Nature Rising: A simple guide for helping our planet

 

Nature Rising is a simple overview of the main problems facing our natural world — biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution — and what everyday people can do about them. It’s set in a welcoming tone of kindness and hope, and filled with motivation to get out and do something.

 

Our troubles: Many of us are concerned about the environment, but are confused about what we, as mere mortals, can actually do to help. Nature Rising explains in layperson’s terms the main problems facing our natural world, and helps to clarify some of the headlines, like monarch butterflies, border walls, and ocean acidification. It also explores how the underlying drivers of these problems, such as racism, poverty, population, consumerism, and competition over cooperation, all add up to bad news for wild things.

 

The good news: Once we are more clear about the problems we are up against, each of us can make a real difference. Nature Rising helps us discover and choose which steps are compatible with our own set of circumstances — whether that is reimagining lawn, rewilding the town roundabout, or changing the structure of our economy.

 

A bigger picture: Things are pretty bleak, but we have a shot at a better future. Never before have so many people wanted to help nature. However, for this revolution to bring a lasting era of balance with wild things, we need a clear vision of all that needs to be done, and a vision of the world we want to create. In the end, our biggest hurdle is not ppms of carbon, or plastic-filled waters, it is our attitude, our separation from nature. Each generation does not realize our ever diminished world, where a flock of a million birds became 100,000 and then 100. Nature Rising helps us reimagine a world where the goal is not just getting by, but recapturing nature’s vibrancy.

 

A handbook for humans making change: It is scary to face the future, and exhausting to grieve over all we are losing. It’s humbling and difficult to drop our old habits. Add to that, environmentalism is intimidating; there is always so much we don’t know, and so many fingers wagging, waiting for us to do the wrong thing. Nature Rising helps navigate these waters. It is a tool for change, welcoming all who pick it up. We are in this together. The more we can learn, the more we can adapt, pool our knowledge, and perhaps even move forward into a more equitable and peaceful future, where wildlands and wild things are given ample space to be vibrant, and where people, in turn, flourish.

 

Author: Karuna Sky Eberl is a nationally recognized nature writer, film producer, and environmental journalist. Originally from the Colorado mountains, she made her way to the Florida Keys by way of Montana, Utah, and California. Along the way she has written for publications and outlets including National Parks magazine, National Geographic Channel, High Country News, the Rocky Mountain News, Discovery Channel, Atlas Obscura, Cold Mountain Review, and National Wildlife Refuges. She has received national and regional awards for her nonfiction nature-writing, as well as her documentary The Guerrero Project, concerning a sunken slave ship, and her book Key West & the Lower Keys Travel Guide, which she cowrote with her husband, Steve. She holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Montana.

 

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