The first Earth Day was designed by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson and organizer Denis Hayes as an “environmental teach-in,” a day meant to educate people about environmental sustainability and conservation. In the same spirit of this “teach in,” let’s find some resources that deepen our understanding of the natural world we call home, how human activity impacts it, who is working for a more sustainable future, and how we can join them.
From Devils Breath (2023) is a documentary about the 2017 wildfires in Portugal, the community that survived them, and their fight to ensure no one goes through what they did. The documentary also shares the story of a scientific discovery that could help protect us from increasing natural disasters. Here in Canada, with our own wildfire struggles, one doesn’t have to reach very far to sympathize with those in the documentary.
For a Canadian story, the short documentary Water Warriors (2017) chronicles a New Brunswick community’s successful fight to protect their resources. When an energy company began searching for natural gas near their homes, Indigenous and non-Indigenous families came together to defend their water and their way of life.
As of July 2024, 74.8 per cent of Canada’s population lives in a metropolitan area, and population growth trends remain on an uptick. But city life can create an illusion of human life being separate from nature. The Nature of Cities (2010) documentary explores projects reconnecting cities and citizens with nature. How are cities around the world integrating nature in urban infrastructure — and what can we learn from them?
Turning to books, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024) by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a short read filled with actionable steps you can take with you long after finishing it. Kimmerer uses the Serviceberry, a native North American berry tree, to illustrate how the natural world operates under the principles of reciprocity, how it leads to mutual thriving, and what we can learn from the plants who have been on this earth longer than humans have. If you’re looking to deepen appreciation for the natural world and our place within it, any of Kimmerer’s books is a good place to start. She’s an author who has captivated me again and again.
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet (2023) by environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb examines the ecological transformations that roads bring — far beyond the familiar tragedy of roadkill. Goldfarb travelled across the U.S. and around the world, talking with road ecologists, conservationists, engineers, animal rehabilitators, and community organizers about how roads have altered the natural world and how we can design better ones for every living being.
If you are looking for a more narrative book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (2021) by Dr. Suzanne Simard is part science, part autobiography. It details the story of how Simard’s research led her to discover that trees are not solitary beings, but communicate and cooperate for the protection of the forest, with Mother Trees connecting and sustaining the trees around them. Simard also writes about her own life growing up in the logging world of British Columbia. And if you are interested in the subject but don’t have time for the full book, she also has a TED Talk discussing the subject.
All of these resources are available for free through our public library system. Using the library supports a culture of lower consumption, which in turn reduces pressures on our natural resources. Sometimes the greenest choices are as simple as using your library card!
While these resources are grounded in science, you don’t need to be science-minded to learn from or enjoy them — each one approaches the concepts in an accessible way. In fact, it was several of these works that helped me understand how the sciences, humanities, and arts are not as disconnected as our courses often suggest. Everyone has something to contribute to building a more sustainable future, and education is part of that continual process of understanding how we can best care for each other and the place we call home.
