Published as part of the Routledge Focus series on Environment and Sustainability, Blanche Verlie’s Learning to Live with Climate Change (2021) explores the ways we are affected by and affect the earth’s climate from the standpoint of education. Devoting attention to the importance of collective storying and climate communication, this book is also relevant for literary studies research on the transformative possibilities of climate imaginaries in literature. Verlie posits that communities need to shift beyond Western perceptions of the climate crisis that are primarily grounded in scientific rationality and so-called ‘resilience’, and instead explore ways of ‘living-with’ climate – the idea that ‘there is no existence outside of ecology’ (114).
As the book’s title suggests, ‘learning’ is a key part of this; not just how we learn as individuals but in classrooms, institutions communities, and other collectives. Verlie explores the complexities of what this learning entails, with a particular focus…