Earth Calling: A Climate Change Handbook for the 21st Century

Description

"The Silent Spring for today's environmental activists, this book offers an invitation to reestablish our relationship with nature to repair our damaged environment." Our earliest mythologies tell us we all start as a little bit of dirt. These stories carry a profound message- each of us is born with a deep and abiding connection to the earth, one that many of us have lost touch with. The Silent Spring for today's environmental activists, this book offers an invitation to reestablish our relationship with nature to repair our damaged environment. Chapter 1 examines the threats to the planet's health through the lens of the human energy system known as the chakras, describing how the broken first chakra relates to our disconnection from our biosphere. Chapter 2 shows how our current environmental crises--global warming, climate change, dwindling water resources, natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes--represent severe manifestations of our disconnection from the earth. Chapter 3 describes how the preponderance of oil in our culture--especially agribusiness--compounds this disconnection, from our dependence on other countries for our energy, to current issues of oil depletion, peak oil, and fracking, to the dumbing down of our agricultural polyculture. Chapter 4 explains how the most basic building blocks of our nourishment--seeds--are being compromised with a loss of biodiversity and rise of GMOs, and how that adversely affects the farmers whose sacred connection to the land has in many cases been severed. Chapter 5 describes the ways in which we as individuals can begin to wake up to climate activism as a spiritual practice. This chapter includes specific activities that you can use to implement change and heal your own connection to the earth. By learning and practicing ritual and understanding the earth's rhythms and seasonal rites of passage, each of us can find unique ways to heal our own connections and help others heal theirs. Chapter 6 looks at stories of how people are responding to their inner callings with generosity, innovation, and dedication--exactly the traits our nation and our planet need now.

ELLEN GUNTER is a climate activist who lectures, delivers Al Gore's slideshow on climate change, and writes about the connections between spirituality and the environment. TED CARTER has been designing earth-centric landscapes along the northeast coast for more than thirty years. His award-winning work has been featured in local and national publications. The author lives in Oak Park, IL/Buxton, ME.

"If I could, I would make Earth Calling required reading for every single person drawing a breath on this planet. We have strayed from our fundamental nature and we must find our way back to our primary rapport with the earth and our own life instincts before we lose sight of those precious instincts entirely."-Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit "An eloquent plea to wake up to what we as humans are doing-and failing to do-for our land, air and water. Let us hearken to the trumpet they sound."-Peter Davis, director of the Academy Award-winning documentary, Hearts and Minds "Our personal relationship with the earth lies at the crux of why we were born and what we came here to do, and it will certainly determine our ultimate fate. In Earth Calling, Ellen Gunter and Ted Carter provide us with a manual for deepening and fine-tuning that relationship and vividly demonstrate the consequences of not doing so."-Carolyn Baker, author of Collapsing Consciously