Summer is coming in HOT this year as we enter into June, which also welcomes important international holidays to bring awareness to our one and only Earth. Specifically, there are two holidays proposed and celebrated by the United Nations to raise awareness for environmental issues.
The U.N. first celebrated World Environment Day in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 5, 1973, and have continued to do so since then. The day is quite self-explanatory, a day that is specifically meant to emphasize the importance of our planet, but there is an interesting twist of each year having a different theme and matching host country, kind of like a green-thumbed Olympics. For example, this year the world is looking at land restoration and the devastation of desertification and will be held in Saudi Arabia, one of the only countries in the world that has no naturally flowing rivers. You can see more about this year’s event at this link!
Even lesser known about is World Oceans Day, proposed to the U.N. by Canada’s Ocean Institute in 1992 but was not fully recognized until 2008. World Oceans Day takes place 3 days after World Environment Day, annually on June 8 and is a day, you guessed it, all about appreciating the World’s Oceans! Interestingly enough, the day is also dedicated to checking up on and making new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs are a set of 17 overall goals to make the world more sustainable by 2030, which you can read through at this link!
With that, I have come up with books from our very own library that showcase the reality of some of these sustainability goals through environmental literature.
A great place to start is Richard Kerridge’s Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature, an anthology of perspectives and questions about contemporary environmental literature. Kerridge was the first to gather together various environmental works, from both sides of the debate, and publish them in a book for all to ponder. Sea Power by James Stavridis is another book that discusses the importance of the environment and how the history of our oceans have shaped the geopolitical world today. Lucas Chancel also looks at human impact on the world around us, but also how the inequal balance between large carbon-producing rich nations and the suffering poorer ones who have been hit the hardest by the blunt end of climate change in Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment.
But environmentalism is not meant to be a dreary or dreadful topic to be debated through literature, it is also a world of exploring endless possibilities. A fascinating way to live through the eyes of an explorer is to read through the tales told by journalists of the sea, such as Alanna Mitchell who wrote about her experiences exploring the Gulf of Mexico in her book Seasick: Ocean Change and the Extinction of Life on Earth. She documents her journey with meticulous detail from the deepest depths to the shallow corals; yet one of the most well-known tales of oceanic exploration is that of Ernest Shackleton’s perilous voyage to the South Pole aboard the Endurance and the story told through his journal South! But as you know, humans spend far more time exploring the continental landmasses we live among; Timefulness by geologist Marcia Njornerud is a fascinating look at the world around us across the 4.5 billion years it has existed, truly putting perspective on how small we are in the grant scheme of the Earth.
Perhaps you are looking for a less real or terrifying dive into the environment, well we’ve got all kinds of wonderful novels that can bring our world, and your imagination, to life. Disconnecting from the world and all our tectological connections is what drives the main character to sail aimlessly into the ocean in the book The Water In Between: A Journey At Sea by Kevin Patterson. The tale is vivid with detail as our beloved characters fight against the rough realities of living out on the open sea, which, I don’t know about you, but that sounds terrifying to me! Might I suggest a similar title The New Wilderness by Diane Cook, a world just as hidden away as the last, but with a bit more grounding, Cook writes a tale of a mother navigating a worst-case-scenario world wrecked by climate change.
It is difficult to encounter environmental media that is less intense, but we also have many informational juvenile and young adult books that can help younger audiences understand the world they live in. Such as Ella Schwartz’s popular picture book Is It Okay to Pee In The Ocean?: The Fascinating Science of Waste In Our World, an amazing book that helps children answer questions they may have about the environment and nature. Another beautifully crafted picture book bestseller is A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel that entices pre-school aged kids with astonishing artwork and vivid colors and whimsical sing-songy rhymes. Evan Turk’s wonderfully written and environmentally dedicated book You Are Home: An Ode to the National Parks is, as the title says, a recognition of the natural preservations across the country, truly bringing alive the spirit of our world.
I’ve saved one more book for last, but before that I want to talk about and appreciate our newest publication on campus, The Ginkgo Magazine. Ginkgo is the first environmental newsletter at Susquehanna University who’s Inaugural Edition and Legacy Issue are posted here at theginkgomagazine.org. Now for one of my favorite books, as well as a book taught this past semester by Professor Thomas Martin, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells.
In the book, Wallace-Wells presents a series of unsettling scenarios depicting a future marked by extreme weather events, rising sea levels, food and water shortages, economic collapse, and widespread displacement of populations. The book emphasizes the urgency of immediate and radical action to mitigate these effects. Drawing on scientific research, Wallace-Wells vividly illustrates the potential impacts on human life, ecosystems, and global stability, urging readers to confront the reality of the climate crisis and the necessity for transformative change.
It is important to read about the world we live in to provide us with a better sustainable footing that we can carry on throughout our lives. We have only one planet Earth, and we are only one species of billions that live and breathe with it; now is the time to make a change, if not for ourselves, then for the wonderous world we inhabit.
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