Unsettling: Surviving Extinction Together

The time has come to reimagine our relationship to the environment before it is too late.

As wildfires char the American West, extreme weather transforms landscapes, glaciers retreat, and climate zones shift, we are undeniably experiencing the effects of the climate crisis in more and more destructive ways. Climate change is impacting every inhabited region of the world, but there is much we can still do.

Unsettling explores human impacts on the environment through science, popular culture, personal narrative, and landscape. Using the stories of animals, landscapes, and people who have exhibited resilience in the face of persistent colonization across the North American continent, science writer Elizabeth Weinberg explores how climate change is a direct result of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism, and heteronormativity. Travel through the deep sea; along Louisiana's vanishing bayous; down the Colorado, Mississippi, and Potomac rivers; and over the Cascade Mountains, and examine how we as humans, particularly white humans, have drawn a stark line between human and animal, culture and nature, in order to exploit anything and anyone we find useful. With gorgeous and pointed prose, Weinberg weaves together science, personal essay, history, and pop culture to propose a new way of thinking about climate change--one that is rooted in queerness and antiracism.

Elizabeth Weinberg is a queer essayist and science communicator. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington, and her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, American Wild Magazine, SEVENSEAS magazine, and other publications. She lives and writes in the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Chinook Peoples (Portland, Oregon) with her spouse, Leslie, and their dog, Pigeon.