Get Educated: #climatefacts
Today—two days after Donald Trump ordered a media blackout at all government agencies, and one day after employees of those government agencies launched “rogue” social media accounts—#climatefacts is trending worldwide on Twitter. The Twitterstorm is organized by 350.org, the international environmental organization founded by Bill McKibben. A statement from 350.org reads, “Denying climate change is irresponsible and will put millions of people at greater risk of harm from pollution, climate disruption, and fossil fuel extraction … Help defend science and the welfare of people everywhere.” To get involved, 350.org has compiled a variety of resources and vetted facts.
As readers, writers, and advocates, and stewards, we believe deeply in the role stories and literature share in changemaking. With this in mind, we have compiled a reading list:
Get Educated: Climate Change & the Environment.
“The story of our relationship to the earth is written more truthfully on the land than on the page. It lasts there. The land remembers what we said and what we did. Stories are among our most potent tools for restoring the land as well as our relationship to the land.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass“Science is about much more than just solving challenges, as important as they are. It is about who we are as human beings, about our ability to love, to wonder, to imagine, to heal, to care for one another, to create a better future, to dream of things unseen. To figure out the world and our place in it, and to capture the great beauty of the world in representations others can apprehend. They may use the language of math instead of paint or music, but they are artful representations just the same.”
—Shawn Otto, The War on Science
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PLUS: Win the four titles below by entering our giveaway! Email thanks@milkweed.org with the subject line #climatefacts. The giveaway ends on Monday, 1/30 at noon CT.
At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a well-funded, three-part war on science. This provocative book investigates why and how, and offers compelling solutions to bring us to our collective senses, before it’s too late.
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Robin Wall Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons.
What if the greatest cause of our planet’s dramatic change—humans’ ability to adapt and innovate—also holds the key to our survival? Part science journal, part travelogue, this book tells the story of a journey into the Anthropocene, or Age of Man, and introduces an essential new perspective on the future of life on Earth.
Deepwater Horizon, Hurricane Katrina, Flint: this is the litany of our time, and these are the events traced in these poems, invoking the poet as moral witness. Incorporating interviews and excerpts from government documents and other sources, this collection reveals what poetry can—and, perhaps, should—be, reflecting ourselves and our world back with gorgeous clarity.