Intrinsic Hope

May 7, 2018
Davies (The Rise of the U.S. Environmental Health Movement), a public health professor at Seattle’s Antioch University’s Center for Creative Change, introduces ideas—including the power of public witness and the integration of love and compassion into activist work—to help mobilize readers who may be paralyzed with fear or despair over the prospect of climate catastrophe. Combining lessons of her Quaker faith with other historical and philosophical sources, including Buddhist teachings, Davies uses a self-help structure for naming and understanding feelings of powerlessness that relies on an evidence-based rationale for feeling hope amid foreboding headlines and species extinction. By sharing her personal experiences in the environmental policy field (a decade running the first municipal environment office in Canada) alongside honest self-reflection about her own moments of doubt about the potential for change, she gives readers a view of how her expertise justifies her positive conclusions about love for the planet, acceptance of the present reality, and the potential for meaningful action. Though the book can stumble into the realm of new-age nostrums (such as sending joyful hearts aspirations to strangers), her declaration that millions of small acts created the present crisis is a helpful reminder of the role that modest actions can play en masse. In an age of extreme weather and rising oceans, Davies’s insistence on hope fuels a useful approach to helping turn back the tide of climate disruption.