Let's save the planet, shall we?
Announcing the release of "All We Can Save," and a HEATED book club effort to rally around its wisdom and solutions.
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“My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”
―Adrienne Rich
Malfeasance, corruption, hypocrisy, apathy. Ignorance, disinformation, denial, delay. These are the topics I cover most here at HEATED, because I consider them the most interesting and important parts of the climate change story.
But these aren’t the only parts of the climate change story worth telling—and I know that, for many of you, they aren’t the most important. For the last year, many of you have told me that you don’t just want to how the world is falling apart. You want to know how you can be part of the solution.
That’s been tough for me, honestly, because bright-eyed solutions journalism just isn’t my comfort zone (could you tell??). But comfort zones are for a cooler world. Our world is very hot.
So today, I’m announcing a partnership that I hope will make us all better-informed, less doom-obsessed, more well-rounded climate thinkers. It’s with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, the editors of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, which goes on sale today.
All We Can Save is book of essays and poems by some 50 women leaders in the climate movement—scientists, youth activists, artists, journalists, architects, lawyers—meant to guide our vision for a new and better world. It is, according to Rolling Stone, “a mosaic that honors the complexity of the climate crisis like few, if any, books on the topic have done yet.”
The essays aren’t exactly meant to give you hope that everything’s gonna be okay. In fact, Johnson actually said “fuck hope” during the Washington Post interview about the book. What they’re meant to do is give you “truth, courage and solutions,” she said. “That’s what’s going to get us there.”
What does the partnership entail?
For the next ten weeks, starting in October, HEATED will be reading and talking about All We Can Save together.
Two newsletters per week will be dedicated to the book, and each week will focus on a different chapter. Tuesday newsletters will feature discussion questions and supplementary materials, and Thursday newsletters will feature original Q&As with an author from that section. Any of one the climate leaders listed below could be interviewed? (Have someone you’d really like to see interviewed? Email me: emily@heated.world)
The essayists featured in All We Can Save. Did I mention I’m one of them?? Oops!
HEATED will also be hosting small discussion groups called “circles”: small groups of six to ten people, committed to reading the book collectively and engaging in directed dialogue once a week for ten weeks. The ten weeks of dialogue will be architected around the book’s eight main sections, flanked with weeks focused on the book’s opening and closing sections. The intention is to build community and seed action that extend and sustain beyond the collective reading itself. We’ll explain more about how circles work next Tuesday.
What if I don’t want to read this book?
If you don’t want to get the book or be part of the circles, don’t worry—the next ten weeks of newsletters will still work for you. Tuesday newsletters will still contain non-book-related stories, and the Thursday Q&As will still be newsy and informative. Plus, there’s still the Monday and Wednesday newsletters for all the gloom and doom regularly featured here.
If you do want to get the book and be part of the circles, though, that’s dope! It’s on sale now, and you can click this link to buy it directly from the publisher or from a bunch of other sellers. If you want to get the book and participate but can’t afford it, send me an email, we’ll figure something out: emily@heated.world.
Also, if you’d rather listen than also read, the link above also has an option for an audiobook version It’s narrated by celebrities like Jane Fonda, America Ferrera, Janet Mock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sophia Bush. Isn’t that wild? I think it’s wild.
Anyway, more info to come next week, and I’m excited to dive into climate solutions with you. Stay healthy and hydrated, have a good Tuesday, and look at all these cool tweets about the book! Go get it!!!
Tom Hayden @mufferaw
Absolutely stoked to use “All We Can Save” for my #environmentalcommunication class @StanfordEarth this quarter. https://www.allwecansave.earth@allwecansave 1/2
OK, that’s all for today—thanks for reading HEATED! If you’d like to share this piece as a web page, click the button below.
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Stay hydrated, eat plants (I like bananas), do push-ups, and have a great day!
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I'm definitely in! Pre-ordered it for curbside pick-up from my local independent bookstore, and can't wait to be called to come pick it up. I like solutions -- but, we also need the hard hitting facts brought to us by you about the cynicism, corruption, hypocrisy, and intentional and massive disinformation campaign perpetrated on us by fossil fuel companies and their allies to understand exactly why we are where we are and how we need to fight to save the planet (i.e. the "it's only fair to include all voices at the table," or "these companies have such expertise they can bring to helping us solve these problems" arguments I hear all the time are not going to get it done. They lied, they keep lying while continuing to destroy our planet and us under the cover of their lies. We need to understand that.) Thank you Emily!
Hell yeah. I've been wondering where the book club went!