Our Planet Our Future, our landmark series of talks and events, has launched an Environment Book Club, meeting regularly in Harpenden to discuss agreed texts on the subject of sustainability. Regular book reviews will be posted by the Environment Book Club on this blog.
The launch book of the OPOF Environment Book Club was – Letters to the Earth – Writing to a Planet in Crisis, Introduced by Emma Thompson
The book is a collection of letters written by the public in response to a general call-out by a group of women ‘theatre-makers and writers’ who had been ‘profoundly shaken by the increasingly dire reports of climate and ecological collapse but inspired by the work of Extinction Rebellion and the Youth Strikers in bringing news to the forefront of the public conversation’.
The letters are presented in 5 categories covering Love, Loss, Emergence, Hope and Action.
Each Environment Book Club member shared the impact the book had on their thoughts and
feelings about the climate and ecological emergency.
One member was saddened by how young many of the contributors were. Another found that a poem transported her back to her teenage years watching bigger flocks of local birds than she saw now, conjuring up feelings of loss. After reading the book, several members were more satisfied that the personal but daily carbon-reducing actions of millions of like-minded people are indeed as effective as wider-ranging environmental policies adopted by larger organisations. And the members discussed whether it mattered that some businesses embrace climate-friendly policies primarily to save costs rather than overtly to improve the environment.
Finally, we agreed with the sentiment from one contributor that the word ‘emergency’ can be
positively interpreted as a ‘state of emergence’ when bad things can change, and new things can come into being.
Check out our next book and dates for our Environment Book Club here.