What on God’s green earth does climate change have to do with living a good life?

To answer such a question, says author and professor Debra Rienstra, we must first ask a more basic one: what is the good life? “We have assumed that it is affluence and upward mobility,” she says, “but that good life is not sustainable.” If a good life is one of purpose and healing, then it is precisely the Western ideal of success that is eating away our ability to live good lives. In this episode, we discuss her book Refugia Faith, in which she makes the argument that “the created world is not just our grocery store and sewer,” and that to live a good life, we must care for the planet on which the good life takes place.

• Similar episodes
  • The Most Polarized Issue in the United States: Katharine Hayhoe
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  • Hope in the Age of Climate Change: Chris Doran

  - The Collapse of the Biosphere: Peter Harris

• Resources mentioned in this episode 
  • Refugia Faith by Debra Rienstra
  • Eaarth by Bill McKibben
  • Great Tide Rising by Kathleen Dean Moore
  • IPCC Reports on Climate Change

  - A Rocha International

• PDF of Lee’s Interview Notes
• Transcription Link

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