To Know the World

A New Vision for Environmental Learning

Ebook
On sale Nov 03, 2020 | 288 Pages | 978-0-262-36105-7
Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy.

How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy--connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.
Part One: Why Environmental Learning Matters
1 The Past and Future of Environmental Learning
2 Memory Forever Unfolding
Part Two: Environmental Learning in the Anthropocene
3 The Tides of Change
4 Is the Anthropocene Blowing Your Mind?
Part Three: The Future of Environmental Learning
5 Constructive Connectivity (Ecological and Social Networks)
6 Migration (The Movement of People and Species)
7 Cosmopolitan Bioregionalism
Part Four: To Know the World
8 Improvisational Excellence
9 Perceptual Reciprocity
Mitchell Thomashow is the author of Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change and The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus (both published by the MIT Press). He served as the President of Unity College in Maine from 2006 to 2011 and as Director of the Presidential Fellows Program at Second Nature from 2011 to 2015.

About

Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy.

How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy--connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.

Table of Contents

Part One: Why Environmental Learning Matters
1 The Past and Future of Environmental Learning
2 Memory Forever Unfolding
Part Two: Environmental Learning in the Anthropocene
3 The Tides of Change
4 Is the Anthropocene Blowing Your Mind?
Part Three: The Future of Environmental Learning
5 Constructive Connectivity (Ecological and Social Networks)
6 Migration (The Movement of People and Species)
7 Cosmopolitan Bioregionalism
Part Four: To Know the World
8 Improvisational Excellence
9 Perceptual Reciprocity

Author

Mitchell Thomashow is the author of Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change and The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus (both published by the MIT Press). He served as the President of Unity College in Maine from 2006 to 2011 and as Director of the Presidential Fellows Program at Second Nature from 2011 to 2015.

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