As the climate emergency worsens and biodiversity shrinks, we somehow get used to it. We struggle to remember what summers were like before the unrelenting heat, in those years before wildfires became an annual routine. We adapt, we normalize. Scientists call this “shifting baseline syndrome,” and they warn that it’s why we are increasingly sleepwalking toward disaster.
In this inspiring manifesto, environmental advocate and longtime editor-in-chief of Sierra magazine Jason Dove Mark offers antidotes that everyone can use to resist ecological amnesia and make lasting progress to repair and revive a livable planet. He puts forth four simple but powerful rules for a life lived in communion with the Earth:
Go outside
Bear witness
Make a record
Pass it on
From the mountains of California to the lakes of Wisconsin and across the lush forests of his beloved Pacific Northwest, Mark shares moving examples of citizen scientists, birdwatchers, mountain climbers, and fishermen who are putting these remedies into practice. And he makes the case for easy, everyday practices that can help us “remember the earth” and support environmental conservation, restoration, and rewilding. The Earth Said Remember Me 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.
Mike Tidwell is a journalist, author, and climate activist living in Takoma Park, MD. His most recent book is an exploration of global warming’s impact in his own front yard, called The Lost
Trees of Willow Avenue: A story of Climate and Hope on One American Street (St. Martin’s Press, March 2025). Publishers Weekly magazine named the book one of the best nonfiction
books of 2025. A passionate conservationist, he founded the Chesapeake Climate Action Network in 2002, where he has led local and national campaigns for clean energy. He lives on Willow Avenue in Takoma Park, MD with his wife Beth and their cat Macy Gray.
