Climate of Community
True Power for Climate Resilience and Recovery
With Sarah Jaquette Ray, author of
A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety:
How to keep your cool on a warming planet
Dr. Ray discusses her book, why she wrote it, and what she hopes it does for the climate generation — and anybody else who experiences climate anxiety. She mentions some of the traps we get into that make us feel powerless and despairing and explores some strategies to cultivate resilience and efficacy to face the challenges of climate justice. She offers educators’ tools and experiences through the lens of the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators.
Follow-up Programming
Read Aloud: A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety with the Kansas City Kansas Public Library’s Book Club!
Join the KCK Public Library for the reading of A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet by Dr. Sarah Jacquette Ray. Online Mondays at 1 pm CDT April 5th-26th. There will be a short discussion period after each reading. The first 20 registrants will have complimentary copies provided to them. These copies will be available at the West Wyandotte Library located at 1737 N. 82nd Street. More information at this link.
You can purchase “A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety” online or for pickup, through
Sarah Jaquette Ray chairs and teaches in the Environmental Studies Department at Humboldt State University. Her current work brings together climate justice and psychology. She is co-founder of the website, an Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators, co-lead on an open-access online teaching resource, NXTerra: Transformative Education for Climate Action, and works with students, activists, professionals, and educators to support the climate generation.
In 2020, she published a book for the climate generation on this research, A Field Guide to Climate Change: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. She is also author of The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (University of Arizona, 2013) and co-editor of three collections: Critical Norths: Space, Nature, Theory (2017), Disability Studies & the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory (2017), and Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial (2019).
The process of how we go about developing a resilient community is integral in effectively responding to the climate crisis.
We are working to create a climate of Community
so the community can work effectively for the Climate.
Climate of Community is working to help our community, based on five concepts:
- We bear the burden of difficult things better as a bonded community than we can ever do as individuals;
- Sharing our stories authentically is part of the bonding and healing process that keeps us strong and effective;
- Finding our personal power and linking that with community power is the most effective we can be in addressing broad-scale difficulties;
- There are many paths to community bonding and healing, arising from diverse traditions and methods, and the more diverse our approaches the stronger we will be and remain.
- True Power is not “power over” others but “power to” advocate for and serve what matters to us.
Climate of Community programming is offered through The Resilient Activist.