Climate: A New Story

10/10/2018 In Global Warming: a New Story (Sept., 2018) Philosopher Charles Eisenstein introduces his title’s subject with a personal story so that readers may instantly connect to the book’s narrative point of view and to the author himself. The writer is fully engaged with his topic. Upon reflection, we all grieve over species and habitat loss, but with our profound awareness of Interbeing, of belonging to a network of all animate and inanimate beings that inhabit this planet, indeed, with our acknowledgement of the planet itself as a living being, he assures us that we can turn the sorrow into joy . . . and shows us how we might do that. In fact, the earth itself is a living, breathing organism that asks for our help, and he responds to her thus: “Land, what do you want from me!” To address its needs, we must embrace a core understanding that nature is alive and intelligent and then we must listen to the earth. We have become environmentalists through experiences of beauty and loss, and listening to an animated planet helps give us direction. We take heart in the fact that if we human beings are instrumental to this loss, that if we could feel this loss and know that others do as well, we would not be able to continue to participate in the destruction in good conscience. Us and them categories therefore are not helpful in a war of blame and reproach. Becoming aware of the way other beings communicate to us and willing to work with us, and animating our own will to participate in rebuilding, are more fruitful alternatives than remaining frozen in war. The book offers practical, well-informed approaches with references and examples, showing us how to begin, giving us hope to begin, so as not to be frozen in despair. Eisenstein offers hope that we can begin to see glimpses of a future world teeming with life and beauty, thus a “new story.” He suggests ways that we can participate in building this future as a “more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” His method is organized and specific as it treats different problems that we face today in eco-systemic collapse. I see him as organizing his work intentionally so that readers receive a well-ordered, easily understood narrative; in fact, that narrator treats his reader with utmost courtesy, calling each “dear reader” and refusing the power-over tactic of intelligent knower/ignorant reader dualism. He often claims his own shortcomings. First, he asks the question: “What is it?” He defines global warming, what causes it, and how to avoid “climate fundamentalism.” “Be attentive”, he responds. He follows that question with “Is it so?” His approach is convincing as he shows flaws in positions and counter positions from scientific and non-scientific sources. He finds much to value, suggesting different approaches to our relationships with water and with soil, for example, while describing our present relationships with them that contribute toward the problem. Next, he asks “What is to be done?” Charles Eisenstein excels at answering this question, especially offering approaches to soil management and water health. He also suggests the following: since we all participate in Interbeing, our efforts to do good also contribute to the well-being of the planet. For example, we could participate in mentoring youth, in aiding refugees, in raising children who “carry a little less pain into adulthood than you did.” Finally, he asks, “Is it to be done?” Each page in the book answers that question with a reverberating “Yes!” I have told friends, family, and peers that this book is “scriptural”; it sounds prophetic and wise. He is a visionary grounded to the earth. His book is weighty, rich with purpose and love. Responding to its invitation to begin the struggle to build a more beautiful world sounds like a call to holiness. In fact, in the narrative’s last pages, the narrator points to God as the Listener who expects us to live up to our promises and to act with loving kindness as we participate in Interbeing. Can we respond to the call? Elizabeth Adams-Eilers, Ph.D., is a published writer and professor living in the “wilds” of New Jersey.

Read it. This book weaves together so many areas - the ecological situation, Western ideology, a critique of the blindspots of science, the shortcomings of activism when it embodies the beliefs of the institutions that are causing the problems, the value of honoring and trusting direct experience and authentic spirituality - and he lays them out in a way that is accessible, clear, and without overly. In terms of connecting and unifying the sacred side of our being with a view of how things really are in the conventional world today, I have never read anything so precise. I titled this review "prophetic" because it is so profound and so accurate that it will take time for it to sink into this culture. Rare is the thinker that has done enough personal work, reflection and study to take their "self" out of their work to this degree, so that he can find the kernels of truth in any practice or tradition he explores while finely discerning where the limits and blindspots are - all while seeing the future potentials. The view that he is offering is the antidote to the global political environment today - his view is one of complexity, humbleness, and a stance that is always wary of too neatly packaged reductionist certainties. The human world, the ecological world, and the interaction between them are infinitely complex. So much better to say we really don't know how we are going to heal ourselves and the planet, but that we sort of know what it might look like, and then we can have the courage to bring into question the tired, ineffective ways that we are currently mired in. He understands how humans function and what is important to bring back into our experience: our relationships and love of each other and the earth. This is what will heal and the direction in which our discourse must turn. We are all tired and exhausted of seeing yet another numerical report on how screwed everything is. That doesn't change anything. What does is a real, felt experience and relationship with our real lives. Then we care and discover new solutions that dominant institutions can't even imagine because their worldview is just too small. I can attest to this journey, having discovered a much larger world than any university would validate, working through my own inner wounding and becoming a somatic therapist myself. So much healing, possibility and innovation is already happening at the margins, but you will never see this on a news report or in an international treaty. The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible will not be legislated into being by war-minded politicians, it will come out of localized, direct projects and experiences fueled by genuine inspiration and love. There is literally nothing stopping this from happening but our limiting beliefs. This book is a beautiful discussion on what our current culture's limitations are and points us towards more life giving possibilities. Perhaps the most important take away for me is that this book helped connect me to my AUTHENTIC optimism that has been bludgeoned by the doom and gloom culture, even on the environmental activism side. When I check in with my real experience, I see things already radically shifting in my life and that of my friends, healing both inner wounds and the land. Change can happen so quickly and there is SO MUCH resiliency available in our bodies and in the earth. Just check out all the latest research in neurology and recovering from things like PTSD, along with everything in this book about ecological healing. Again: the only thing stopping us from tapping into it all is our beliefs. Charles helps us dismantle those.

(You can read it for FREE on the author's website charleseisensteinDOTorg.) This book has really opened my eyes on the realities of not just climate change, but global environmental destruction overall. Humanity is in a very precarious situation of our own making, and there is clearly a need for radical changes worldwide. His overall premise: "...while high levels of greenhouse gases add stress to an already challenged biosphere, the main problem is the impoverishment of life and the degradation of the water cycle." The author first makes a solid case for his interpretation of the climate change data, i.e., that we've entered a period of rapidly intensifying "climate derangement". By this he means increasingly extreme (weather) events, ranging from prolonged serious droughts to wildfires to more frequent/severe hurricanes and blizzards. He also suggests to focus somewhat less on climate change-induced rises in temperature, but more on climate changed-induced changes in the local and global water cycle. (Precipitation is clearly a key aspect of climate, but the existing narrative pretty much only focuses on rises in temperature.) The author also includes the terrifying statistics showing that humanity is in effect killing the planet and its ability to sustain human life. Finally, he explains how climate change is worsened by environmental destruction in numerous ways that most policy makers are not aware of and that scientists may not be even be able to measure. The incredible interconnectedness of all life, and how human actions destroy these connections, is made clear to the reader. Even if we dropped carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, our current way of living on this planet will still lead us to ecological collapse. Further, some forms of clean energy production, especially hydroelectric dams, may actually contribute to climate change in other, but just as important ways. Fascinating hypotheses...! The author makes the case for all of this very convincingly, using actual scientific evidence and logical arguments. The author also proposes a set of solutions throughout the book, which are summed up in the final chapter. You can read that chapter here on amazon through the 'Look inside' function (or on the author's website, see above). These suggestions are not new, he just makes a convincing case for why they are so helpful: protecting remaining rainforest and marine ecosystems, abolishing pesticides and other forms of chemical pollution, local food production through regenerative agriculture, restoring watersheds to their natural condition, changes to the international trade and banking systems, and others. These solutions would heal the planet's ecological carrying capacity AND the climate. This has been a real revelation to me. Charles Eisenstein argues that there needs to be shift away from just focussing on greenhouse gas reductions to ecological restoration and conservation on an unprecedented scale - now. This may be "naive" and "unrealistic", but it IS possible, and probably the only way to ensure human survival past the next few generations. It would also create a more peaceful, happier, dare I say "better" world. Please read this book and widely share its valuable information. The book is freely available on the author's website.

I work in solar, so I'm all about our "carbon footprint” and have been gung-ho about this for years – I even tried my hand at starting a solar panel company (worker-owned coop) with some success. I was giddy with excitement about my new field of renewable energy (and in some ways I still am). But I regret to say our oh-so-smart solutions aren’t really working big picture, or long-term. I also love nature, but like half of us these days, I live in a city and rarely get to see it. And there are a lot (thousands?) of books on climate change that come out annually. Lots are a waste of pulp, screen time or ear time, while still others are quite good. Some are even “unbelievably OK!” This one’s a different animal. Wider in scope, larger in a lens that trains its focus more kaleidoscopically, accurately, in a more heartfelt, incisive, relevant, and important-to-hear fashion than I believe is currently on the market. Like, at all. I'm saying it's a unique voice, yet also the one you've known all along – speaking of things you didn’t know that you always knew were true, and have found difficulty giving voice to. I think considerate critically thinking conservatives could read this because Charles champions local and is skeptical of boiler plate social justice recipes for utopia (certainly its results, which often inadvertently prop up the very structures they proport to be opposed to). And I think liberals could read this because Charles champions caring about our planet in a way that genuinely takes into account systemic realities of economics and oppression, becoming a more authentic tuning fork for the causes liberals say they believe in – a distillation of What Really Matters. This is the one you quietly recommend to select friends but you’re almost embarrassed at how badly you want basically everyone to read or listen to it. To be sure, this book doesn’t have all the answers. Turns out that’s part of the answer. We don’t have to know everything in order to move the rudder in an unimaginably powerful new way. He outlines why our current model of modeling, if you will, is built on sinking sand and exacerbating the problems we’re so keen to fix. He steps behind the curtain of the rationales that give birth to the way we conceive of solutions in the first place and highlights where we can make viable shifts – a change in the story. Less scripted, a little more improv, but leagues more effective all the same. Reading Climate - A New Story, feels like having a reliable compass and a good map without all the labels filled in, and that's OK. It’s not hippie dippy kumbaya camp, nor is it a concrete city of swirling spreadsheets and accountant’s mouse clicks, though Charles has a masterful understanding of both and wields accurate information adroitly. Rest easy. This book is a bridge. Read it, but not in big chunks. It’s best enjoyed – considered – in chewy bits. And don’t be afraid to write a review when you’re done. I haven’t written one in quite a few trips around the sun. This one deserves it.

This is an excellent addition to Eisenstein's radical and thought provoking body of work on the collapse of our current systems, which he sees as based on the "Story of Separation," and of the transition to a new (and also ancient) paradigms based on a "Story of Interbeing." This is must reading for anyone who cares about the climate, especially those who are concerned with policy and strategy. This is also a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in better ways to engage "climate deniers." Eisenstein offers a perspective that transcends arguments about climate science, and even the focus on warming and greenhouse gas emissions as the primary issue to be grappled with. He contends that our love for Life in all its forms is the only power that can carry us towards a future worth living into. This spiritual stance takes us out of the realm of cost benefit analysis and debates regarding the value of one kind of activism or another. At the same time, it leads us to precisely the kinds of regenerative work that more traditional climate activists agree are essential, such as an end to deforestation and wetlands destruction, the rebuilding of soils so that they sequester carbon, etc. Whether one agrees with Eisenstein's critique of the mainstream's focus on technological and greenhouse gas emissions focused solutions to the climate crisis or not, I think it is essential that we answer his challenges. Otherwise, we run a terrible risk of exacerbating many of the worst aspects of our current system, such as the use of centralized and linear "command and control" strategies that are incapable of grappling with deeply complex, nonlinear systems dynamics. The unintended consequences of such an effort could be every bit as dire as the global warming threat we seek to combat. Indeed, Eisenstein suggests that the very notion that "we" (the climate saviors) are in a battle against "them" (the deniers, the polluters, the conspiracy theorists, the con-men profiting off of ecocide) embeds us in the Story of Separation. Without a fundamental grounding in love and compassion, even for our "opponents," he suggests that we are doomed to fail. If, on the other hand, we change the Story, seeing that the way we treat anyone and anything affects everything else, Eisenstein offers us hope that what now seems unlikely or even impossible might suddenly become natural and ubiquitous.

This book is important because it offers a much more holistic view of the climate crisis than is normally discussed. Like the Sunrise Movement's Green New Deal, and the great Canadian effort The Leap Manifesto, Eisenstein connects climate to racial and economic justice. But he also goes deeper by also showing how the crisis stems from the industrialized world's overall dysfunctional relationship with nature, its tendency to oversimplify complex problems and treat them as enemies, its overemphasis on quantification, and its broad view of the cosmos as separate from the individual person, a thing that can only be understood by science, and must be controlled by technology. The most important revelations in the book have to do with the danger of what Eisenstein brilliantly calls "carbon reductionism," the erroneous view not that carbon should be reduced (it should), but that solving the complex ecological problem of climate change can be reduced to a cutting carbon. He shows that to slow climate change, restoring suffering and destroyed ecosystems all over the world is just as important as cutting our CO2 and methane emissions. Why? Two reasons are because of the huge amount of carbon healthy forests and grasslands could sequester, and the protection healthy wetlands could offer us from rising seas. A very inspiring part of the book is the description of restorative agriculture—the exciting, new field exploring how we can grow food, heal the land, and reduce climate change, all at the same time. But the reasons for ecological restoration go much deeper. The earth, viewed holistically, is a single living system of networked, interdependent parts, and the health of all those parts effects the health (and yes, the climate) of the whole. Indigenous wisdom has always recognized this; modern science is now beginning to understand it, too. Just one of the fascinating examples Eisenstein offers is how healthy forests draw cooling and land-quenching water far inland from the oceans, through a process called the biotic pump. The big picture that emerges from Eisenstein's arguments is that the most important thing we need to reconnect to in order to respond to climate change is our love towards nature and our sense of wonder towards our magnificent planet. We need to treat them as sacred, and ourselves as parts of a single, living being. The only section I found disappointing was the part about climate deniers. I agree with Eisenstein that it is essential for us to treat them with empathy and listen to their views as openly as possible, because if we try to "dominate, control, and destroy" them, we are using exactly the mindset that got us into ecological turmoil in the first place. But I think he devotes too much space to a rational assessment of climate denialism, and not enough to a compassionate look at particular climate deniers as people. I also wasn't thrilled with the amount of space given to comparing science to dogmatic religion. I agree that we put science on too high a pedestal, and that other approaches, such as love, intuition, inspiration, and learning from indigenous wisdom, are just as important. But I think he over-emphasizes this argument, almost to the point of denigrating science. From what I know of Eisenstein, he actually has great respect for it, and he indeed relies upon it very convincingly in other parts of the book. By the way, I HIGHLY recommend Eisenstein's books Sacred Economics and The Ascent of Humanity. —Michael Holt in Truro, Massachusetts

Climate- A New Story, by Charles Eisenstein is, oddly enough, a love story. His allegorical introduction leaves no doubt about that. But it’s not a silly or romantic love story, and no matter how irrational love (Eisenstein tells us so), the case he presents for shifting the attention of our focus away from carbon emissions and toward the earth as the living, perhaps even sentient being that it is, is compelling. A more holistic approach. Most ecologists recognize the soundness of the arguments presented, and Eisenstein has not been remiss with his citations, nor in his explanations for why the focus has been and continues to be on carbon. But ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole are very complex systems and the body of the earth responds in ways we can’t always predict. Carbon is much too limited a focus, one simply cannot discuss atmospheric carbon without thinking about the water cycle, the two are inexorably linked, nor can one address issues with the “non-living”, abiotic environment (i.e. atmosphere, sea, etc.) without recognizing interaction with, and dependence on, the biota. The two are interdependent. Just like humans and environment, biotic and abiotic. Eisenstein explains the science clearly, and “correctly”, at least as correctly as “science” understands it. His uncertainty and exhaustive review of many perspectives is refreshing. He suggests that climate is not our most dire problem; the relationship we have with the earth, and with each other, is. That’s where the love story comes in. Earth as thing, as inanimate, cannot be killed. It can be looked upon as a mass of resources, something for our use, without needs of its own, non-responsive. Clearly, the earth is responding. Climate change is one of many responses. Eisenstein asks us to listen, to turn off the noise, to look at the beauty, to feel the grief, and to listen. The earth is trying to tell us something. Counting carbons is not enough. For anyone concerned about climate, environment, earth, and humanity, I highly recommend this book. L. Brooke Stabler, Ph.D.

I picked up "Climate" a few weeks ago as I was feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed with the latest reports from the IPCC predicting the oncoming climate disaster. This book has generated a major shift for me in finding a place for my grief, and rethinking and re-energizing my personal work towards healing the earth as an engaged climate and social justice activist. I shared a summary of the key ideas with a handful of friends who are diehard carbon-fighting climate activists, expecting a lot of pushback for these "out there" radical ideas, and they resoundingly resonated with the ideas and found it encouraging and helpful as well. Same for my father who is an old school environmentalist and dedicated scientist from the 70's and 80's era. Charles has a unique way of both digging into the technical and scientific debate, and painting these images from the heart about the underlying emotions and mythologies at play. If we manage a future where we have successfully navigated the current environmental crisis, I imagine the humans in that future will look back on this book as an essential step in the process that got us there. If you think much about climate change (or do whatever you can to avoid thinking about it), you will almost certainly find much that is new and valuable to you in this book.

Un autre regarde sur un sujet effrayant que nous s devrons lire. Merci M. Charles Eisenstein pour cette approche très très intelligente et profonde ❣️

チャールズ独特の視点が素晴らしい。新しい物語という文脈も良く、考察の説得力も個人的には好きなところ ですが、データ重視の人や科学的分析を求める人には今一歩物足りないかも。 最近日本語版も出ましたね。

It is not by chance that I have found Charles Eisenstein’s books and videos - they have found me and resonate deeply, satisfying a long held yearning for this information and teaching. Others will feel the same so please read, be inspired and share. 🥰

In this book Charles Eisenstein has again gone beyond and behind the dominant rhetoric and baseline beliefs of our culture to ask the questions that might actually shift us out of where we seem to be heading. He does this thoroughly, intelligently and eloquently and more importantly with heart and soul and beauty. Reading his writing makes me feel as if it is possible, as if this great turning can be within our reach and not in an optimistic head in the clouds way, in an earth rooted heart centred full human capacity way. So, read it. Where ever you stand in the climate scales the ideas he puts fourth in this book encompass so much more than a place in a binary belief system. His writing offers us a belief and values system that can hold the breadth of earth and all her life systems within our fragile fierce human hearts.

No doomsday scenario in this book. We find in this book the way forward to allow us to thrive on this planet. This book explains how we must respect ourselves and our environment, how it is foolish to believe there is a way to keep life as it is and avoid environmental catastrophe. Change is coming, and this book will help us bring into the world the positive change that is awaiting but needs us to come to life.