Change in climate isn’t just something happening “out there” in the planet. It’s something happening inside us, too.

The more facts I learn about current weather pattern shifts, the more I understand how devastating future impacts could be. I feel the inner turmoil myself—fear, helplessness, wondering about my grandchildren’s future.

If extreme weather events concern you too, here’s a book I just finished that can help you move through these feelings: Facing Climate Anxiety by Jon Gorman, PsyD.

It’s not designed to educate you about heat waves or changes in growing seasons. There are other books for that. But instead, this one gives you skills to navigate your internal changes as external changes occur around you.

What This Book Clarified for Me

Gorman begins by acknowledging something we know but don’t always want to admit:

Ignoring the trends won’t make them go away. It only keeps us in the dark.

Yet cognitive dissonance is real. When the world feels like it’s on fire but everyone around us is acting normal, it’s easy to tell ourselves: “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe things aren’t really that bad.”

But the book reminded me that our emotions are healthy signals, not overreactions. The anxiety, grief, and even anger we feel alert us that something precious is at stake. Our emotions are not the enemy.

Scientists have done, and are doing, their part. They’ve given us the data. What we need now is behavior change, emotional resilience, and community support.

What I Loved Most

This book does not tell us to get rid of our climate anxiety.
Instead, it teaches us how to stay present with it, learn from it, and let it guide us toward meaningful action.

Here are a few practical takeaways I want to practice more:

• Connect to nature regularly
  Even small, daily moments outside help build resilience.
• Talk about climate feelings
  Research shows most people are concerned—even if they aren’t saying it out loud.
• Choose direction over scale
  Moving in the right direction matters more than the quantity of actions you take.
• Practice community-level self-care
  Kindness, connection, and shared purpose are antidotes to despair.
• Reframe hope
  Wishful thinking isn’t helpful, but grounded, active hope rooted in values is.

Why I Recommend Others Read This Book, Too

If you’ve ever felt alone in your worry about the climate, paralyzed by the immensity of changes that need to be made, or even guilty for not doing more yourself, this book can help you feel less alone and more peaceful.

It reminds you to also seek out positive environmental news (we are making progress in some areas!), practice gratitude, make room for joy, and prioritize relationships.

Being kind not only toward people but also to our planet is a win-win for everybody.

As Gorman reminds us,

“The antidote to despair is not false hope.
It is connection, empathy, feeling understood, and knowing you are not alone.”

After all, for better or worse, we are in this together.

Do you have some climate anxiety, too? What helps you?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

More resources on the climate:

• Climate content for purpose, courage, and hope
  This is a wonderful collection of resources at Katharine Hayhoe’s substack. She includes suggestions for books, podcasts, and newsletters.
• Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World
  This is Katharine Hayhoe’s book, which I heartily recommend. I learned so much in it about the harm we’ve been doing to our planet, but more importantly, what we can do about it.
• Life After Doom: A Journey of Hope Amid Climate Chaos
  Brian McLaren’s book was extremely helpful to me. It considers how to live with wisdom and resilience through all the possible outcomes, from everything is fine to total annihilation of the planet. I wrote more about it here.
• Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
  This Hannah Ritchie book gets into more of the scientific data about our changing climate AND what we can do about it. It gave me hope—my review is here.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review
copy of Facing Climate Anxiety

I want people to read this book, Life After Doom: A Journey of Hope Amid Climate Chaos by Brian McLaren. Here’s why.

SHORT REVIEW:

HEAD: What’s one thing I’m thinking about from Life After Doom?
Contemplating our future.

Brian presents these four scenarios in the book:

1: Collapse Avoidance Scenario
This is the scenario we want, the one where governments, businesses, and citizens unite with urgency to stabilize our climate crisis.

2: Collapse/Rebirth Scenario
This scenario is a gradual decline with survivors who can rebuild communities and economies in new ways.

3: Collapse/Survival Scenario
This scenario is like the dystopian movies we’ve seen, where the few survivors face unimaginable conditions.

4: Collapse/Extinction Scenario
Well, you can figure this one out. We’re gone.

HEART: What’s one thing I’m feeling about this book?
Finding hope in despair.

One thing I’m feeling is more hope. I’m not necessarily hopeful we’ll quickly stop the damage we’re doing to our planet, but I’m cautiously hopeful we can maintain our values and humanity through the challenges. I appreciate Brian’s encouragement that we don’t have to resort to selfishness or despair. This is a much-needed message for people like me who can feel discouraged and disheartened by the vitriol and despair surrounding climate change.

HAND: What’s one thing I’ll do after reading this book?
Keep learning.

One thing I’ll do is continue learning about climate science from those more knowledgeable than me, then hopefully pass along something of use to others who want to know more.

“Voicing your concern matters, and voicing your commitment matters even more. Katharine Hayhoe says it well: the single most important thing you and I can do about our current situation is talk about it.”

LONGER REVIEW:

WELCOME TO REALITY

Who should (and shouldn’t) read this book?

Life After Doom isn’t for everyone. Brian states early on that this book may NOT be for you . . .

• If you’re already on edge because of personal challenges, save this book for another time.
• If you dismiss climate change as a hoax, skip the book altogether.
• If you are looking for statistical evidence and charts to convince you how bad things are, this book won’t satisfy you.

But if you are a human being looking to face head-on what is happening to our climate, with humility, resiliency, and responsibility, then please read this book.

The book is intellectually easy to read, but emotionally difficult at times. I teetered through a range of emotions as I read it. But it’s worth it. As Brian writes,

“We need to face what we know. And we need to face what we don’t know. Only what is faced can be changed. That is why I say, and I hope you will join me, welcome to reality.”

STAY THE MORAL COURSE

I have read several climate science books the past two years and each has brought me hope for different reasons (Not the End of the World is a great one for data). But none of these books went to a final scenario quite like Brian does in Life After Doom. I found it oddly hopeful to imagine that even if we don’t save Earth, we can still be courageous and loving human beings along the way.

If it comes to this:

“Standing on the brink of oblivion (to use Ernst Becker’s phrase) we feel arising within us this sustained declaration: We will live as beautifully, bravely, and kindly as we can as long as we can, no matter how ugly, scary, and mean the world becomes, even if failure and death seem inevitable.”

Brian occasionally draws from his own Christian tradition in the book, but also values insights from other religions, philosophies, and indigenous traditions. We all are neighbors on this planet, and we’ll need to be in solidarity on how to heal it.

“Do you see why I keep coming back to the Serenity Prayer? I do not know for certain whether our current doom trajectory can be changed with courage, or if it should be accepted with serenity. I do not yet have that wisdom. The only thing I know is that I want to set a moral course for myself, without judging others if they take another course.”

ACT NOW, LOVE ALWAYS

None of us can accurately predict which scenario will happen in this experiment we’re playing with Earth. But I do know it’s time we act now, before our options dwindle down further.

Brian includes lots and lots of resources throughout Life After Doom for wise actions we can take, for information we can read, for people we can listen to, and for support we can find.

I realize complacency is often our default option.

But I hope we won’t get stuck in complacency. Whether you are a poet, a scientist, a politician, a theologian, a businessman, a teacher—a human being with any gifts and skills!—there is something for you to do to ease our transition from climate destruction to climate rejuvenation.

“In times like these, many things become too late. For example, it is already too late to keep CO2 levels below 350 parts per million. If it is not too late already, it will very soon be too late to keep Earth’s temperatures below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit proposed by scientists in Paris in 2015. It will be too late to save this coastline or that ecosystem, this city or that species, this democracy or that economy. But it is not too late to love, and it never will be. Love will count, no matter what.”

What we need most are people who care. Reading books like Life After Doom is a powerful way to nurture a caring spirit.

Be a person who cares.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

My thanks to NetGalley + St. Martin’s Press
for the review copy of Life After Doom

I set a personal goal to have six conversations.

It was in response to the national goal of my climate science group to collectively have 25,000 conversations about climate in the month of April.

I decided to start with an easy one: my husband Jeff. We’re basically on the same page anyway about climate. We may not agree on some of the statistics, but we both agree on the need to care for the planet we’re living on.

But as the conversation progressed, something went wrong. Instead of a conversation of curiosity and camaraderie, it grew into an argument. I became frustrated that he couldn’t understand my points, and he was irritated that I assumed I was right about it all.

It was a lesson for me. Not on how to have a healthy climate conversation. But how NOT to have one. (I quickly realized I should have first watched the recommended video about having the conversations.)

With Jeff, I had been curious enough to initiate the conversation, but not curious enough to be a good listening partner.

The next day, I asked Jeff if I could try again with him. He gently suggested maybe I should ask someone else instead? Touché.

We both found his response quite humorous and had a great laugh about it.

And we did have the conversation about climate science. This time it went beautifully.

I didn’t meet my conversation goal that month. I only had five conversations about climate instead of six. But I am meeting my goal (so far) this year to write a poem each month using my One Word of the Year, Curiosity.

Here is an acrostic I wrote, prompted by curious conversations I’ve been having this year—some hard and some easy.

PRACTICING THE ART OF CURIOSITY AND CONVERSATIONS

Conversations are richer when you remain curious.

Uncertain of answers, you ask deeper questions.

Relationships swell as thoughts rise higher.

Inquisitive souls breed compassion and grace,

Offers of unfolding mysteries bubbling up.

Slow down enough to accept one or two.

Intentions to attend and consider are rewarded,

Teaching you lessons never imagined.

Yonder in time you’ll need the wisdom they birth today.

Share in the comments.

“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children.”
– Ancient Kenyan proverb

Straw or Burger?

When I go to Culver’s or Five Guys for a juicy cheeseburger and french fries, I sometimes feel guilty using a plastic straw in my drink. I want to be a responsible citizen of the earth, after all.

But after reading Not the End of the World, I realize I’ve been focusing on the wrong thing.

This is a book review I’ve dreaded writing.

Sometimes a book feels too weighty to sum up in just a few words or blog post. This is one of those books for me.

So in case you read no further here, I encourage you to find a copy of Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie and read it. See what you can do to be a better neighbor to fellow earth-inhabitants.

Eat Less Beef

I’ll start this review with one of the actionable take-aways for me: eat less beef.

If this seems like a weird to-do item, listen to what Hannah Ritchie says about environmental problems.

“Changing what we eat is not going to solve climate change. We need to stop burning fossil fuels to do that. But only fixing our energy systems, and ignoring food, will not get us there either.

. . . Eat less meat and dairy, especially beef. It’s one of the most effective things you can do to cut your carbon footprint.”

Food is connected to climate change? Definitely.

While there are many layers of work we can do to stop harming our environment, making slight adjustments in our diet is one place we as individuals can begin (as we advocate for better laws and have more discussions about climate science).

“Look at any of the world’s environmental problems and food lies close to the centre. It really is at the nexus of sustainability. The food system is responsible for one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.“

Save the Forests

I used to think that the rise of cities is what is eating up our land and causing deforestation. But I’m learning I was wrong. Again, the culprit is food.

“Our cities and urban areas take up just 1% of the world’s habitable land. Agriculture takes up 50%. Our biggest footprint on the world’s land is not the space that we ourselves take up, and build our house on; it’s the land that’s used to grow our food. This is the biggest driver of deforestation, not the rise of urbanisation. In fact, the migration of people from rural areas to cities has mostly been good for protecting our forests.”

We need better agriculture practices. Bad agriculture practices are a huge contributor to deforestation. Because deforestation releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it causes even more global warming.

Thankfully, we’re making progress in improving our agriculture practices in many regions around the world. The progress just isn’t happening fast enough. Our global equilibrium is greatly offset by the reduction of the world’s forests.

Back to the Burgers

How does this relate to my hamburger?

Ritchie says,

“Beef is the largest driver of global deforestation. The most obvious way to reduce deforestation, then, is to eat less of it. Raising cattle is a very resource-intensive way to make food. Cows need a lot of food, water, emit a lot of greenhouse gases and need a lot of land.”

I see a lot of cows in Alabama. We have approximately one cow for every three people here. Beef production is a multimillion dollar industry for our state. You’ll find cows in all 67 of our counties.

But while these cows do produce tasty food for us (I do love a tender steak!), they require far more food than they give. Ritchie says that, “For every 100 calories we feed a cow, we get just 3 calories of meat back in return; 97 calories are effectively wasted.”

And they take up for more land than forests. About three-quarters of the world’s land (not including deserts or land covered in ice) is “used for raising livestock—either land for grazing or for growing crops to feed it. . . . We put a lot of resources into livestock, but the returns are not great.” I didn’t know.

As a comparison, Ritchie asks,

“Can you imagine buying a loaf of bread, cutting a slice, and throwing the rest—more than 90% of it—in the bin? When it comes to calories, that’s pretty much what we’re doing with meat.”

She’s not suggesting we eliminate meat entirely from our diets (although that’s not an impossible idea either, as many global citizens prove daily). But finding and implementing the best policies for producing, transporting, distributing, and storing our food (including meat) is more critical than ever.

An Optimistic Book

Not the End of the World is about far, far more than just burgers and land, though. Ritchie also writes very plainly (yet also very data-driven) about air pollution, biodiversity loss, ocean plastics, overfishing, etc.

And surprisingly, she’s not pessimistic. She sees a lot of reasons for hope because she’s seen a lot of changes that the world is already making as we grapple with our climate crisis.

We just need to make the most effective changes the quickest before it’s too late. Together we can do this.

And plastic drinking straws? While Ritchie isn’t an advocate for them, naturally, she doesn’t think plastic straws make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. In rich countries like the U.S., the odds are very, very small that my plastic straw will end up in the ocean. It will probably end up in a landfill (which is another topic in the book).

So instead of foregoing the plastic straw—and for the record, I’d rather have no straw than a paper straw, ugh—perhaps I should more often forego the burger. My cholesterol would also appreciate it. (I’ll address my bacon consumption another day.)

I didn’t tell you enough about this book; there are so many treasures in it. I learned SO much from it. I knew this would be hard. I highly recommend you read it yourself.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

My thanks to NetGalley + Little, Brown and Company
for the review copy of This Is Not the End of the World