Earth Day is an event that originated from the need to spread awareness about environmental damage and create change to address it, and if possible, reverse some of it. Earth Day is the largest secular civic-engagement event in the world, usually celebrated by about one billion people worldwide. Within a decade after Earth Day was created in 1970, many influential environmentally protective initiatives and legislations had been established, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act, among others. The use of lead in gasoline and the pesticide DDT had both also been banned. Over the following decades, organizations have continued to strive to create change to address the ever-evolving problems caused by modern practices that are harmful to the environment, even as new knowledge and problems spring up. The perseverance and resilience of scientists, researchers, and activists, along with support from the global community of eco-minded individuals connected through media, helps to create modest hope for change and improvements in some of these environmental issues.
One of the principal purposes of Earth Day is to spread awareness and provide mass education about climate issues that need attention. The task of spreading awareness for this crisis involves many factors, activism through demonstrations, speaking engagements, media coverage, and petitions, along with providing education in schools, videos, online platforms, and through other forms of delivery. Education is the first essential step in this process, and is one of the most important motivators for inspiring change.
Books about climate issues, both nonfiction and fiction, are a priceless resource of information. Fiction especially helps us understand the world through the empathic lens of a character, and this both deepens our knowledge and initiates calls to action. The most successful of climate-related fiction books often educate and entertain simultaneously, spreading awareness and igniting the desire to support the earth without the reader realizing that this was one of the author’s goals.
With that in mind, we’d like to highlight one of our dedicated authors, Sim Johnson, whose book Seasons of Change centers on an ordinary but brave heroine surviving an environmentally devastated earth, who sets out on a mission to save the world from an apocalyptic freeze:
Seasons of Change, by Sim Johnson, edited by Maurice Billington
If you are looking for even more to read this Earth Day, here are a few books centering around our climate and actions to take to support our world and make it a healthier place to live:
We are Better Together, by Bill McKibben
Can I recycle this? A guide to better recycling and how to reduce single-use plastics, by Jennie Romer
Rising – Dispatches from the New American Shore, by Elizabeth Rush
Our House Is on Fire – Greta Thunberg’s Call to Save the Planet, by Jeanette Winter
The Uninhabitable Earth – Life After Warming, by David Wallace-Wells
Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward
A Terrible Thing to Waste, by Harriet A. Washington
Richter Publishing 