life-support systems strain, and show us how to turn from “Business as Usual” to “The Great Turning.” Beginning with gratitude, they take us through a process of honoring the pain of the world, then seeing with new eyes, and finally “going forth.” They point out that we might each be called to different types of actions: Holding Actions, Creation of Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices, or Shifting Consciousness. Many have wept with relief when reading this book. Groups are available online and in person to process the work with others; I may be able to direct you toward some of those if you find yourself interested. - Amanda Franklin, reviewer