The Climate Review no.3

Welcome to the Cool Davis Climate Review, quotes and inspiration from a new-ish genre of books and videos … and more! Visit our Cool Solutions page for a list of climate documentaries in the Resources section at the bottom. Have a quote, summary, or link you would like to share with Cool Davis? Email newseditor@cooldavis.org

This month:

“At any moment, there could be a swerve in a different direction,” a poem by Ellery Akers
“Why numbers never end,” a poem by Julia Levine
Excerpt from The Hightower Report on the Rights of Nature (shared by Ken Beck)
Link to The Hidden Brain podcast: How to Change the World (shared by Bernadette Balics)
Link to New York Times article: Climate Advocates Who Say It’s Not Too Late (shared by Danielle Fodor)

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At any moment, there could be a swerve in a different direction

There was a moment

when shooting egrets for feathers became wrong.

There was a moment

when the Wilderness Act

changed the lives of billions of blades of grass.

I remember the moment when a river that used to catch fire

turned from flammable to swimmable.

A swerve smells astringent, like the wind off the sea;

It tastes red, the way Red Hot cinnamon mints

burn in your mouth;

it’s heavy, the way the weight of letters is heavy,

arriving in sacks at the Senate;

it sounds like the click of needles

as hundreds of thousands of women knit pink hats;

it looks like a coyote, crossing the freeway to go home.

Ellery Akers

from Swerve, Blue Light Press, 2020

Thank you Julia B. Levine for sharing Ellery with us!

HEAR MORE OF ELLERY’S POEMS AT OUR UPCOMING READING AND DISCUSSION EVENT

Why numbers never end

We walked to water through a field of star thistle,

spores shivering in wind.

She was counting as high as she could,

while my hands lifted a blaze of hair from her lips.

I was thinking how my quarry of genes

laddered her legs and arms,

as we knelt in the river’s muck,

watching knots of minnow and tadpoles

interrupt the shadows.

She was four years old when she asked me why

the numbers never end.

And I didn’t know why

perfection allows us near enough to grieve.

I only knew that the wholeness of her world

was about to change.

So I said, Look at the river,

and she saw water

endlessly counting itself over stones

and the blue, blue hills.

Julia B. Levine

from Practicing for Heaven, Anhinga Press, 1999

Julia B. Levine is the Poet Laureate of the City of Davis

WRITE NATURE POETRY WITH ELLERY AKERS AND JULIA B. LEVINE AT OUR UPCOMING POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP EVENT

“Give Nature a Seat at the Governing Table”

Excerpt from “The Hightower Lowdown” Jan 2022 Vol 24 No. 1 by Jim Hightower

Shared by Ken Beck

“…that oak’s autonomy and ancestry have become emblematic of a newly energized, transformative legal concept: Rights of Nature. It’s a simple idea: Rather than continuing to rely on the corporate-controlled, business-as-usual model of environmental regulation, why not grant self-protective rights of law to our invaluable natural systems? … these living beings, no less than humans, have intrinsic value and the inherent right to exist, regenerate, flourish, and defend themselves from exploitation and death…. The foundational truth upholding this legal approach is that we humans and our environment are one organism. After all, we can’t live without nature–indeed, we are nature, and nature is us.”