The New Books Network: Michael Simpson interview about To Know the World (May 28, 2025)
Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning (MIT Press, 2020), Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy--connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.
Dr. Mitchell Thomashow is a renowned environmental educator with a career that spans decades, and this is his 4th book within this domain published by MIT press.
An overarching theme of ‘sense of place’ has permeated this and his other writings, and all have asked people to stop, see and reflect on the changes around them.
Mitch has a had varied career in academia, from teaching and advising graduate students, to initiating a cohort-based, low residency model, for a PhD in Environmental Studies. He has chaired an Environmental Studies Department at Antioch University and subsequently was appointed as the President of Unity College.
Mitchell’s expertise is still in demand in the environmental arena. He has been well received through over a hundred of his plenary addresses, workshops, and sustainability consultations.