Love Global Warming

Her life by the sea in ruins, Pen has lost everything in the Earth Shaker that all but destroyed the city of Los Angeles. She sets out into the wasteland to search for her family, her journey guided by a tattered copy of Homer’s Odyssey. Soon she begins to realize her own abilities and strength as she faces false promises of safety, the cloned giants who feast on humans, and a madman who wishes her dead. On her voyage, Pen learns to tell stories that reflect her strange visions, while she and her fellow survivors navigate the dangers that lie in wait. In her signature style, Francesca Lia Block has created a world that is beautiful in its destruction and as frightening as it is lovely.

A romance at the surface, but look closer, and you'll see this hybrid love story also addresses the fate of the planet. Julian, a workaholic-romantic, returns to school and falls head-over-heels for Allison, a lithe and lovely twenty-year-old college student while taking a course that examines the nuances of global warming. In class, they pass notes, flirt, and slowly a relationship evolves. When Julian discovers that Allison is due to marry her high school sweetheart, he risks all-including his job-to impress her, seduce her and steal her away. During a final exam, dressed as a dictator, he reads a treaty on the social economics of climate change, threaded with stanzas from a divine poem written centuries ago by Sappho. Allison is moved by his courtship.

When the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg spoke for the first time in January 2021, millions of people around the world took notice. “It is encouraging to see how you have opened the eyes of the world to the urgency to protect our planet, our only home,” the Dalai Lama wrote to Greta before their meeting. A Future We Can Love shares the words of these two great figures, generations apart, bringing them into dialogue with cutting-edge climate scientists, activists, and spiritual leaders to start a world-changing conversation.

Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle L. Eiseman offer an eye-opening journey through a complete menu of before-dinner drinks and salads; main courses and sides; and coffee and dessert. Along the way they examine the escalating changes occurring to the flavors of spices and teas, the yields of wheat, the vitamins in rice, and the price of vanilla. Their story is rounded out with a primer on the global food system, the causes and impacts of climate change, and what we can all do.