709: Madeline Ostrander, part 1: At Home on an Unruly Planet

What's actually happening with our environmental problems? Scientists predict. Journalists in periodicals tend to write what gets attention and clicks, so we don't know how accurately they represent versus sensationalize. There's plenty to sensationalize after all.

Madeline spent time with several communities to find out what problems they faced, how seriously, and what they were doing about it. The result is she sensitively portrayed them in her book At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth. The book reads at time like she's projecting doom, but she isn't. She's describing things as she sees them and the people there describe them. The second half of the book talks about what people are doing. It's sobering, but if we want to do anything, we have to know where we are and how fast we're changing.

In our conversation, beyond describing highlights of the book, she gives backstories of how she picked them, what motivated her, her goals, and more.

GOOD NEWS: the paperback comes out tomorrow. (I don't get a commission, I just couldn't stop reading it once I started).

• Madeline's Home Page, featuring her book At Home on an Unruly Planet
• All her published articles and essays
• Her stories at The Nation

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