I hope you’ll watch or listen to this wonderful Sustain What conversation on ways to navigate, and improve, this moment on Earth increasingly called the Anthropocene - the Earth as shaped by human activities, for worse or better.
Some here will recall I played a role in the evolution of this concept thanks to a line in my 1992 book on global warming. See my essay about that at the bottom of this post.
My guests are the longtime actor and environmmental activist Ed Begley, Jr.;
, the writer of the refreshing Substack newsletter ; and Yvonne Reddick, an environment-focused poet and scholar who is Reader in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Central Lancashire.Reddick’s new poetry collection is Burning Season, which won the 2023 Laurel Prize for best UK first poetry collection. She has also just written Anthropocene Poetry – Place, Environment and Planet.
Ed Begley’s life has been a whirlwind of acting success, personal challenges and endless enthusiasm for improving lives and life on Earth through activism. He has written a funny, sad and valuable new book on his journey: To the Temple of Tranquility...And Step On It!: A Memoir.
I got to know Ed Begley starting in 2005 and first covered his decades of environment-focused communication in a quirky video I did for The New York Times with my former colleague Pat Farrell in 2008. Begley and I conversed in a pedicab on a frigid Manhattan winter day about his “Living with Ed” show on HG TV and much more. It’s worth a look as a fun artifact from my first year of Dot Earth blogging. The video isn’t on YouTube or the like but you can watch it on nytimes.com here:
Sam Matey, who graduated college at 18, when most of us are just starting that part of our life journeys, is an early-career environmental scientist, climate journalist and geospatial data analyst who is devoted to balancing all the dire headlines you’re flooded with with big regular doses of environmental and social progress. Join me in subscribing to The Weekly Anthropocene.
Here’s his 2023 Year in Review post:
Here’s my Anthropocene journey:
Watch Yvonne Reddick’s short fillm on Britain’s snow hares:
And here’s an amazing vista we were graced with here on our shoreline in Downeast Maine last week - when a cold snap built mist over the warmer seawater and cloaked the salt marsh with hoarfrost. For more clips, including the scene after a thaw, click over to @revkin on X.
An Anthropocene Check-in with an Eco-Focused Actor, a Poet and a Good News Blogger