Who’s Mother-ing Earth?

We now know that Earth isn’t resting on the shoulders of a very strong man, nor are we floating on the back of an enormous turtle. Sadly, there is no benevolent guardian holding us in orbit, gently rotating us on our axis or protecting our atmosphere. The job of caring for Earth falls into the hands of us glorious, innovative human beings.

And what a job we’ve done.

The evidence of our abuse of the environment is all around us, whether we want to call it global warming, global weirding, climate change or even the apocalypse. It’s happening now, and it is depressing. Seriously, reading the newspaper today just makes me sad, sweaty and nauseous. Here’s just a few tales of climate woe, all gathered from today’s headlines:

• Heard about those massive floods in Pakistan? You know the ones that have killed 1,700 (for now) and displaced 14 million? Well, scientists are now saying that it’s the “flood of the century,” a deluge of “biblical proportions,” and a humanitarian crisis greater than the Asian tsunami and the Haitian earthquake combined. And, you guessed it, caused by climate change.
• How about those fires in Moscow? Wildfires have been raging around Russia’s capital for weeks now, exacerbating the already unusually high temperatures and coating the area in a layer of smog. The culprit? Maybe El Niño, but mostly climate change. Oh, and because of the fires’ proximity to Chernobyl, the immense clouds of smoke might be radioactive.
• I know you’ve heard about the glaciers melting. They’re practically the mascot of the climate change movement. Now an island of ice more than four times the size of Manhattan has broken off of Greenland, and is prepared to disrupt shipping routes and oil platforms in the North Atlantic.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you read these headlines or ones exactly like them every day, and you start to feel Overwhelmed with a capital O. You also began to think things like, “I am only one person,” or, “I am too small,” or, “How will me switching to locally grown produce stop huge clouds of radioactive smoke?”

Step One: Relax. Take a deep breath. You were not born to solve the problems of the earth by yourself.

Step Two: Check out Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World (on sale Sept 7, 2010 – preorder available now!). In it, you will find 55 stories from people who felt the same way you did before Step One. All of the contributors in the book took on the following question: “In a time of environmental crisis, how can we live right now?” The answers, from writers such as Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan and Howard Zinn, will help you find relief, inspiration, determination, and of course, hope. You’ll realize that we can fix our environmental crisis, if we work together. Individually we are small, but together we are powerful. And locally grown produce is but a step on the ladder that leads to a radioactive smoke-free world.

This book is printed on recycled paper, and what’s more, 25% of the editor’s proceeds from the sale of Hope Beneath Our Feet will be donated to environmental causes! Books really do have the power to move mountains, or in this case, keep glaciers right where they belong.