All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

“If humans are to help reverse global warming, we will need to step into the flow of the carbon cycle in new ways, stopping our excessive exhale of carbon dioxide and encouraging the winded ecosystems of the planet to take a good long inhale as they heal. It will mean learning to help the helpers, those microbes, plants, and animals that do the daily alchemy of turning carbon into life.”

Janine Benyus focuses on the need for a mutualistic relationship with nature. She writes that collaborative healing can take place when we return to our role as nurturers. Several writers featured in this collection suggest that this is one reason why women—who have traditionally been their families’ and communities’ nurturers—should play a leading role in the climate movement.

“We must also recognize that climate change is only one symptom of a larger problem. Human beings have fallen out of alignment with life. Their beliefs and ways of being have shifted dramatically from those of their ancestors, taking them further and further away from the sources of their survival. As a result, people have forgotten how to live in relationship with the rest of creation […] the greatest contribution that Indigenous peoples may be able to make at this time is to continue providing the world with living models of sustainability that are rooted in ancient wisdom and that inform us how to live in balance with all of our relations on Mother Earth. This will require non-Indigenous people to stand with us and ensure that our lands, waters, and ways of life are not further eroded by government and industrial intrusion.”

Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset of Penawahpskek Nation, emphasizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge in climate change. Centering Indigenous knowledge will guide us back to a place of respect toward the Earth and in turn, the environment will benefit. This idea of returning to a prior relationship with the Earth is one that recurs even in the more policy-driven essays in this collection—for example, in Amanda Sturgeon’s description of biophilic architecture as more in line with how humans have traditionally built and lived.

“Once you have done your homework, you realize that we need new politics. We need a new economics, where everything is based on our rapidly declining and extremely limited carbon budget. But that is not enough. We need a whole new way of thinking…We must stop competing with each other. We need to start cooperating and sharing the remaining resources of this planet in a fair way.”

Naomi Klein shares this quote from Greta Thunberg. She writes about the need for structural changes in order to make progress in the climate. The Green New Deal is one example of this structural change and will help to create equity for those who are disproportionately affected by climate change.

“In every successful effort to make change, there is some lucky convergence of circumstances. But in my experience, there is always one essential ingredient: scrappy people who are willing to work backward from goals that seem impossibly ambitious at the start.”

Abigail Dillen describes her experience working to oppose the building of coal plants that would be harmful to the environment. While she was not particularly confident in herself as an advocate at first, others in her organization encouraged her and helped her make a strong case for their cause. This highlights the importance of community in climate action.

“Fossil fuels are cooking our planet, but they’re also creating scores of scary local pollution problems that have people up in arms: coal-ash spills in our rivers, oil slicks on our beaches, smog triggering asthma attacks among our kids and heart attacks and strokes in adults, fracking ruining our drinking water, toxic mercury in our seafood. The side effects of fossil-fueled electricity are actually front and center in our day-to-day lives.”

Mary Anne Hitt focuses on both the immediate and long-term effects of pollution on frontline communities. Not only are we harming future generations and our planet, but entire communities are experiencing health issues and complications right now as a result of proximity to fossil fuel emissions. The idea that it is important to engage these vulnerable populations—often communities of color—in climate activism and solutions is a key theme in All We Can Save.

“Mainstream America ignores hard-learned lessons from a people who, enslaved and forced to travel across the Atlantic under unimaginable conditions, to work a land they did not know, figured out how to make things thrive and grow using their wisdom of nature and spirit. As we all face a climate crisis that threatens our very existence, the ability of my ancestors to adapt to wholly new environments offers wisdom to embrace.”

Heather McTeer Toney speaks from her experience as a Black woman in America. She reminds the reader of the wisdom of the Black ancestors that learned to live from the land during a time when they were enslaved. This inherited wisdom should not be forgotten but should be embraced and utilized in the climate movement.

“Listen to the communities most affected by environmental impacts when crafting policy, because nobody knows better the nuances of our struggles, or the solutions that will lead to a more equitable future, than those affected.”

Maggie Thomas emphasizes the importance of listening to those whose voices often go unheard. In many cases, these are the people and communities that climate change disproportionately affects, as well as those likely to have the best solutions.

“For most people in this country, we are not a nation of prosperity. We are a nation of lack, and a world where resources are increasingly constrained by the climate crisis. If we do not counter this scarcity, how will we build anything but a society of fortresses as the planet continues to warm?”

Rhiana Gunn-Wright criticizes a common platitude about the United States–that we are the most prosperous and successful country in the world. This is not so: Many of our citizens are suffering and lacking because of climate issues of our own making.

“We must challenge the idea that some life matters more than other life. This means creating more stories that center the experiences of human beings, showcase solutions, activate our human empathy, and help usher in another worldview.”

Favianna Rodriguez emphasizes the importance of listening to stories that are different from our own and show us new perspectives on common problems. Climate activism has often centered a white perspective; Rodriguez suggests that it’s time to share the platform and allow others to share their worldviews and solutions.

“The movement to reclaim this way of thinking is called biophilic design–philia meaning ‘love,’ bio meaning ‘life.’ Rooting the design of the built environment in a ‘love of life’ is about much more than daylight, fresh air, and views; it is a strategy to reawaken hopeful and positive connections between people and nature.”

Amanda Sturgeon discusses an approach to architecture that will allow humans to reconnect with the natural environment. She suggests that current building design not only closes us off from the outside world but also requires more energy to keep things cooled and heated, which contributes to carbon emissions.

“Thriving landscapes are next-generation climate infrastructure: generous riverbanks, healthy reefs and mangroves, protective dunes, and living shorelines.”

Kate Orff analyzes the degradation of ecosystems that the development of suburbs has caused. She explains that landscape design needs to incorporate the existing landscape rather than creating man-made ones that pollute and emit greenhouse gas.

“Mending some things will also require tearing up and dismantling others: equitably unbuilding places in harm’s way, depaving roadways, blowing up dams, ripping out concretized stream channels, jackhammering asphalt roadways, and cutting down sterile seawalls that push risk downstream. Acts of design can tend to the rights of the channelized river, the clam in the muck, the climate migrant to survive and thrive.”

Kate Orff tells the reader that in order to mend the landscape, many things will have to change. We cannot continue to do things the old way because that will just keep us headed down the path of inequitable climate change.

“The most polluting coal plants are disproportionately located in communities where residents are predominantly low income or people of color. Burning fossil fuels is resulting in sea level rise, which is displacing communities […] Shifting rainfall patterns and extreme weather are disrupting agriculture, deepening existing food insecurity in too many communities. Climate change is absolutely a civil rights issue.”

Jacqui Patterson makes one of the book’s most explicit cases for considering climate change a civil rights issue. She shows how racial inequity and climate change are inseparably intertwined and how they worsen one another the longer they both continue.

“Our steady resistance forms cracks in the world of profit margins. It transitions us away from self-destruction. We are a thorn in the side of a world that believes it must extract to exist, a bone-deep reminder there are other ways of being a people willing to take personal risk for something greater than any one individual. I have seen fear in eyes shielded behind riot gear, fear of a braid of sweetgrass and a prayer, of the person who stands unarmed to protect the land.”

Tara Houska advocates for the environment by standing with the land. She uses her body and her words to make a point to the powerful who would destroy the natural landscape for profit. Significantly, she also uses the first-person plural throughout this passage, underscoring that activism must be a collective endeavor.

“Maybe the word we need is not one for a sickness. Maybe we need a word for a difficult truth: that when the world is ending, our health depends on closing ourselves off to awareness of this fact. Where you choose to draw your boundaries is arbitrary, not rational. If you draw them wide–if you include trees and refugees and animals and whole nations–you will be sick from overwhelm and will be seen as crazy. But if you draw them narrowly, you’ll suppress more and admire yourself less–which is its own sort of sickness.”

Here, Ash Sanders articulates the difficulty of being a climate activist; becoming too overwhelmed will render you useless, so it’s important to draw your own boundaries. Yet, becoming too despondent or disengaged is an issue as well. Like several others in the volume (e.g., Amy Westervelt motherhood), this essay strives to find the right balance between the emotions, responsibilities, and impulses that pull us in different directions. 

“Here are two truths: To some of us, much of the time, it feels exceedingly unlikely that humans will survive this–yet it’s a simple fact that if we respond robustly, we can survive this. Despair is an accurate reflection of the peril we face, but it isn’t a predictor of the future; it’s devastatingly nearsighted. To see beyond what despair sees–to move from the feeling toward the possibility–calls for things we have in abundance: love, imagination, and a willingness to simply tend the world as best we can, without guarantee of success. Any one of these can get us started.” 

Emily N. Johnston writes about the balance between despair and hope in climate activism. Despair can overtake our will to act, but simply using the skills and abilities at our disposal is a place where we can start our activism: Whatever we have to offer will help in some way.

“We don’t have to be Pollyanna-ish or fatalistic. We can just be human. We can be messy, imperfect, contradictory, broken. We can learn the difference between hopelessness and helplessness. Because what if we’ve been doing the equation backward? What if hope isn’t what leads to action? What if courage leads to action and hope is what comes next?”

Here, Mary Annaîse Heglar focuses on the grace we should give ourselves as climate activists. Rather than feeling pressure to be overly optimistic or feeling so down that we are nihilistic, we should simply find ways that we can act. Being human means that we will experience a range of emotions throughout our activism. 

“When it comes to climate solutions, diversity of perspectives and approaches should be foundational; we need it to foster ingenuity and resilience. Without diversity, innovation is stale, and we end up with ‘change’ that looks like the status quo.”

Jane Zelikova emphasizes the importance of diverse worldviews and approaches in climate activism. She explains that if we want different results for our planet, there need to be different approaches to the problems we see. If we keep trying the same things, change will not come or it will be very slow (which, in the context of a continuously warming planet, could have devastating consequences).

“For many, this period of land-based terror has devasted that connection. We have confused the subjugation our ancestors experienced on land with the land herself, naming her the oppressor and running toward paved streets without looking back…Part of the work of healing our relationship with soil is unearthing and relearning the lessons of soil reverence from the past.”

Leah Penniman writes that the relationship that many Black people have with the land is one filled with trauma and horror because of what their ancestors experienced in the past. Penniman advocates for a renewed relationship with the soil, as Black Americans’ estrangement from the soil due to colonization, capitalism, and white supremacy is just another form of oppression.

“At this difficult moment it is essential to embrace our humility, our place in the cosmos, and to accept what we cannot control. But it is also important to acknowledge where we do have leverage.”

Judith D. Schwartz reminds the reader that we are constantly living on the edge between two realities; we live in a world that is being devastated but we also live in a world full of beauty and life. We live on the edge of making positive changes but also being complicit in the destruction of the environment. She urges the reader to live as if they believe in the future where things are changing for the better, echoing the importance of continuing to act purposefully through complex, shifting, and often difficult emotions.

“The reality is it is too much work for one generation. Those of you who are retired and have more time on your hands, or with children you are no longer caring for, or those of you with additional resources—consider becoming a climate activist. Can you imagine how beautiful a movement led by children and grandparents would be?”

Alexandria Villaseñor calls all adults to the cause of fighting climate change. She focuses on the unfairness of generational inequality and the things that her generation will never experience the way her grandparents or parents’ generation did because of climate change. This call for intergenerational solidarity is another example of the importance of community action. 

“We must have the courage to admit we’ve taken too much. We cannot close our eyes to the fact that the entire world is paying a price for the privilege and comfort of just a few people on this planet.”

Colette Pichon Battle emphasizes the fact that many people are suffering because of the greed and wealth of a small elite. Climate migration has already begun to occur and will continue to occur as climate change makes conditions in certain places worse. She urges us to prepare our infrastructure and systems to be able to take care of and help those who are forced out of their homes.

“Put simply: We cannot make enough headway on the climate problem by working at the individual level. We need to organize our efforts. And that is one essential function of a modern, healthy democracy: cooperation and coordination.”

Leah Cardamore Stokes talks about the different spheres of influence that we each have. Individually we can take action and do our part, but we have the most impact when we join with the collective, whether that is our community or an organization.