Reader's Place: August 1, 2022
The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. As we are living the very real consequences of global warming, we can read about our warming planet in a variety of genres.
When time is short: finding our way in the Anthropocene, by Timothy Beal, 2022. (Catalog)
A theological response to our denial of death as a species (the possibility if not probability of extinction), considering how religion has fueled that denial, and how religion might also help break through denial and find hope.
Eleutheria, by Allegra Hyde, 2022. (Catalog)
Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope over her parents' paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job at a donut shop, over the rising ocean levels. After finding a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution, Willa flies down to the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas to join the author and his group of ecowarriors at Camp Hope. Upon arrival, things are not what she expected. The crew's leader, author Roy Adams, is missing, and the camp's public launch is delayed. With time running out, Willa will stop at nothing to realize Camp Hope's mission--but at what cost?"
The Anthropocene reviewed: essays on a human-centered planet, by John Green, 2021. (Catalog)
In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet-from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu-on a five-star scale.
Vigil Harbor, by Julia Glass, 2022 (Catalog)
A decade in the future, in the historic town of Vigil Harbor, there's been a rash of divorces among the yacht-club set; a marine biologist despairs at the state of the world; a spurned wife is bent on revenge; and the renowned architect Austin Kepner pursues a passion for building homes to withstand the escalating fury of coastal storms. The fates of Vigil Harbor's residents become intertwined on one remarkable day and a long-held secret involving a selkie comes to light.
The ministry for the future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020. (Catalog)
A new international climate-crisis body has been “charged with defending all living creatures present and future who cannot speak for themselves”, and is quickly dubbed the Ministry for the Future. A shadowy terrorist network called the “Children of Kali” uses drone swarms to crash passenger jets and container ships in deadly protest at continuing carbon emissions. There is no shortage of sardonic humour here, a cosmopolitan range of sympathies, and a steely, visionary optimism.
Tales of two planets: stories of climate change and inequality in a divided world, edited by John Freeman, 2020. (Catalog)
Freeman draws together some of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. The effects of global warming are especially disruptive in less well-off nations, sending refugees to the US and elsewhere in the wealthier world, where they often encounter the problems that perennially face outsiders: lack of access to education, health care, decent housing, employment, and even basic nutrition. But the problems of climate change are not restricted to those from the less developed world. Authors include Arundhati Roy, Edwidge Danticat, Margaret Atwood, and Lauren Groff, and a number of exciting young voices.
Under a white sky: the nature of the future, by Elizabeth Kolbert, 2021. (Catalog)
Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. She meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single, tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave. She visits a lava field in Iceland, where engineers are turning carbon emissions to stone; an aquarium in Australia, where researchers are trying to develop "super coral" that can survive on a hotter globe; and a lab at Harvard, where physicists are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere in order to reflect sunlight back to space and cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau