This Book About Climate Change Will Give You Hope
In one of this year's best climate books, All We Can Save brings an empathetic perspective to a fraught subject
Dr. Katharine Wilkinson (left) and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, co-editors of All We Can Save, and co-founders of The All We Can Save Project.
Source: Jennifer Robinson
Before 2020 collapses under its own weight, it’s worth noting some of the positive things that came out of the year. A book that was published this fall, All We Can Save, is something that will help us navigate a nerve-wracking future. Against a backdrop of the trickling, everyday dross of internet life—not to mention destabilizing pandemic and populism around us—this book is what the late short-story author Raymond Carver might have called “a small good thing.”
All We Can Save is a collection of essays, memories, poems, and even advice memos written by 60 women, most enmeshed professionally one way or another with climate change — scientists, researchers, activists, journalists, former government officials, writers, and more. A fine expression of the project comes in one of many interstitial quotations dropped in-between the short essays. It's a statement from Heather McGhee, a political commentator, author, and board chair of the group Color of Change: “Inequality and climate change are the twin challenges of our time, and more democracy is the answer to both.”