Foreward by
Terry Tempest Williams
From protesting the Vietnam War to supporting the Civil Rights Movement that led to his own actions of helping to organize the anti-Apartheid Movement in America as a student at Union; to his own moral merging of social justice with environmental justice; to the intersectionality of human and ecological survival inherent within the climate crisis before us that he so powerful speaks to now -- the moral trajectory of Larry Rasmussen can be traced through these loving letters found in “The Planet You Inherit” written to his grandsons, Eduardo and Martin.
Reviews
This impassioned call to action by ethicist Rasmussen (Earth-Honoring Faith) meditates on climate change and the role faith might play in allaying it. In a series of dispatches addressed to his young grandsons, Rasmussen waxes poetic on humanity’s future and expounds on the role that Christianity can play in the climate crisis. He explains that his grandsons’ generation marks the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, the first epoch during which Earth’s climate will be significantly impacted by humans. Rasmussen reminisces on major crises of his lifetime, including John F. Kennedy’s assassination, 9/11, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the January 6 insurrection, lamenting the role that “religious pride” played in the attack. Warning his grandsons that the stakes they face are higher than those posed by these events, he posits that their task “will be to remap the world on an altered Earth for a different way of life in an uncharted future.” To meet this challenge, Rasmussen urges keeping faith in the power of a universal God found within the beauty and wonder of nature. Though these heartfelt missives sometimes stray from their focus on the environment, they capture the apprehension surrounding ecological collapse while outlining a faith-based mindset for healing the environment. These ruminative letters resound with pathos and hope.
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Publishers Weekly
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