As the climate emergency worsens and biodiversity shrinks, we humans get used to it—we adapt, we normalize, we forget. Scientists call this “shifting baseline syndrome” and warn that it’s why we are increasingly sleepwalking toward disaster.
In this positive and inspiring manifesto, the environmental activist and longtime editor-in-chief of Sierra magazine Jason Dove Mark offers an antidote, focusing on four simple but powerful rules that everyone can use to resist environmental amnesia:
Go outside. Bear witness. Make a record. Pass it on.
Mark makes the case for easy, everyday practices that can help us “remember the Earth” and support environmental conservation, restoration, and rewilding. And he shares moving examples of citizen scientists, birdwatchers, mountain climbers, and fishermen across the country who are putting them into practice. The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet is a hopeful, achievable prescription for protecting the planet, one citizen at a time.
Jason Dove Mark has served as editor-in-chief of Sierra and editor of Earth Island Journal. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Atlantic. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
