“The Earth is the Lord’s:" Climate Reading Resources

The Climate Witness Project is blessed to have a great group of regional organizers across North America, working to mobilize people of faith and churches to live into our moral call and duty to care for creation. As we settle into the fall season, we asked each of them to recommend favorite books or current resources they are reading around the climate crisis. Here’s what they said:

Joanne Vandergrift - Greater Alberta

“Presently, I am reading a book from Brian McLaren called The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey. I like how the descriptive nature of his writing creates a beautiful picture for the reader of God's world. The intent of the book is for the reader to take this journey to the Galapagos with him, the author. We are to be aware of how he is experiencing this trip to the Galapagos and how his spirit and his faith are being influenced by all of it. It has reminded me to stop and look at all the beauty around me and give praise to the Creator of all it. Brian McLaren has become an advocate for climate change and the ensuing issues. His books, Everything Must Change, and Life After Doom are other books that talk about these issues. Lots of great reading!”

• The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey by Brian D. McLaren
• Everything Must Change by Brian D. McLaren
• Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart by Brian D. McLaren

Steve Mulder - Michigan

““Doomscrolling” and diving deeper and deeper into the trouble the Creation is in can breed inaction and despair. We need to be clear-eyed, but we also need hope. There are several books out now that provide hope that leads to effective action. Data Scientist Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World is one of these. She addresses 8 critical topics from air pollution to overfishing. While not sugar coating anything, she dispels the myths that the data doesn’t support and points the way to effective individual, corporate and policy action.”

• Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie

Allen Drew - Eastern U.S 

“My recommendation would be Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is a well researched, believable, and profoundly thoughtful novel about how the near term future (perhaps 2050-2100, though he never states it explicitly) will play out as the climate crisis progresses. He manages to weave together compelling human stories, national and international policy efforts, ecological disasters, and social shifts in a way that is not at all utopian, but is ultimately hopeful. If you want a deep dive into a projection of all the global complexities of the climate crisis told in the form of a well-written story, this is your book. Additionally, Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart by Brian McLaren would be another suggestion. While I’m yet to read this next  book myself, I have received very strong recommendations from a number of Christian leaders I highly respect. As I understand it, the book is about how the Christian movement can find its way into a new and life-giving expression in the context of the major and multi-faceted global suffering that is coming to us all through the progression of the climate crisis if we don’t take continued actions towards mitigation and repair. I finally have a shameless plug for a quasi-weekly blog I'm producing focused on all things climate, as engaged through a Christian lens.  Every 4 posts are organized to focus on a single climate related topic.  The first week introduces that topic and seeks to understand it through a framework of Christian discipleship.  The second week tells a story related to the topic.  The third offers individual action that can be undertaken related to the topic.  And week four offers collective action.  It is designed to engage and equip the Church to become increasingly committed and impactful participants in the global effort to heal and restore our planet and the people living in it.”

• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart by Brian D. McLaren
• On Earth as it in Heaven by Allen Drew

Donna Lee - California

“I’ve recently been engrossed in the continued study of the intimate interconnectedness of our relationship between the land, our foods, health and the climate crisis. This led me to a very interesting book by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé called The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health. This book emphasizes that rebuilding soil health is essential for cultivating nutritious food, which leads to stronger, healthier bodies. It also details how interactions between people, animals, and soil microbes are crucial for building a healthy gut microbiome”

• The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé

Catherine Wiersma - U.S Rocky Mountains

“Regeneration is a beautiful work of hope, inspiration, and action, discussing diverse ways that communities across the globe are addressing climate change. Paul Hawken approaches the bold challenge of ending the climate crisis in one generation with rigor and realism, stating that while global warming is a decades-long journey, "ending the crisis means that by 2030 collective action by humanity will have reduced total greenhouse gas emissions by 45 to 50 percent." Hawkin then portrays stories of the varied ways this work takes place across nations, ecosystems, communities, and sectors. I love Regeneration because it's a beautiful coffee table book that I leave out to start conversations with guests, or pick up and page through the beautiful photography and gain some inspiration. Regeneration provides tangible ways to engage the masses in climate action, focusing on a strategy of synthesizing and building rather than fighting or combatting.”

• Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation by Paul Hawken

Wayne Miedema - Southern Ontario 

So We and Our Children May Live - Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis by Sarah Augustine and Sheri Hostetler (2023)

From co-author Sarah, a Pueblo descendant, I was reminded of the long view that reveals that the profit focused consumer cultures and economies we are immersed in are relatively new creations. This begs the question of how people of faith can create new cultures and economies centered on God's vision of the flourishing of the whole creation. Sarah points to Indigenous cultures as a source of radically different cultures and economies. I was reminded by Sheri, a Mennonite, that yet today there are Amish and Mennonite communities that model setting limits around consumption of energy and tech. Together, Sarah and Sheri make a compelling point that the root of the climate change problem is cultures and economies based on the myth of limitless growth through limitless extraction and consumption. Shifting to a green economy without addressing the structural injustices in our cultures and economies continues the myth of limitless extraction. Instead, they say, "We need to divest from systems of death emotionally, intellectually, imaginatively, theologically and economically. We need to begin to imagine and build new economic and cultural structures that are in alignment with the Kingdom of God." (pg161)  Study guide available.”

On Care for our Common Home - Encyclical Letter Laudato Si by Pope Francis  by Pope Francis (2015)

Pope Francis took the name Francis after St. Francis of Assisi. Francis of Assisi was known for many things - including a very unique relationship with nature. In Catholicism, Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of ecology and the patron saint of animals. In the song Canticle of the Sun, Francis of Assisi refers to Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, and Sister Water. And Francis sees all these brothers and sisters as offering praise to God who created all things - including humans. Pope Francis holds Francis of Assisi as a model of relationship with the non-human creation and calls for an "ecological conversion" "Living our vocation to be protectors of God's handiwork is essential to a live of virtue; it is not an option or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience". This book has birthed the Laudato Si Movement - a Catholic movement for ecological and climate justice that partners with all people of good will.

A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency by Seth Klein (2020)

Seth Klein looks back at how Canada mobilized to confront the enemy in World War II and wonders what it would look like if a similar national mobilization happened to confront climate change.  The book chronicles the rapid and drastic changes that were made by government in order to confront the Nazi threat.  Car manufacturers retooled to make airplanes and tanks.  Food was rationed so that soldiers overseas would have enough. Cost was not an object because the cost of losing the war was greater than the cost of winning it.  Seth Klein imagines the gathering of consensus that climate changes is an threat that needs to be confronted at all costs.  Wondering includes shifting energy away from fossil fuels to electrification - and increasing renewable means of generation.  Woven into Seth's plan is an effort to address structural injustices in society.  At first glance, the idea seems compelling.  At second glance, it falls to the logic of Sarah Augustine and Sheri Hostetler when they point out that even renewable sources of electricity demand the consumption of non-renewable resources in their construction. Also, the book sees climate change as the problem - not the extractive and consumptive nature of our economies. However, the book does make one wonder what would be possible if Canadians did come to consensus that the cost of ignoring the climate crisis was more than the cost of addressing it.

Fire and Flood - A People's History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present (2022) by Eugene Linden
Eugene Linden is a journalist that has been writing about climate for over 30 years. In this book, Linden uses the analogy of 4 clocks - the first clock showing the advances of changing climate in real time, the second, lagging behind the first, showing the scientific understanding of those changes, the third, lagging even further behind, is public and political will and the last clock, lagging sometimes by a decade, is the clock showing the reaction of business and finance.  I found this a sad tale of opportunities lost due to very organized and well funded "merchants of doubt" who created enough mistrust of the science that any real public or political action was delayed by decades while industries that profited from the status quo continued to reap profits. In his last few pages, Linden offers his belief that the forces that have slowed any real response to climate change are close to doing an about face as the reality of climate change and its consequences everything, including business and finance, become more and more obvious.

Our Regional Organizers are here to guide and assist you on your climate action and justice journey. If you would like to connect with any of them in your region, please contact us at [email protected] and we would be happy to put you in touch with them and get you started.