Ministry for the Future
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Book summary: “Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world’s future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. It soon became known as the Ministry for the Future, and this is its story. From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined. Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come.”
– Heidi: Climate Policy Analyst
NPR episode on meat and masculinity
A podcast episode titled, “Men, beef, and a climate solution” that covers the USA’s cultural ties between meat and masculinity, including anti-soy thinkpieces, “meatfluencers”, meat industry advertising, and more!
Check out the podcast episode and transcript here and an article based on the episode here, with more links to investigate.
– Melissa: Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs Team Coordinator & Suncor Action Committee Leader
Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
Book summary: “This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers. Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behavior patterns that are killing the planet we’re part of.
Driven by expansion, colonialism, and resource extraction and propelled by neoliberalism and rabid consumption, our world is profoundly out of balance. We take more than we give; we inoculate ourselves in positive self-regard while continuing to make harmful choices; we wreak irreparable havoc on the ecosystems, habitats, and beings with whom we share our planet. But instead of drowning in hopelessness, how can we learn to face our reality with humility and accountability?”
– Ciara, Communications Coordinator
Skip (Skills to Inherit Property)
By Paul Wheaton & Mike Haasl
Book summary: “SKIP is a bridge to connect aspiring homesteaders with older folks looking for someone to steward their land.
Are you young and dreading a costly journey through college and the rat race? Will you pursue money so you reach your goals sooner or follow your passions and struggle financially? Are you one of the many young people who wish they could get their hands dirty helping the environment and doing meaningful work?
Are you older and struggling to decide who will care for your land as you age or after you pass? Your kids don’t want to live there and would just sell it to developers. You don’t know any younger people who would keep it operating as a farm or homestead. Who will tend the orchard, nurture the garden and continue your life’s work? Whom can you trust with your little patch of heaven?”
– Bobbie, Beyond Oil & Gas Campaign Coordinator
All We Can Save
by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (Editor), Katharine K. Wilkinson (Editor)
Book summary: “All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States–scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race–and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save.”
– Steve, Roaring Fork Team Coordinator
American Serengeti
by Dan Flores
Book Summary: “In a work that is at once a lyrical evocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory–and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them at the hands of market hunters and ranchers and ultimately a federal killing program in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Great Plains with its wildlife intact dazzled Americans and Europeans alike, prompting numerous literary tributes. American Serengeti takes its place alongside these celebratory works, showing us the grazers and predators of the plains against the vast opalescent distances, the blue mountains shimmering on the horizon, the great rippling tracts of yellowed grasslands. Far from the empty “flyover country” of recent times, this landscape is alive with a complex ecology at least 20,000 years old–a continental patrimony whose wonders may not be entirely lost, as recent efforts hold out hope of partial restoration of these historic species.”
– Matt, Promoting Climate Solutions Coordinator
Climate Deniers Playbook Podcast
Climate Deniers Playbook Podcast: “Rollie Williams (Climate Town) and Nicole Conlan (The Daily Show) are two comedians with Master’s Degrees in Climate Science & Policy and Urban Planning. But don’t get too excited, because they’re here to examine the pervasive myths and misinformation campaigns that are making it obnoxiously difficult to address the looming climate crisis you’ve probably heard about. If you’re looking to get your hands on some of the absolute coldest, hardest, climate changing-est facts to help sift through the noise, then you’ve come to the right place, brother.”
Check out the Climate Deniers Playbook Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Podbean
– Chelsea, Movement Building & Volunteer Director
West with Giraffes
by Lynda Rutledge
Book summary: “It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.”
– Kim, Administrative Assistant
The Great Simplification
Podcast summary: “The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens is a podcast that explores the systems science underpinning the human predicament. Conversation topics will span human behavior, monetary/economic systems, energy, ecology, geopolitics and the environment. The goal of the show is to inform more humans about the path ahead and inspire people to play a role in our collective future. Guests will be from a wide range of scientists, leaders, activists, thinkers, and doers.
We have spent the last century harnessing enormous amounts of fossil energy to build a world of complexity like nothing seen before. In the coming century, humanity will experience A Great Simplification, beginning with the onset of financial and economic turbulence, followed by contraction. The ensuing simplification will be among the most significant events ever experienced by our species.
Those who look through a systems lens can serve as early visionaries of a simpler life with new ways of relating to technology, to consumption, to each other and to Earth’s ecosystems. Our system – and the components, processes and interactions that comprise it – is incredibly complex. On this podcast we will try to ‘simplify’ the ‘great’ issues of our time to expand the number of people making sense of our reality.”
– Micah, Executive Director
