Our library in Hewett Centre is open every Sunday after service during Coffee Hour in Hewett Centre, and our Library Team offers related reading lists based on the topic of Sunday service. Here is their list for the upcoming service featuring Rev. Shawn Gauthier on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024 at 11 a.m. All welcome in Hewett Centre after Sunday service to check out some books and to have coffee and conversation.
VanU library books related to this Sunday’s sermon:
1. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power, by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, 2022, 303 MAC [From Scorpio Books: “The challenges we face can be difficult even to think about. Climate change, war, political polarization, economic upheaval, and the dying back of nature together create a planetary emergency of overwhelming proportions. This revised, tenth anniversary edition of Active Hope shows us how to strengthen our capacity to face these crises so that we can respond with unexpected resilience and creative power. Drawing on decades of teaching an empowerment approach known as the Work That Reconnects, the authors guide us through a transformational process informed by mythic journeys, modern psychology, spirituality, and holistic science. This process equips us with tools to face the mess we’re in and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, to a life-sustaining society.”].
2. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, 2021, 363.7 [Gift of Mary Bennett. From LibraryThing: “There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it’s clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it’s a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States’ scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race, and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
This book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save.”].
3. Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety, by Britt Wray, 2023, 155 WRA [Donated by John Boyle. A foreword by Adam McKay. From LibraryThing: “An impassioned generational perspective on why climate anxiety is completely natural and necessary, and how we can be stronger for it. Climate and environment-related fears and anxieties are on the rise everywhere, with few resources to address them. As with any type of stress, eco-anxiety can lead to paralysis, burnout and avoidance. In Generation Dread, Britt Wray seamlessly merges scientific knowledge with emotional insight to show how these complicated feelings are a sign of our humanity, and acknowledging and valuing them is key to making it through present and future crises. This isn’t a simple process, and it’s not a level playing field when it comes to our vulnerability, she notes. However, with the worsening situation, we are all on the field–and unlocking deep stores of compassion and care is a crucial step in healing our relationship to the planet and each other. With openness and curiosity, Britt explores her own fears about starting a family when evidence of dangerous environmental shifts creates an especially bleak picture of what lies ahead. Weaving in valuable insights from climate-aware therapists; reflections on the emotional impact of ecological catastrophes; critical perspectives on the role of race and privilege in this crisis; ideas about the future of mental health innovation; and creative coping strategies to foster connection, meaning and resilience, Generation Dread brilliantly illuminates how we can learn from the past, from our own emotions, and from each other to survive–and even thrive–in a changing world.”].
4. The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis, by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, 2021, 363 FIG [Donated by John Boyle. From LibraryThing: “In this cautionary but optimistic book, Figueres and Rivett-Carnac–the architects of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement–tackle arguably the most urgent and consequential challenge humankind has ever faced: the world’s changing climate and the fate of humanity. In The Future We Choose, the authors outline two possible scenarios for the planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris targets for carbon dioxide emission reduction. In the other, they describe what it will take to create and live in a carbon neutral, regenerative world. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head on, with determination and optimism. How we all of us address the climate crisis in the next thirty years will determine not only the world we will live in but also the world we will bequeath to our children and theirs. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us, in no uncertain terms, what governments, corporations, and each of us can and must do to fend off disaster”].
5. American Exodus: Climate Change and the Coming Flight for Survival, by Giles Slade, 2013, 304.8 SLA [Written by a VanU member. From Google Books: “Some scientists predict the sea will rise 1.5 meters before 2100, but rapidly melting polar ice caps could make the real amount much higher. In the coming century, intensifying storms will batter our coasts, and droughts and heat events will be annual threats. All this will occur as population grows, and declining water resources desiccate agriculture. What will happen when the United States cannot provide food or fresh water for the overheated, overcrowded cities where 80% of Americans currently live?
The good news is that this overall decline of habitability in the mid-latitudes will be matched by increases in the carrying capacity of sparsely populated lands above the 49th parallel. This phenomenon suggests that waves of environmental refugees will travel poleward as southern conditions worsen. Our northern lands are our Noah’s ark – a vital refuge against the moment of mankind’s greatest need.
In this compelling cautionary tale, Slade argues that we are entering a long period of global desperation which will be characterized by human migration on an unprecedented scale. American Exodus is a frighteningly believable survey of our immediate future, but it ends on a note of hope: we may yet survive the coming century of climatic change if we act now to safeguard our shelter of last resort.”].
6. The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change, by Gleb Raygorodetsky, 2018, 304 RAY [From the jacket, according to LibraryThing: “The ecological and cultural researcher discusses indigenous communities throughout the world and their creative efforts to deal with climate change, arguing that biological and cultural diversity are key to resilience. “An enlightening global journey reveals the inextricable links between Indigenous cultures and their lands–and how they can form the foundation for climate change resilience around the world. One cannot turn on the news today without a report on an extreme weather event or the latest update on Antarctica. But while our politicians argue, the truth is that climate change is already here. Nobody knows this better than Indigenous peoples who, having developed an intimate relationship with ecosystems over generations, have observed these changes for decades. For them, climate change is not an abstract concept or policy issue, but the reality of daily life. After two decades of working with Indigenous communities, Gleb Raygorodetsky shows how these communities are actually islands of biological and cultural diversity in the ever-rising sea of development and urbanization. They are an “archipelago of hope” as we enter the Anthropocene, for here lies humankind’s best chance to understand how to take care of the Earth. These communities are implementing creative solutions to meet these modern challenges. Solutions that are relevant to the rest of us. We meet the Skolt Sami of Finland, the Nenets and Altai of Russia, the Sapara of Ecuador, the Karen of Myanmar, and the Tla-o-qui-aht of Canada. Intimate portraits of these men and women, youth and elders, emerge against the backdrop of their traditional practices on land and water. Though there are brutal realties–pollution, corruption, and forced assimilation–Raygorodetsky’s prose resonates with the positive, the adaptive, the spiritual–and hope.”].
7. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, by Bjørn Lomborg, 2007, 363 LOM [From LibraryThing: “Argues that many of the elaborate actions being considered to stop global warming are too costly and will have little impact, and suggests that society’s focus should be on such immediate concerns as fighting HIV/AIDS and maintaining a fresh water supply.”].
8. Winds of Change: Short Stories About Our Climate, by Keith Wilkinson, 2015, FIC WIL [Written by a VanU member. From DragonFly: “… is a diverse collection of eighteen insightful, witty, and emotional short stories about climate change. The selected stories are the result of a short story contest run by Dragonfly.eco (then eco-fiction.com) in the summer of 2014. In collaboration with 100,000 Poets (Artists/Authors) for Change, Dragonfly engaged authors from Vancouver, BC, and other places around the world, to create speculative fiction about a harsh reality: our planet-at-risk. With a foreword by Michael Rothenberg, Winds of Change also includes several poems by Stephen Siperstein and Carolyn Welch. …”].
9. The New Northwest Passage: A Voyage to the Front Line of Climate Change, by Cameron Dueck, 2012, 910.91 DUE [From LibraryThing: “In the summer of 2009, Cameron Dueck and the rest of the crew of the Silent Sound completed a journey made by fewer people than have climbed Mt. Everest; they sailed through the infamous Northwest Passage. These waters are normally locked in ice, but due to climate change it is now possible to sail here for a few short weeks each summer. Their voyage from Victoria to Halifax carried them through raging storms and mechanical breakdowns and took them into sea ice that threatened to crush their hull. But more importantly it brought them face to face with modern Arctic life in tiny, isolated Inuit communities where the challenge of climate change is added to the already crushing load of social and economic woes. Each person they met along the way added their story to the colourful tale of life in the Arctic; a unique place where the climate change experience is affected by the critical and ongoing debates over sovereignty, resources and cultural assimilation.”].
10. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, by David Suzuki, 2007, 304.2 SUZ [Amanda McConnell and Adrienne Mason are primary contributors. From LibraryThing: “With a new foreword from Robin Wall Kimmerer, New York Times-bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass-and an afterword from Bill McKibben-this special 25th anniversary edition of a beloved bestseller invites readers to see ourselves as part of nature, not separate. The world is changing at a relentless pace. How can we slow down and act from a place of respect for all living things? The Sacred Balance shows us how. In this extensively updated new edition, David Suzuki reflects on the increasingly radical changes in science and nature-from the climate crisis to peak oil and the rise in clean energy-and examines what they mean for humankind. He also reflects on what we have learned by listening to Indigenous leaders, whose knowledge of the natural world is profound, and whose peoples are on the frontlines of protecting land and water around the world. Drawing on his own experiences and those of others who have put their beliefs into action, The Sacred Balance combines science, philosophy, spirituality, and Indigenous knowledge to offer concrete suggestions for creating an ecologically sustainable future by rediscovering and addressing humanity’s basic needs. Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.”].