Friday Nudge: Books on Climate Anxiety
So many people are experiencing climate anxiety right now. Here are two books; one for adults, one for kids
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Friday Nudge: Books on Climate Anxiety
I’m away right now, off-grid and out of range as I vacation with my kids and seek renewal and refreshment with the other-than-human community around me. As I said in my post on Tuesday, I realized that I have been experiencing climate anxiety. There aren’t many books on my shelf about this topic, so I am offering you two books that I need to read, too. Have you read them? Or others? What is guiding you right now? Drop me a comment here:
Here we go:
A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet by Sarah Jaquette Ray (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020)
Author Sarah Jaquette Ray is a professor of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, where she studies and teaches precisely on climate anxiety and related areas. She invites readers to learn about the role of emotions in the climate crisis and climate action; to feel what we feel (climate anxiety is a normal and rational response to what is going on); and to seek community in which to express how we are feeling and take climate action. I am intrigues by the titles of the chapters in this book, such as “Cultivate Climate Wisdom” and “Be Less Right and More in Relation”. This is one I want to check out. How about you?
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Coco’s Fire: Changing Climate Anxiety into Climate Action by Jeremy D. Wortzel & Lena K. Champlin et al. (US: Future Perfect.Media LLC, 2021).
On Sundays when I lead worship, I have a time for the children “and children at heart,” where I share a story or item and relate it to a message of the Gospel. My experience has been that the adults often get as much, if not more, out of the ‘children’s time’ as the children do! Whether or not that is the case here, this children’s book looks very helpful for talking with children about the climate emergency, affirming their fears, and encouraging them to take action as a way to cope with climate anxiety. I am going to find this book to read to my own kids, as well as at church.
How do you talk to kids about the climate crisis? Are the children in your life (young kids, middle school, teens) experience climate anxiety? Leave a comment about how it is manifesting and any comments or questions you have about helping kids (and ourselves) in dealing with climate anxiety:
One book which has spelled out anxiety and then hope from collective action in the era of Keystone XL is just as appropriate for today. Mary Pipher's The Green Boat Reviving ourselves in our capsized culture.
I just purchased this book, I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope and Gallows Humor by Andrew Boyd. https://bettercatastrophe.com I have just started it, but the style of writing is refreshing and I find myself saying- yes, that's how I feel too. Maybe it's not hope, but humour we need to navigate climate chaos. A very accessible read...