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Planting a “Forever Forest”

Today’s Holiday Blog is from Sami Grover, author of We’re All Climate Hypocrites Now. He shares a creative, homemade gift idea that in part aims to help his kids understand the power of incremental change.

We’re happy to offer a 50% discount on all our books, using coupon code READ50 (except New Catalyst titles or titles not yet off press), from November 28 until December 5, 2022, to help you create a thrifty, low-carbon holiday to remember.

From the Author

When I wrote We’re All Climate Hypocrites Now, many people assumed it was a critique of individual action as a means to meaningful change.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, it was an attempt to reframe why individual action matters, and to help readers to focus their efforts on meaningful interventions that could actually move the needle. Sometimes those interventions are focused on absolute emissions reductions (riding a bike to reduce car dependency, for example) and sometimes they are more about cultural change (talking about climate with your friends and family, for example.) And sometimes they are both.

In our family, we have created a holiday tradition that encompasses both aspects. And that’s the small gift of a tree themed journal to each of my daughters, which I re-gift to them each birthday and holiday—with a new page filled out with hand drawn trees that I have “planted” in their honor. (“Planted” meaning I have donated to a non-profit who will do all the hard work for me.) We call this their Forever Forest – and my goal is to keep going until the journals are completely filled with trees. The intention of this gift is two-fold:

1) To directly help maintain and create a livable climate and healthy ecosystems for their future, and

2) To help them see how small actions add up over time, and to inspire them to find their own ways to make a meaningful difference.

Will it change the world? Probably not. Will their teenage selves one day ask for me to give them money instead? Quite possibly. But, for now, they seem to take genuine delight in seeing their “forest” grow.

And that’s enough for me.

Click here to download an excerpt from We're All Climate Hypocrites Now.

Author Sami Grover

Sami Grover has spent half his life trying to live a low-carbon lifestyle. He's written about everything from composting to e-bikes, yet he's seen only marginal success in reducing his own impact. Active in the sphere of good-for-the-world business, he has developed branding projects for clients including Burt's Bees, Dogwood Alliance, and Jada Pinkett Smith. Sami lives in Durham, NC.

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