• Ayesha Mehrotra, “A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Why Cities Must Engage Artists in Climate Action,” National League of Cities, April 14, 2023.

• Alina Tigend, “Can Art Help Save the Planet?” New York Times, March 12, 2019. 
• Steve Holt, "Art Meets Activism." CFA Magazine, July 29, 2023.

• Svalbard Global Seed Vault explained:

https://www.croptrust.org/work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/

• Svalbard Global Seed Vault Virtual Tour | Explore in 360°: https://seedvaultvirtualtour.com/

• Debra Ronca, “How Seed Banks Work,” How Stuff

Works, April, 2025.

• John N. Alexander, “The Tellico Dam,” Streamed April 8, 2025, Youtube video: 0:12:33.

• Tellico Village Network, “The Tellico Dam: From Riverside Farms to Lakeside Village,” Streamed April 9, 2025, YouTube video, 0:29:05.

• Plater, Zygmunt, The Snail Darter and the Dam: How Pork-Barrel Politics Endangered a Little Fish and Killed a River, Yale University Press, June 18, 2018.

• Wheeler, William Bruce. TVA And The Tellico Dam 1936-1979: A Bureaucratic Crisis In Post-Industrial America, Cambridge University Press, 1986.

• Southern Anthropological Society, “The Competing

Narratives of Tellico” 

• Arbor Day Foundation (If you or your school become a member, the foundation will send ten tree saplings suitable for your geographic location, along with a booklet about how to care for the trees. Or, if you prefer, you can choose to have the foundation plant trees in needed locations rather than sending them.) https://www.arborday.org/

• “Planting Trees Has Never Been Easier!” United Nations Environment Programme, September 28, 2019.

• Amigxs del MAR—a revolutionary environmental movement that arose from the need for citizen action to defend the environment and communities of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

https://www.amigxsdelmar.org/

• Casa Pueblo—a community self-management project that is committed to protecting Puerto Rico’s green spaces through education and engagement.

https://casapueblo.org/

• A growing list of community organizations doing work in Puerto Rico:

https://www.mgarciabooks.com/puerto-rico-organizations

• Consumer Reports, “You’re Literally Eating Microplastics. How You Can Cut Down Exposure to Them.” Washington Post, October 4, 2019.

• Cullen Murphy, “Point Nemo, the Most Remote Place on Earth.” The Atlantic, October 11, 2024.

Ways to Take Action Against Microplastics:

• Contact your Marine Debris Program Regional Coordinator to learn more about how marine debris is affecting your region and for more ideas on how you can get involved.

https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/who-we-are/contact-us

• Lead or participate in beach and waterway clean-ups.

https://cleanups.surfrider.org/about/beach-cleanups/

http://www.sustainablecoastlineshawaii.org

• Form an eco-club to analyze plastic to determine waste from your school in local water supplies and demand action. Write letters about organizations demanding transparency concerning waste. Campaign for school-level, local, and city-wide bans on single-use plastics.

• Model eco-sensitive practices. Reduce your food packaging waste by bringing your own cup, takeout containers, and eating utensils to restaurants and other events.

• 6 Minute English, BBC Learning English. “How to Talk to a Climate Change Denier.” March 9, 2023.

• John Marshall, “3 Strategies for Effectively Talking

about Climate Change, TED Countdown,” May 4, 2021, Youtube video: 0:07:55.

• Dolan Reynolds, “Interactive Map: Wave of Armadillos ‘Expanding’ Across North Carolina, Latest Counts Reveal.” CBS 17, December 21, 2023.

• Craig Welch, “Half of All Species Are on the Move—And We’re Feeling It.” National Geographic, April 27, 2017.

“The Care and Feeding of Mother” is set in the future, but it was inspired by a crisis of the past: the 1930s Dust Bowl. Like many ecological disasters, the Dust Bowl—immortalized in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath—was triggered by natural causes, exacerbated by human interference. Ongoing drought, overfarming, and systemic destruction of prairie grasses eroded the topsoil, which caused enormous clouds of dust to storm across the United States, from Texas to Canada. Sixteen million acres of land were affected and more than two million people were displaced. 

To learn more about the Dust Bowl, visit:

• Library of Congress: Dust Bowl Migration.

• “Mass Exodus From the Plains: The Dust Bowl

Prompted the Largest Migration in American History,” accessed April 10, 2024, American Experience.

• Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower, Grand Central Publishing, April 2019.

• Castaldo, Nancy F. When the World Runs Dry: Earth’s Water in Crisis, Little, Brown, January 18, 2022.

• Gooley, Tristan. How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea, The Experiment, August 23, 2016.

• Kimmerer, Robin Wall, and Monique Gray Smith. Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Zest Books, November 1, 2022.

• Maudlyne Ihejirika, “What Is Environmental Racism?” Natural Resources Defense Council, May 24, 2023.

• According to the NRDC, “the phrase environmental racism was coined by civil rights leader Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. He defined it as the intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers.”

• The Black Hive: The Heart of the Movement for Black Lives Matter organizes to assess how climate change and ecological destruction impact Black communities in the United States and across the Global Black Diaspora.

• National Resources Defense Council, “Four Poets Honor Chicago’s Hazel M. Johnson, the Mother of Environmental Justice,” April 1, 2022.

• Southern Environmental Law Center, “What is environmental justice?”

• Jeremy Barnicle, “Climate Threat v. Climate Opportunity,” Ecotrust, January 21, 2020.

• Ecotrust: Stories of Home

• Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) is an organization led and guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors, and land defenders from communities and regions across the United States. 

• Center for American Progress, “The Nature Gap: Confronting Racial and Economic Disparities in the Destruction and Protection of Nature in America,” July 21, 2020.

• Philip J. Landrigan, Virginia A. Rauh, and Maida P. Galvez, “Environmental Justice and the Health of Children,” National Library of Medicine, March-April 2010m, issue 77, pages 178–187.

• Renee Skelton, Vernice Miller, and Courtney Lindwall, “The Environmental Justice Movement,” National Resources Defense Council, August 22, 2023.

• Seattle Office for Civil Rights, “Seeking Environmental Justice: Heat Waves Disproportionately Affect BIPOC Communities,” Civil Rights Now: Seattle Office for Civil Rights, July 13, 2021. 

• “Florida Manatee with ‘Trump’ Etched on Back Prompts Investigation,” BBC News, January 12, 2021.

• Katie Mettler, “Snooty the Famous Manatee Dies in ‘Heartbreaking Accident’ Days After His 69th Birthday,” The Washington Post, July 24, 2017.

• Kimberly Millerkmiller, “What the Heck Are These

Things Washing Up on Florida’s Beaches?” The Gainesville Sun, March 1, 2020.

• Scottie Andrew, “More Manatees Have Died in the First Half of 2021 Than in Any Other Year in Florida’s History, Wildlife Agency Says,” CNN, July 12, 2021.

• “South Florida Divers Set Guinness Record for Cleanup,” Tampa Bay Times, January 17, 2019.

• Theresa Machemer, “More Than 600 Tons of Dead Sea Life Wash Up on Florida Coast Amid Red Tide,” Smithsonian Magazine, July 16, 2021.

• Zachary T. Sampson, Shreya Vuttaluru, and Bethany Barnes, “Part 1: The Die-Off: Wasting Away Rampant Pollution Caused Manatees to Starve. Florida Waters Are Getting Worse,” Tampa Bay Times, April 2, 2025.

Dr. Sarah McFarland Taylor, the brilliant professor mentioned in my essay, has deepened her explorations of the ways in which spirituality and religion intersect with environmentalism and climate change. Check out her book Ecopiety: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue (NYU Press, 2019), as well as a forthcoming project which “focuses on the power of defiant hope to fuel climate action.”

Somatic educator, writer, and tarot card reader Abigail Rose Clarke offers unique guidance for tuning into nature and our own vessels in her book Returning Home to Our Bodies: Reimagining the Relationship Between our Bodies and the World (North Atlantic Books 2024). This title includes a treasure trove of accessible resources, including other YA book recommendations. 

If you’d like to read more healing reflections like the one offered by “El Mundo” in my essay, dig into my oracle deck and guidebook Lotería Remedios (Hay House, 2024), which includes plenty of plant and animal medicine. Some readers use these cards as journal prompts, so it’s a nice way of putting your inner voice on the page to navigate a way forward.

• Danielle Kaeding, “A Fight Is Brewing Over a Bottled Water Proposal Near Lake Superior.” Wisconsin Public Radio, September 2, 2021.

• Gary Wilson, “Question of Diversion: Great Lakes

Governors Group Silent on Future Water Threats.”

Great Lakes Now, Detroit PBS, August 27, 2021.

• Jeremiah Zac, “Causes of Water Conflict: Past Wars and Future Predictions,” World Water Preserve, May 8, 2024.

• Jonathan Thompson, “The Incredible Shrinking Colorado River.” High Country News, August 23, 2021.

• Keith Matheny, “Nestlé Bottled Water Operations in Michigan Sold as Part Of $4.3b Deal to NY Private Equity Firm.” Detroit Free Press, February 18, 2021.

• Water Science School, “How Much Water Is There On Earth?” U.S. Geological Survey, November 19, 2013.