This article is part of our occasional series The Climate Questionnaire, where we talk with authors, writers, filmmakers, podcasters, and other content creators about their work illustrating the human impacts of air pollution and global warming.
Cynics dismiss Earth Day—now morphed into Earth Week and even Earth Month—as marketing. But deep down, in the middle of this very dark historical moment for those of us who care deeply for this Earth, aren’t we all yearning for its original essence? Into this pain comes some light: Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home, the latest book by climate leader Katharine K. Wilkinson. This is the guide for navigating climate anxiety and action needed right now. It’s a follow up to All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, an anthology Dr. Wilkinson co-edited in 2020 with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, which features essays, poetry, and art from over 50 women leading the climate movement.
Six years later, the movement is facing different and unusually surprising challenges, including an EPA that prioritizes business and polluters over people. Climate Wayfinding, which comes out May 5, offers tools to help people find their unique role in pushing for climate solutions. It offers a framework for personal and collective engagement with the climate crisis.
Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission
Dr. Wilkinson is also senior writer of the New York Times bestseller Drawdown, co-founder of The All We Can Save Project, and co-host of the podcast A Matter of Degrees. Time magazine named her one of 15 “Women Who Will Save the World” in 2019. And she seems to be living up to the praise. Climate Wayfinding, like her last book, features essays, poetry, art, and practical exercises, like conversation guides and even journaling prompts, to help readers move from fear and doubt to courage and possibility. The guide is based on a foundational premise that healing the planet starts with tending to ourselves and our communities. This is not easy work, and the book addresses both climate grief and paralysis and tries to inspire action to move beyond despair by showing the many possible ways to get active in climate work.
We spoke to Dr. Wilkinson about Climate Wayfinding, fears, challenges, books, and so much more.
What are your greatest climate fears for the future?
There is so much to love on this extraordinary planet. I adore moss and waterfalls and horses and elder trees and evening light… Earth is home to almost everything and everyone we love. And all of it is at risk—people, places, more-than-human beings.
I believe our young human species is capable of participating in life on Earth in a truly generous, generative way. And maybe my greatest fear is that the learning journey won’t be successful, and we’ll lose so much along the way.
Given that, what does hope for the future mean to you?
Hope to me isn’t so much a feeling as a practice of perseverance—to cultivate visions of possibility, orient to them, take steps in that direction, and do it again and again. How is this all going to go? There’s no guarantee. But I can’t think of anything more worthy to do with our time in these bodies than to contribute what we can to a future that can hold us—all of us.
What talent would you most like to have that could help or advance the climate movement?
We have an amazing thing going for us: Majorities of people in the U.S. around the world are worried about the climate crisis and want to see action. If I could “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo” something, it would be to lift all those who care off the sidelines and into action. If all the worriers became doers—from the halls of power to the smallest niches—we could heal our planet. And I think we’d do a lot to heal ourselves along the way.
What do you consider the greatest challenges to the climate movement right now?
Whew, there are many in this moment, I’m afraid.
We think a lot about the opposition from polluting industries, the inadequate spending on solutions, the innovation we still need in some areas, the utter injustice of how climate impacts land in our already unequal society. But if we want to make headway on any of it, we have to tend the people and communities who turn what’s possible into what’s real.
This work is really hard. I don’t think we can succeed without caring for each other as the heart of climate healing.
What is your climate motto?
The idea that animates my work is this: Each of us is a node of possibility for healing the climate crisis, whoever we are and whatever we’ve got to give.
Which is harder: writing a book or fighting for clean air and a better climate?
In the case of Climate Wayfinding—or All We Can Save, Drawdown, Between God & Green—I hope they’re one in the same. As much as I love words and stories, I’m only making “things with pages” because I think they can help us in that bigger effort.
A book is a heavy lift, but it’s timebound. Clean air, a better climate, safe places to live, a planet in balance? That’s the work of our lifetimes and beyond. And whether we’re authors or activists or analysts or anything else, we all have a unique and necessary role to play.
Which climate book changed your life?
Oh, so many—reading them, but also writing and editing them.
When I was in high school, I studied Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael and started immersing myself in Mary Oliver’s poetry. The first had a lot to do with sparking my climate journey. I realized how much the shape of our world and the problems we face grow out of our shared beliefs, stories, and culture. The second has nourished and sustained me for more than 25 years.
I was over the moon that we got to include “Mornings at Blackwater” in my last book, All We Can Save. “Put your lips to the world. And live your life.” Yes.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
Climate Wayfinding is a book you can curl up with and read. It’s also one you can do—solo or in a reading group, using journal prompts, creative mapping exercises, and more. The chapters help you look inward with care, outward with curiosity, and forward with courage. It’s a proven process for folks who are climate veterans, newly curious, and everyone in between.
No matter where we are on the journey, we can deepen a relationship with ourselves, and others, as part of Earth’s abundance. And that’s where the healing begins.
We have a promo for you! Purchase a copy of Climate Wayfinding through Bookshop.org using this link, to get 15% off PLUS an email to redeem a free art print from the book’s publisher, Andrews McMeel
Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission