Flipping the script on climate change, Eisenstein makes a case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction With research and insight, Charles Eisenstein details how the quantification of the natural world leads to a lack of integration and our “fight” mentality. With an entire chapter unpacking the climate change … climate change denier’s point of view, he advocates for expanding our exclusive focus on carbon emissions to see the broader picture beyond our short-sighted and incomplete approach. The rivers, forests, and creatures of the natural and material world are sacred and valuable in their own right, not simply for carbon credits or preventing the extinction of one species versus another. After all, when you ask someone why they first became an environmentalist, they’re likely to point to the river they played in, the ocean they visited, the wild animals they observed, or the trees they climbed when they were a kid. This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth. Freeing ourselves from a war mentality and seeing the bigger picture of how everything from prison reform to saving the whales can contribute to our planetary ecological health, we resist reflexive postures of solution and blame and reach toward the deep place where commitment lives.
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Charles Eisenstein’s book Climate: A New Story is full of compassion and insight about human alienation from the natural world that has led to our current climate crisis. His is fundamentally a book of philosophy that challenges readers to reevaluate many widely-held cultural beliefs and assumptions that could very well end up killing us and everything on the planet. Philosophy books are not easy to read. Readers must be willing to read carefully and to do some serious self-reflection to fully understand this book. Only then can we begin to make the changes that must be made.
At root, Eisenstein is asking us to recognize the different stories we tell ourselves and how those stories are not working. The Story of Separation from the natural world is leading to disaster. We focus on fear rather than on what we love. He takes to task the global warming narrative that is yet another us vs. them narrative. He makes a strong argument that fear won’t work in the end. Only love works. “We work to save what we love,” and that’s why protecting local ecosystems usually work much better than abstract larger-scale projects. He calls for a Story of Interbeing.
Everything is connected. It makes no sense to worry only about the death of kelp forests which suck up CO2 if we don’t also be concerned about the threats to sea otters which keep sea urchins under control which wipe out kelp forests. Instead of a love of nature and the recognition that all living things are connected, he says we focus on fear of our survival. He takes on at length our very dysfunctional economic system which measures quantity to the detriment of living things. He asks us instead to measure instead.
This is not a book of only what doesn’t work. Eisenstein has plenty of great examples of Interbeing, a recognition of how to live within and love the natural world and how to act on that. He points out the many ways in which the planet is suffering that has nothing to do with the climate crisis. Our overuse and misuse of plastics is one example. Another is our methods of agriculture which involve deforestation, monocropping, pesticide use, and a resulting insect holocaust. He gives us ways out of this human-caused disaster through regenerative agriculture methods.
“Human well-being and planetary health are inextricably connected.” That’s why we have to stop thinking of ourselves as separate from nature. “The world is a living being,” and we are a part of that living being. “The earth is still alive,” he tells us. “Now is the time to choose life. It’s not too late.”
What a blast of sanity! Eisenstein’s corrective is a bracing piece of work, dazzlingly thought through and eloquent in its articulation. He writes from within an uncannily woke worldview, enacting a full-bodied way of thinking that discerns and feels into the complex entanglement of our lives with every facet of this breathing biosphere. This book is visionary and prophetic, achingly grounded and useful to the max.