The great work of today’s gen­er­a­tions is noth­ing short of sav­ing the earth. We know enough, are capa­ble enough. The ques­tion is: do we care enough? Will we work hard enough? Do we even rec­og­nize when we have enough?
Now not­ed envi­ron­men­tal­ist Rab­bi Nina Beth Cardin chal­lenges us to devel­op the indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive will need­ed to cre­ate change and offers spir­i­tu­al and prac­ti­cal guid­ance to invig­o­rate that effort.

To For­ev­er Inhab­it This Earth­is a pow­er­ful must-read for any­body inter­est­ed in the inter­sec­tion of envi­ron­men­tal­ism and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.
Cardin implores us to envi­sion the world, not as a com­mod­i­ty but as a frag­ile, improb­a­ble, extra­or­di­nary gift whose well-being and future now depend on us, and using metic­u­lous­ly researched Jew­ish texts and the teach­ings of oth­er faith tra­di­tions, she makes the case that envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty is a fun­da­men­tal reli­gious prin­ci­ple — and some­thing we can address, if we have the will to do so.

“Despite the harms we as human­i­ty have caused, if we dare to act bold­ly (which we can), based on the best guid­ance of our advi­sors (which we have), and recruit will­ing hearts (which we pos­sess), we can heal the wounds, rem­e­dy our mis­takes, and remake a safe and vibrant world for our­selves and all the gen­er­a­tions to come. It is up to us.”

Cardin asks us to con­sid­er spir­i­tu­al ques­tions, tech­ni­cal ques­tions, and eth­i­cal ques­tions about how we live in the world, and pro­vides both spir­i­tu­al and prac­ti­cal guid­ance on ways to rethink that, including:

• A con­tem­pla­tion of our spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to ​‘the land’ and the call upon human­i­ty to estab­lish, pre­serve, and main­tain a hab­it­able world here on earth
   
• The bib­li­cal frame­work that urges us to see that life is awe inspir­ing and order is its essen­tial ingre­di­ent, pro­vid­ing the sta­ble envi­ron­ment that brings forth and sus­tains life
• A close look at texts from Gen­e­sis to con­sid­er two ways humans inhab­it our world
• A dai­ly med­i­ta­tion for pre­serv­ing a hab­it­able world
• Eight guide­lines for eth­i­cal consumption
• A chart for a one-week self-assess­ment of our buy­ing, con­sump­tion, and dis­card­ing practices