Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming

by Steven Pavlos Holmes (Editor)

"Amidst the current deluge of statistics about global warming, this book provides a refreshing look at how individuals are affected. This is a beautiful book to keep near, open at random, and share the words of gifted writers as they prepare for the coming changes."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Facing the Change is a new kind of book about climate change. Instead of experts talking at us, this innovative literary collection shares the voices of fellow citizens struggling to make sense of the concrete changes taking place in our world today. Instead of scientific facts and predictions, this book offers personal essays, poems, and short stories expressing what’s going on in people's lives, hearts, and dreams. Instead of leaving readers guilty and disempowered, this book will help us all to begin to work through the full range of emotions—confusion, fear, sorrow, anger, and realistic hope—that we must face in confronting the crisis. Showcasing the voices of a wide range of authors—from prize–winning writers and poets such as Roxana Robinson, Audrey Schulman, and Barbara Crooker, to regular citizens and young people— Facing the Change offers a new opportunity for moving past denial and despair to awareness and action.

Genres: Climate Change, Nonfiction, Nature, Environment

173 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2013

About the author

STEVEN PAVLOS HOLMES, Ph.D., is an independent scholar in the environmental humanities, with a special interest in people’s personal experiences of the natural world. He earned a doctorate in American cultural history from Harvard University and has taught both at Harvard and at the Cambridge (Mass.) Center for Adult Education. His first book, The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography (as Steven J. Holmes; University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), won the Modern Language Association’s Prize for Independent Scholars, and he has presented papers and workshops on Muir and on environmental life-writing at numerous academic and literary conferences. More recently, he has worked on innovative literary and historical projects with The Wilderness Society, the Blue Ocean Institute, and Massachusetts Audubon’s Boston Nature Center. Steve currently lives, gardens, and watches birds in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, with his partner Carlene Pavlos and their cat, Millet (who sometimes does more than watch the birds ...).

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book with the idea of skimming through it, but I was quickly drawn in and couldn't put it down. While this should be required reading for everyone on the planet, the reality is only those who are interested in the natural world or in global warming will pick it up. But I encourage anyone who is concerned about the topic to read this. It will make you experience global warming in a way you may not have before, consider issues deeply, and help you navigate through the learned helplessness we all (who believe in it) feel in the face of the changing climate.

Not scientific but personal, Holmes has done a beautiful job of arranging the essays into a meaningful order. My favorite essay appeared in the venerable Terrain.org, "To Wit,to Woo," by Kathryn Miles, who explores climate change through the effects on the owls in her region. And this paragraph stayed with me, from Willow Fagan's "Beyond Denial":

"As a queer person, I have some experience with denial. I would like to be able to tell you that emerging from denial is like moving from blindness to light, prison to flight, as a butterfly escapes her cocoon. But the truth is more messy...I catch glimpses of destruction that our collective actions have caused or might cause, of what global warming means or might mean, and then I retreat back into distraction, into disconnection, into false promises of safety. Do butterflies ever return to the broken shapes of their former shells, in need of shelter from snow or storm? Do they long to?"

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a difficult book to rate. I chose it as one of the books for the sustainability science book club I'm teaching this semester. Some of the writings I enjoyed, some I did not. Some continue to haunt me, some are more difficult to recall or seemed to get lost. But it asks an interesting question, do you need to have a personal encounter with an issue like global warming before we decide to change behavior and take action?

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

The editor of this book realized that people feel overwhelmed by the enormity of climate change and need some support grappling with that overwhelm if we're going to have any hope of meeting the enormous challenge of it. To all of us. Everywhere. I may not have come across it if I didn't have a poem in it so I'm trying to get the word out. If the scientific data alarms you - try these personal stories and think about your own life. Put it all in perspective and think what you can do to help!

[Harold Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal responses to climate change, both poetic and factual. A different kind of approach
and I thought it was quite engaging on both the artistic and scientific levels.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy project, getting ordinary people to write about their experiences of climate change but with non-professional writers the prose and poetry can be a bit plodding at times.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very profound account from people who have written poetry, essays, editorials or musings on the changes in climate they have seen. It's how a mountain no longer has an ice cap all year, how a lake may never freeze, how trees have died due to insect invasions caused by fires, how some land after the fires in the west, never recovered. But it is much more, it is the lament of parents whose children will never see certain species of animals. It is about the children who trust the adults to take care of our earth, our most precious and vulnerable gift. It is about our complacency and the fact that perpetuates the greed and wonton neglect of our planet and the bleak future our children and grandchildren will inherit.

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please read this book now. Earlier this month a United Nations panel on climate change published their findings: We only have 15 years to change course or we will face calamitous climate affects. This collection of personal essays, stories, and poems, offers insight on climate change that is much more than a panic-inducing wake-up call. It also offers hope that we can take action to turn things around before it's too late. The last two essays, by Monica Woelfel and Audrey Schulman, are particularly effective.

[World Literature Today]

"These crisp contributions read like the thoughts of ordinary folks trying to figure out how to live sustainable and meaningful lives in thrall of enormous changes that so often seem beyond the reach of individual action. This book is an important and often moving contribution." - John Calderazzo, Colorado State University

This book was reviewed in the May 2014 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/W5o7jb