Reading Wyver, Little, and Elliots Outdoor Learning Environments made me realize that as a child, I was given a gift: the freedom to roam. Before the pressures of extracurriculars and college applications, my days after school were spent alone in the  beautiful woods behind my house. I climbed on rocks, tramped through the leaves, explored the creek, and, sometimes, sat and just listened to the wind whistle through the trees. 

Author, Ryan McMorrow circa 2007

Things have since changed. Parents have become increasingly cautious surrounding their child’s freedom. I often wonder if I hadn’t had the good fortune to 1) have such a large backyard leading into the woods and 2) been allowed to disappear into it for hours on end if I would be who I am today. 

The book Outdoor Learning Environments: Spaces for Exploration, Discovery, and Risk Taking in the Early Years only affirms my personal experience. Of course while I was climbing up trees and over rocks, I was not thinking about the risk taking or other social emotional gains, but this free form exploration has benefited me in many ways. 

My experience is not the only way, however – structured intentional play and exploration can have the same positive effects. This book is a  mix of literature, accounts of experience, and standardized education frameworks. Though this book itself explains the value of “play”, contextualizing it within already established frameworks (ex. EYLF, the Early Years Learning Framework and the NQS, the National Quality Standard). 

The book focuses mainly on the early education environments in schools, play centers, and daycares. These settings are important for a few key reasons. Early education programs are already more likely to provide more holistic and flexible programs, especially compared to  standardized elementary, middle, and high school education. And early education is the formative base for much of the rest of your life. 

This research can inform not only how we structure our curriculums, but also the infrastructure of schools. While concrete and turf are popular settings for children to burn energy, studies referenced show that “physical activity is best supported in outdoor environments comprising a diversity of landscape features that respond to a wide variety of young children’s interests and capabilities (Dyment, Bell, & Lucas 2009, Moore & Cosco, 2014). Adding green spaces not only psychologically calms the child, but allows them to be creative and think outside the box in the games they play.

If a child experiences and internalizes the values (risk taking, appreciation of surroundings, physical health, etc.) that are gained with outdoor play, they will remain part of their core as they move through life. One example of this is in food. While attention is often focused on the cafeteria options, research shows that planting and tending a garden leads to both a greater depth of knowledge about nutritious food, as well as long term positive effects on eating preferences and habits (Gibbs et al., 2013). Overall, studies have shown that intentional educational settings, (particularly those that incorporate hands-on activity) facilitate healthy behaviors and important life skills.

Some people are quick to dismiss the value of play, particularly as kids age. It is not something that is traditionally thought to create productive members of society, something that capitalism values above all else. Outdoor Learning Environments shows not only how important  outdoor play itself is, but also how wide reaching the benefits are. It caters to the current education system we have, while also branching into the realm of social and emotional development. 

Outdoor Learning Environments does not claim to be perfect and acknowledges its role and limitations. Frequently Western scholars with more privilege and access to academia end up publishing and claiming discoveries as their own. In the first section of the book, the authors acknowledge that “While the most documented early education philosophies are mainly European, it is recognised that most, if not all, cultural groups traditionally have supported children’s learning by establishing connections with nature”. 

Overall, this book provides an excellent and well flowing overview of the value of outdoor play and education spaces. Viewing the spaces themselves as pedagogical, a framework of learning beyond the physical space itself, is a key shift that educators must make.

How much do you know about the products you consume? Where do they come from? How are they made? What happens to whatever is left over?

Consider the case of Teflon. It may make for non-stick pans, but its history is much stickier.  In 1946, a DuPont Scientist accidentally invented PTFE, or Teflon. The product was a hit! It’s amazing nonstick properties appealed to manufacturers of both consumer goods and defense products. Seven years later and the multinational corporation Dupont was pumping out the highly desired Teflon pans to consumers across America. Dupont used the chemical PFOA to produce their product, a part of the family now known as “forever chemicals”.

In the 1990s the town of Parkersburg, West Virginia noticed that many residents and livestock were falling ill. Despite these patterns and their proximity to a local DuPont Teflon factory, government officials in the EPA found no evidence of unsafe levels of pollution. Instead, with little other explanation, they attributed the cattle’s death to their farmer’s own mismanagement. In desperation, members of the community contacted Robert Billot, corporate defense attorney and the grandson of a local long-term resident. 

Billot’s decades-long struggle against Dupont was highlighted and retold on the screen by Mark Ruffalo, as Billot, and director Todd Haynes in his movie Dark Waters. The film is aptly named for the pollution and contamination that spread in Parkersburg in ways invisible to the human eye. 

Characters in the movie use photographs to humanize the victims and tell their story, conveying the importance of human connection and visual imagery in communicating environmental threats. However, though Dark Waters has entertainment and informational value, the film can leave viewers anxious about the degrading environment with little direction on how to act.

Initially reluctant to help, only a call from his grandmother convinced Billot to visit. But when he stopped by a farmer’s house and saw firsthand the poor conditions of the townsfolk and their livelihood, he began to understand what was at risk for this community. The film compares old photographs of Billot at the same farm, a space where he once had happy childhood memories, transformed into a mass cattle graveyard. 

After personally viewing this devastation, Billot committed to investigating the water for potential contamination. He used photographs of children born in Parkesburg with facial abnormalities to appeal to his partners’ sympathy and convince them to support his proposed case against Dupont. These acts emphasize the importance of visual imagery in raising awareness and demonstrating the urgency of an issue to people who cannot see it firsthand. As a lawyer, Billot also employs these techniques at work, asserting that to be successful “whatever happens to a client I have to make sure the jurors think ‘that could happen to me’”. 

The film itself is another example of how visual imagery can be effective in combating environmental issues. 

As a mainstream movie that stars well-known actors such as Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, it reaches a broad audience. This promotes awareness in the public of the dangers of “forever chemicals” and the ineffectiveness of US governmental systems purported to help the American people. The movie’s inspiring narrative of an individual’s fight for what is right against powerful groups like Dupont demonstrates the importance of visual evidence to engage individual action and personal commitment.

Though the story of an underdog lawyer makes for an entertaining blockbuster movie, it takes agency away from the average person.

 In the film, the only people with power are white lawyers and Dupont employees. The only “good guy” with power is Billot and even he is almost unsuccessful. The film portrays  individual people as  helpless. In a particularly emotional scene, a farmer attempts to protect his land and family by futilely yelling at a Dupont helicopter circling overhead. 

That only a small group of people – all  white and highly educated – have any power in this narrative is a realistic representation of issues of environmental justice worldwide. However, this portrayal can negatively impact viewers. 

The issues introduced by the movie including invisible pollutants and systemic governmental problems are difficult to combat for the average citizen. The typical viewer lacks the agency to fight against industry pollution and the broader climate crisis–unless you have a corporate defense attorney grandson who you can guilt trip into helping.

Movies provide an interesting and possibly effective means of exposing the public to environmental issues. By humanizing the victims, viewers gain  a better understanding of and sympathize with those that are experiencing the impacts of environmental degradation. 

The movie Dark Waters does a great job at raising awareness about lurking environmental threats, and reveals the challenges of addressing them. However, the film’s focus on the actions of Billot make it more of an entertaining and educational film rather than a galvanizing environmental one. Audiences are alarmed by the hidden dangers that this film exposes but have little agency to make similar, sweeping changes in their communities.

Take a look around. What surrounds you? You may point to your laptop, a lamp, a pen, maybe even a cup of tea. 

But what you probably didn’t notice is the air, and frankly neither do I. Yet thousands of liters of air pass through my body each day without me even realizing it.

Air is funny that way.  It’s so fundamental to our lives and yet so easy to forget. 

But what happens when that air is polluted?

Even though air pollution is the fourth largest risk factor for early death, it is easy to ignore. Other risk factors, like alcohol, physical activity, or smoking, often feel more real to us than the tiny gaseous particles that surround us at all hours of the day. Air pollution is by no means an abstract concept but it can definitely feel that way.

That is why Beth Gardiner’s book Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution was so powerful for me. It helped me recognize air, and its pollution, as part of my daily life. She turned this seemingly abstract concept into something that feels concrete and urgent. 

Choked tells the story of air pollution, what the major driving factors are and how it’s affecting people’s lives across the globe. In between personal anecdotes and community narratives, Gardiner breaks down the science behind air pollution. In that way, she tells in-depth human stories of the people most affected and uses science as a storytelling tool to explain these larger concepts. 

My mental picture of air pollution had been of smog-filled cities like Los Angeles and Beijing, where the outline of skyscrapers are blurred by a grey mist. I had no clue how ubiquitous air pollution really was. Even areas that I had thought were “air-pollution free” weren’t. In fact, it is very likely that you and I are breathing polluted air right now. Ninety-five percent of the world’s citizens breathe polluted air, making air pollution the unfortunate norm rather than the rare exception.

My mental picture had another flaw. Although I had certainly never imagined air pollution to be good for me, I didn’t understand how harmful it truly was. Luckily, Gardiner was there to lay it all out for me. Breathing dirty air is associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia, heart attacks and strokes, miscarriages, infertility, preterm births, and even pediatric cancers.

It gets even worse. Air pollution results in an exceptionally high mortality rate. One in nine deaths globally are hastened by air pollution. This is because, as Gardiner makes clear, air pollution doesn’t just impact our lungs. The particles that we unknowingly breathe into our bodies spread quickly, impacting every single organ.

Even if we have “good health” now, that doesn’t mean that we have escaped the consequences of air pollution. It just means we just haven’t experienced them yet. 

Gardiner continued to challenge my assumptions, like that of “first-world” immunity. Many people, like me, associate environmental degradation with poorer countries. The assumption is that if we live in more developed countries like the U.S., air pollution is less of a concern. This is a misguided take. Even if the air outside doesn’t feel dirty, even if the city you live in has air pollution levels far below federal guidelines, no one is immune from the effects of air pollution. Gardiner explains that there is no “safe” level of air pollution. We don’t just want our air to be “cleaner,” we want it to be so clean that breathing it doesn’t harm us. 

Choked uncovered the polluted truths of my day-to-day life. Gardiner helped me realize that air pollution is not an ephemeral, abstract phenomenon, but real and personal. Although air is easy to take for granted, doing so puts our health at risk. Every individual is affected by the air that they breathe, even if those negative effects manifest later in life. 

Now when I look around me, I still notice the obvious — the laptop, pen, the cup of tea– but Choked pushed me to recognize what is far less visible but perhaps exponentially more consequential: the air that I breathe. This realization is one I hope others will make with me, because neglecting the need for clean air is not something we can collectively continue to forget.

Behold the cover of Jenny Price’s most recent book

Oh, so you’d like to “Save the Planet?” Alas, if only there was a step-by-step guide, a How-To Manual! It’s a daunting, imperfect task — a calling for which you’d prefer a set of linear instructions.

What if I told you Saving The Planet was not only an imperfectly unscalable task, but also not a morally sound pursuit? Lawful neutral, perhaps. But certainly not lawful good. 

Jenny Price’s Stop Saving the Planet: An Environmentalist Manifesto offers a succinct, compelling case for rethinking the commonly embraced mantra of planet-saving. She criticizes the binary the ‘Save the Planet’ evokes, neatly separating humans from their surrounding ecosystems, accentuating the divide between Us and the cypress trees that dot our cityscapes.

Price, a public writer and artist, makes her case with scintillating humor: “Can we please stop trying to save the $#!ing planet?!” 

She goes on to outline an alternate method of ‘saving,’ one that hinges on a restructuring of economies and a rethinking of sustainable initiatives more broadly. We can’t just save the planet — what about the myriad of social justice issues intertwined with environmentalism? The actions of the average person result in  impacts, direct and indirect, on environments everywhere. 

What Price describes as ‘Great Changes’ environmentalism recognizes the connection between economy and earthcare. If Humans are inseparable from mountainscapes carved with the noses of society’s renowned dead titans, then surely our systems of monetary trade are also intertwined with the Great Outdoors. The alleged wilderness is not so wild and not so far away, the outdoors inextricable from the ‘in.’ 

Price’s point is that every aspect of our daily lives impacts nearby environments in some manner — internet usage entails emitting greenhouse gases, cooking linguini necessitates turning on a gas stove, trekking through the Appalachians requires material items assembled in a factory in some distant location. An ‘in here’ approach to eco-friendly stewardship acknowledges this connection, recognizing the ways that we our choices as consumers contribute to environmental degradation. 

The crux of Price’s masterful manifesto is this: you can’t buy your way into a greener lifestyle. Meaningful earthcare doesn’t have a price tag. The idea of sustainability as something you can buy  — like a glamorous $70k vehicle — has muddied the global perceptions of those who dub themselves environmentalists. 

If an (allegedly) eco-friendly lifestyle is available solely to those who can afford chic vehicles, then what about those already struggling financially? Price’s biting prose criticizes the superficial nature of sustainability that comes with a price tag. 

“Why Does Everyone Hate Environmentalists?” inquires Price’s manifesto. It’s a good question, and one Price answers well. When Saving The Planet becomes a hobby for the affluent, then yes — those who can’t afford greenwashed commodities would question environmentalists who spend excessive sums on ‘sustainable’ consumer goods. 

Cruising through suburbia in your bumper sticker-laden Prius might make you feel like a god of sustainability, but high efficiency vehicles serve merely as vehicles for ‘greener-than-thou’ environmentalism. An action that makes you feel more virtuous won’t negate the myriad ways you perpetuate ecological degradation. Price’s analysis of environmental guilt doesn’t cut corners, and — sometimes addressing the reader directly in pithy second person — it’s not the type of book many environmentalists would want to cozy up to at night. 

Speaking to the shallowness of Whole Planetude, or the (mis)conception that every action taken towards protecting ecologies is at least some sort of action, Price reminds us that 1 + 1 ⧣ 100. Recycling your homework — which, by the way, is not likely to make up part of the 3.7% of materials that end up repurposed — won’t stop the ocean from consuming the bottom half of Florida. Price reminds her readers that corporations and bureaucracies ultimately wield the power to shape broader eco-consciousness at large. 

We’re not helpless, though. Price’s avant-garde ending makes that fact abundantly clear: she invites her readers to take tangible action, leaving space titled ‘SCRIBBLE ZONES: write, draw, ponder.’ Reminiscent of elementary school exercises meant to inspire creative thought, these pages offer a tl;dr version of all that was fleshed out within the pages of Price’s book. She stresses the importance of collaboration as a pathway to environmental problem-solving, emphasizing the vital role of art and activism to spur public action. 

Forget climate defeatism. Stop pining for an idealized version of wilderness! Price ends on a note of hope: she details tool libraries, bike co-ops, and fashion swaps as ‘all the rage,’ her book rolling its eyes at “eco-friendly” items with a hefty price tag. 

While straightforward and candid in its critique of the consumer-oriented environmental movement, Stop Saving the Planet isn’t for those who already have a solid grasp on the shortcomings of modern environmentalism.

The 39 steps outlined by Price act as a touchstone for taking on meaningful work related to improving our climate and ecologies. It’s worth noting, however, that her diction — while accessible and witty — sometimes reads as stilted and a touch simplistic.She criticizes the shallow nature of listicles meant to affect change, all the while ironically writing her own. A well thought-out, in-depth guide for environmental stewardship, but a step-by-step outline nonetheless. Can the complex issue of affecting ethical environmental action — along with the humanitarian and social justice issues that affect them — be meaningfully fleshed out in a mere 143 page volume? 

I agree: such a feat seems implausible. But that shouldn’t deter aspiring environmentalists from wrestling with  the candor of Price’s How to Stop Saving the Planet. Price weaves a thoughtful piece that reads as pithy, quirky, and self-aware. Consider borrowing it from a friend, or else securing a lightly used copy. Haven’t you heard? Secondhand is all the rage. 

I picked up The Power Surge hoping to learn more about the divisions between renewable energy development and the oil and natural gas industries. Could their differences be bridged? Is progress possible with an “all or nothing” approach?

What I learned, instead, is just how quickly energy production in the United States has been changing. 

Since the book was published in 2013, more electric and partial-zero-emission vehicles are on American roads than Michael Levi could have imagined. Coal has been cut drastically. The US now produces almost all the natural gas it consumes. Oil imports are down. And solar and wind power has grown at an astounding rate. 

The timeline for technological innovations has been compressed as interest in climate-friendly energy solutions has surged. The Green New Deal bumped climate change to the middle of the political stage and the American consciousness. 

Even if The Power Surge didn’t anticipate the details of these transitions, Levi knew change was afoot. He described the early 2010s as revolutionary, writing that “everything we once knew about American energy seems to be changing.” He also knew that our understanding of energy was likely to continue to change rapidly. 

For all the changes, however, one thing has remained constant. The political divisions highlighted in The Power Surge are even more stark today than they were in 2013. 

Former president Trump was met with enthusiastic support from his base when he suggested resurrecting coal–one of the worst energy sources for the environment. On the other side, the movement towards renewables is gaining astounding momentum with some of the biggest offshore wind bills ever being passed in several states. Support for the Green New Deal has grown but so has support for expanding fossil fuels. Levi was optimistic that people could overcome their differences if they recognized their common goals. Unfortunately, the chasm has only deepened.

Many of the interviews in The Power Surge illustrate these divisions, but Levi’s positive conclusions often seem unrealistic. 

One story in particular illustrates these divisions: Two Ohio dairy farmers, Bill Dix and Warren Taylor, adamantly disagreed on whether or not local fracking was a good idea. Dix felt that people were struggling to survive and that seeing a couple of rigs on their Sunday night drive shouldn’t be much of an issue if money was getting into their wallets. Taylor had experienced environmental pollution first hand when the value of his corn fields was decimated by strip mining on a neighboring property. Both agreed, however, that the way in which companies were moving into their area was dangerous. How the state regulated the environmental safety of the fracking activity and whether or not communities’ voices were respected were more important to them than the presence or absence of the fracking itself. Levi felt that these commonalities could help them work together to solve this issue. However, acknowledging similarities doesn’t magically resolve differences.

America’s political divisions are deeply entrenched and–despite the optimism of The Power Surge–not likely to be easily overcome. But this book should be read. It shows us just how far we’ve come and that America’s energy landscape will continue changing in ways we can’t imagine.

Even if finding common ground won’t erase the political divide, perhaps it can make us more compassionate as we push for the outcome we feel is right.

I’ve had the same laptop for almost 10 years. 

It’s a 2014 Macbook Air that’s had its fans and battery replaced once out of necessity. Other than my A, S, and E keys falling off and a couple of dents on the corners, it works perfectly fine. I’ve learned to use things until they break from my father. He had a flip phone until 2018.

Modern consumer culture and product design are based in “planned obsolescence,” meaning most of our products are intentionally made to break.  

Cover of Made to Break by Giles Slade.

In his book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, writer Giles Slade explores the origins and development of planned obsolescence in the United States and its impacts on other nations. From light bulbs to sanitary products to cars, Slade introduces us to the history and the forerunners of the movement from durable to disposable.

If that feels like a random assortment of things, I understand. But Slade’s real focal point is his discussion of technology and electronic waste (e-waste), especially computers and phones.

Although Slade published Made to Break in 2006, his contributions to understanding the e-waste epidemic ring true today. Sadly, many of the problems Slade anticipated have only gotten worse. 

A phone in 2006 was supposed to last five years. Partially as a result of advertising of the latest product, Slade argues, these phones are thrown away every 18 months to 2 years. This problem has only gotten worse in the era of iPhones and Amazon.

Fully functioning phones are abandoned because they’re not the shiniest new toys.

As a result, e-waste, discarded electrical and electronic devices, is a growing problem. Slade said it would get worse in 2006 and he was right. 

Stories about familiar companies and products, like Macintosh and early edition Apple technology, piqued my interest. And stories about key figures, like the self-proclaimed creator of planned obsolescence (spoiler alert: he wasn’t) made even the heavier material worth it. It was often dense in some of its historical contextualization of modern problems, so you can skip the first third if you are primarily interested in technology. But, don’t discount those earlier sections, you might be surprised at what familiar products you find.

That being said, this book made me more worried for the future of our environment as technology becomes increasingly embedded in our culture. Slade seems optimistic that education would lead us to be less wasteful moving forward. To be honest, I’m not convinced. 

Even though Slade made me reflect on my own consumption and overuse, I still found myself considering buying new useless things on Amazon that same afternoon. (See the rubber chicken slingshots here). This realization felt overwhelming, like trying to break a cycle I have little control over. But that’s what Slade wants. By focusing on products we all have likely used or bought at some point, Slade made the issue personal. He makes us think about our choices.

Ghanians working in an e-waste site in Agbogbloshie, Marlenenapoli.

Do you really need that new laptop?

Do we really need the newest iPhones?

Do any of us really know where our waste goes?

We can hit “buy” and scratch our need to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary, ignoring greater consequences. 

But we cannot buy a new planet free from toxins, leaking chemicals, and pollution from burning excess waste. 

Slade stresses that for any change to actually happen, we need to move beyond planned obsolescence, and back to long-lasting, or at least reusable products. That’s a major culture shift I’m not sure people will embrace. Maybe I’m skeptical, but as Slade puts it, “this is the industrial challenge of the new century. We must welcome it.” 

I’m not sure people are ready to welcome that change, but Made to Break is a good place to start.

It’s 4:03pm. You’re walking around the suburbs of some town in some state and you see a woman dead on her lawn. The culprit? A lawn mower. 

Believe it or not, in just one year, nearly 82,000 Americans suffered severe injuries while tending their yards.  The pursuit for the perfect lawn carries more danger than you might imagine.

Ted Steinberg includes this disturbing fact and more in his book American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn. The title alone employs a literal and satirical approach to tackling the phenomenon that is front lawns. 

Before I begin, a disclaimer: However critical Steinberg’s account of front lawns, you may still recognize yourself in these irony-filled, humor-heavy pages— and P.S., that’s okay. After all, Steinberg is challenging the unchallenged, examining the American front lawn—an everyday space that people often take for granted. 

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Expensive lawn care products, obnoxiously loud lawn mowers, hopeless dependence on fossil fuels— front lawns carry no purpose beyond the aesthetic look, Steinberg argues. Given these harmful aspects of front lawns, why do we continue to water, mow, and fertilize them? Furthermore, why do we view patches of green open space to be a key indicator of cultural importance and social status? Why do Americans even have front yards to begin with? In American Green, Steinberg sets out to answer these very questions. 

The American lawn is a product of our irrational obsession with control. As Steinberg explains, “The perfect lawn, like the perfect body, is an illusion, a gigantic fantasy stymied by the realities of ecology and American geography both.”

Steinberg crafts a narrative about the American Dream vis-à-vis the American front lawn. Through a series of cleverly titled chapters that often include photos, comics, and advertisements, he illuminates the significance of lawns in American history. 

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Although we can’t imagine a world without them, lawns are a new(ish) invention. The story begins in the 1700s in Europe as a marker of class privilege. European colonists eventually arrived in the U.S. carrying their newfound love of lawns with them. 

Often dismissed as ‘natural’, lawns are nothing but a human invention. If we adopt the false (and harmful) belief that lawns are natural, we are casting the “lawn compulsion as something beyond our control, thus rationalizing the mantle of green we have wrapped around our homes.”

Tracing the genesis of the lawn in the U.S. from its booming popularity in post-Cold War suburbia to our current obsession with picturesque green grass, Steinberg’s  entertaining exposé unearths the origins and consequences of the “perfect” lawn. Steinberg chronicles the history of the lawn, detailing key players like The Scotts Company, which before didn’t just sell products for the lawn, it marketed a suburban ideal.

I will give it to him here: Steinberg successfully engages a popular audience through types of hyperboles such as the former example; death by lawn mowers. Such examples  underscore the toxic nature of lawns and their real and ultimate impact on humans and the planet. 

Despite the fact that Steinberg writes through the lens of his experience of being a suburbanite in Ohio, he only provides a surface-level look at front lawns, while contextualizing it in a political framework. By superficially detailing the roles of war, media, climate, notable inventions, and history, he reveals a part of the paradoxical story behind an American obsession—and offers a glimpse of lawn alternatives where not-as-harmful-lawns are possible.  His final sentence of the book “I’m fine with brown,” leaves us to wrestle with notions of perfection, alluding to the fact that brown lawns are not inherently bad.

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While Steinberg is most concerned with the ecology of lawns, what he gives less attention to are how they play into the whiteness of the suburban ideal. The only real mention of race, beyond considering undocumented ‘Hispanic’ lawn care workers, sits in parentheses, enough said. 

Steinberg’s over-generalizations provide weak, surface-leveled interpretations of history and allow for many critical time periods and events to go unexamined. If you’re looking for entertaining personal anecdotes and wit-infused histories, then this book is for you. However if you are hoping for explanations and concrete, fruitful insight into this American ‘obsession’, I’m afraid you’ll need to keep mowing.

How did coffee, native to Ethiopia, become the global commodity that connects the world today? Augustine Sedgewick digs and uncovers the dark historical roots of the red cherry that caffeinates our world in Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug. 

At the center of Sedgewick’s book is the coffee entrepreneur James Hill.  His journey from Manchester’s working class to establishing and owning a coffee empire in El Salvador is a stunning tale with at times unbelievable and fiction-like events. Make no mistake though, as Sedgewick’s research eventually shows, James Hill’s entrepreneurial success and El Salvador’s domination in coffee trading sits in a historical landscape of colonialism and imperialism. Readers of this book learn how history contributes to today’s global inequalities and gain an appreciation for connectedness through everyday objects. 

The book begins in El Salvador before the coffee boom. According to Sedgwick, a visitor to El Salvador in the mid 19th century would have been unlikely to see disparate economic classes. People participated in communal farming and villages were generally self-sufficient. In the late 1800s, a group of politically powerful Salvadorans feared falling behind a world that was undergoing transformations powered by the industrial revolution. They too, wanted combustion engines, telephones, and electric lights. El Salvador’s terrain was filled with rich soil which meant that for these political elite, coffee plantations represented the best way forward

Starting in 1846, through tax breaks, subsidies, and state-led campaigns, El Salvador plunged into coffee production. While production increased significantly, indigenous and peasant farming communities continued farming food crops on the best land for coffee cultivation. Growing impatient, the government ordered these farming communities to construct coffee nurseries and commit to the agricultural transition. Disaster ensued. A century after El Salvador first jumped into coffee production, poverty and famine became more common. El Salvador flourished in an industry it set out to dominate but its working class ended up faring worse after doing so. 

Coffee is not just an important commodity in global capitalism; it embodies the history of global inequality and trade. Coffee’s past in El Salvador exemplifies  the humanitarian issues and social injustices characteristic of  the Global North’s exploitative relationship to the Global South. 

Coffee production is founded on labor, often cheap labor. Coming from Manchester, a booming urban center powered by industrial capitalism, James Hill knew that hunger drives work, even under unfair conditions. In addition to paying money to laborers, compensation also came in the form of tortillas and beans. Coffee monoculture transformed communal farmland into privately held properties as El Salvador pushed to make space for coffee plants at the expense of other food crops. 

Here is the harsh truth that underpinned Hill’s success: these policies gradually made it harder for those who used to occupy that land to be self-sustaining. Hill and the Salvadoran government put coffee exports first and subsistence second. To make matters worse, edible plants that naturally sprung up on the estate were uprooted to ensure that workers could not feed themselves independently of the coffee business. Whether they wanted to or not, farmers found themselves farming for the likes of Hill and global demand for coffee, instead of farming for their families and communities.

Such strategies did much to grow the coffee industry, but little to promote fair economic development. Income differed by two fold in 1880 between industrial economies and the rest of the world. Then it was three fold in 1914. By 1950, the difference exceeded by five fold. This polarization parallels coffee cultivation and global development. El Salvador’s coffee industry was a product of an emerging global economy that commandeered the resources of the Global South to feed the wants and desires of the Global North.

Through the tale of James Hill and Ecuador, Sedgewick raises important and complex issues central to governing modern life: What does it mean to be connected to faraway people and places through everyday things? 

This question made me realize that I, as a daily coffee consumer, knew little of the  humanitarian crises coffee farmers faced in 2019, as coffee prices plummeted. 

Consumers today may have heard of fairtrade and volatile prices, but Sedgewick’s book  explains how specific past events contribute to global inequities that persist today. For instance, Sedgwick introduces key events like the establishment of the New York Coffee Exchange. He then guides the reader to important questions like “why did New York Standards hold such power” against all other exchanges in the world that soon followed. What this means is that the wellbeing of coffee growers in El Salvador increasingly depended as much on what happened on the New York Coffee Exchange as it did what happened on their farms

A foodie understands that food is at the foundation of community and culture. When I purchase a foreign good, I am getting a piece of another place in the world. But Sedgewick demonstrates that there is more beyond food and culture. He insightfully incorporates key historical events and shows how greater themes of each era are embedded in small but relevant details of James Hill’s coffeeland. 

Turn the pages in Sedgewick’s compelling piece of narrative and learn more about the breadth and depth of coffee’s history. We are not connected just by today’s trade but by global dynamics that stretch across time and space. This was known all along, but Sedgewick’s connects the dots between international relations, economics, and agriculture in ways that will likely change how you think about your morning cup of coffee. 

Image Source: Amazon Books

$20,000, twenty acres, and a boat.

That’s all Bren Smith needed to launch his journey as a restorative ocean farmer. Smith now grows and farms shellfish and kelp (a type of seaweed) on his underwater farm in Long Island Sound. 

What began as a lost fisherman’s attempt to find his way back to the sea turned into the potential for a groundbreaking, global ocean-based climate solution: regenerative seaweed farming. 

In Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change, Smith combines memoir, history, fisherman’s tales, and even a kelp-based cookbook to show readers how seaweed can play a key role in addressing the climate crisis. The book is a story of his “search for a meaningful and self-directed life,” as well as a story of how the oceans can combat climate change. 

But Smith has not always lived a life focused on seaweed. Driven by a need to work hard for the “thrill of the hunt,” he spent his early years as a ruthless fisherman, facing forty-foot seas and grueling hours on fishing boat’s decks. After giving up fishing, Smith had  a brief stint in industrial aquaculture working with farm-raised salmon.  It was then Smith realized something was terribly wrong with how people approached farming the ocean: we focus on producing food that can swim away.

Image Source: Pixabay

Smith asked what the ocean wants us to grow.

His answer to that question is simple: seaweed.

I know, it’s slimy and kind of gross. I was a bit skeptical at first too.

Smith claims that seaweed is a climate solution we need. It can sequester up to five times as much carbon as land-based plants, which have already taken up 25% of the carbon that humans have released into the atmosphere. Seaweed is also versatile and has many nutritional benefits. Best of all? It is easy to grow!

Fishermen know how to tell a tale, and Smith does not disappoint. He narrates with a conversational yet knowledgeable raw honesty. His passions, regrets, and visions of a beautiful, more-just future swirl through every page. While sometimes I felt the examples and anecdotes could be a bit disjointed, what tied the whole book together was Smith’s engaging voice. 

With this strong voice, Smith does more than walk us through his seaweed vision: he tells us how we can take part. It is more than just a book about his stories of his search for a life of meaning and his goals for the future.  He also concludes each section of the book with a how-to-guide for regenerative ocean farming. From seeding to harvesting, Smith breaks the process down and makes it sound so easy that even I feel like I could give it a go. 

What excited me most about the potential for regenerative ocean farming is its accessibility to people of all economic backgrounds.  He believes that the power of regenerative ocean farming is that it can revitalize blue-collar communities and re-strengthen the middle class. The revitalization of the middle class aligns with the goals of the Green and Blue New Deals, both of which hope to transition the world to a clean energy future in a just way.

The key, as Smith sees it, is to make sure ocean farming doesn’t repeat the mistakes of land-based agriculture. He hopes that the oceans will be seen as a commons to be “protected, not privatized.” To this day, in the waters of his own farm off the coast of Connecticut, people still swim and boat above the shellfish and kelp he grows.

In addition to his tall tales and how-to guide, Smith included a “Recipes” section at the end with his favorite kelp-based cooking creations. You can barbecue it, fry it, or even make kelp butter—I had no idea that kelp could be incorporated into so many dishes!

Oftentimes, proposed climate solutions can feel like a lot of hand-waving, or they can feel unachievable due to the limits of the agricultural and capitalistic systems already put in place. Regenerative ocean farming gives us the chance to build a successful, sustainable industry from the bottom-up. 

I felt hopeful and excited while reading this book. Climate change is upon us. And we need ocean-based climate solutions to address the crisis and achieve a just clean energy future. Eat Like a Fish details a novel and much needed solution. 

In the book’s introduction, Smith includes a quotation from a 1962 speech by President Kennedy: “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea…we are going back to whence we came.” Smith then writes, “The time has come to return from whence we came.”

That time has come.

How would a 100% renewable world look and feel?

This is the opening question in Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy, a 2016 book by David Fridley and Richard Heinberg on the pros and cons of transitioning to 100% renewable energy. 

A few weeks ago, I spent my time looking for any articles, reports, or blogs that would give me the cut-and-dry basics on biofuels. I wanted to know whether or not biofuels could help fight climate change, how the economy or policy influenced biofuel use, and what the social impact of biofuels was on local communities. 

Our Renewable Future is a handbook that helped me begin to answer these questions. The book intentionally reads a bit “text-bookie” in order to provide an accessible overview of renewable energy and potential avenues to restructure our energy system. Its breakdown of the technical and economic complexities of energy can help readers make connections between their individual energy usage and the global energy economy. 

Any shifts in energy sources will require shifts in energy usage patterns at the individual, regional, and national levels, a recurring theme throughout the book.  Many of our production or consumption habits continue to rely on fossil fuels. Thus, a good percentage of our existing infrastructure – be it transportation, food, banking, or housing – also relies on fossil fuels. A transition away from fossil fuels will require a societal transformation that affects how we live, move, and communicate. 

To achieve this transition, the authors suggest that our society decentralize and embrace local energy solutions. I am familiar with the initiative of “buying local” but the idea that we also “power local” intrigues me. In other words, rather than depending on nationally operated electricity grids or imported oil, we could build infrastructure to produce the energy we need closer to home. Community-based models, the authors argue, could provide many benefits like promoting equity, providing long-term and reliable energy availability, and democratizing the energy market. 

Transitioning to 100% locally sourced renewable energy will not be easy. 

Fridley and Heinberg use wind and solar as examples to explain two major obstacles facing a renewable energy transition. For one, a transition to wind and solar will be expensive. A rapid build-out of either will likely require some sort of government subsidy to support private enterprise. Second, manufacturing solar or wind equipment currently requires fossil fuels. This means making a renewable energy transition will require copious amounts of fossil fuels, and in turn, an increase in carbon emissions (at least in the short term). 

Going local will also require readjusting energy’s economics and policy. Unless we’re more willing to invest smartly (to avoid another economic crisis) and compensate for a short-term increase in carbon emissions, a society that relies entirely on wind and solar remains unlikely.

Until we overcome these larger systemic stumbling blocks, it will be difficult for local energy sources to emerge. 

After reading Fridley and Heinberg’s book, I know that all energy sources have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. I still can’t tell you exactly how biofuels make your car run (to this day, I wonder if I ever will), but I can begin to answer my inquiries about the economics and politics of renewable energy. 

But I still have some questions that remain unanswered.  What are the real-life impacts of a 100% renewable energy transition, and eventually, the world? Will renewable energy actually translate into jobs and strengthen local economies? Will those jobs and gains translate into opportunities for marginalized communities and actually promote equity?

That those questions remain unanswered highlights one of the weaknesses of this book.  Throughout, the cultural and social aspects of the energy transition are often lost. I think a more holistic approach would ground the technical definitions and statistics with stories of how the economic and political challenges are actually experienced by communities and individuals. 

Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy is a great starting point to learn about the technical aspects of energy transitions so we can go on to address the socio-cultural. I would encourage readers of this book to take this handbook as a resource to inform future conversations about the social and cultural implications of energy transitions.