FAITH, HOPE, ACTION

The ongoing climate crisis has propelled author and speaker Ensign on a personal journey to uncover all the ways that disaster may yet be averted.

A sense of melancholy and heaviness pervades every step of the author’s yearlong exploration of three key questions: “What harmful human actions are causing our environmental crisis? How do we learn to work together to solve the challenges we face? What positive actions can we take to benefit our Earth home and all of Earth’s inhabitants?” She initially visited parks, farms, woodlands, and nature preserves all around the Midwest, hoping to find answers. Feeling discouraged and overwhelmed, the author wisely chose to kick off her main expedition at a cloistered hermitage nestled deep in a forest. Nature’s rhythm and flow provided her with the inspiration she needed for the task ahead. She later met a Lakota healer who called Ensign a “frightened fox” who needed to “release the fears from [her] past and look toward the future.” The author discovered that the answers she sought were in abundance. Some solutions draw on time-honored traditions of Indigenous people, she notes, regarding being good stewards of the land. Other remedies stem from technological advancements, including “solar trees” that can scrub the air of greenhouse gases. Some readers may find her encouragement to vote for environmentalist candidates to be naïve, and others may roll their eyes at the notion that humanity can assuage global warming by simply adjusting some personal buying habits and recycling more. At the same time, Ensign does acknowledge that “individual action alone will not solve our environmental challenges.” Much of her on-the-ground reportage heavily emphasizes what one can learn from nature. Despite her ambivalence and doubt about humankind’s ability to overcome the ongoing crisis, her decision to turn her one-year mission into a two-year endeavor underscores the abundance of options. Also, her acknowledgment that people need to “implement solutions that come from the people: not solutions for the people but from the people” provides further credibility to her findings, which ultimately make this book an uplifting journey.

An earnest antidote to the climate crisis blues.