IV Words Founder Releases Book of Climate Crisis Posts

“The Climate Covenant” – Speaks the Fracking Truth

Hypocrisy, greed and duplicity drip from the pages of “The Climate Covenant:  Building the Critical 3.5 Percent” like the slimy, sticky and unstable oil fracked out of the depths of western North Dakota.

The book, released on Amazon today in both eBook and print editions, is a collection of hit-and-run blog posts by Fargo, N.D.-based environmental and social justice blogger Martin C. Fredricks IV.

The eBook will be free for download one day a month; watch for announcements. It’s only $1.99, the lowest amount Amazon will allow, every other day.

The Climate Covenant” features government officials using pandemic relief funds to plug long-abandoned oil wells and prop up fracking, the coming wars over potable water worldwide, and young Zoomers who have already decided to forego children rather than submit them to the devastating effects of climate change.

The collection comprises these and dozens of other topics related to global warming, resulting climate change and dearth of government actions to save the human race. At the same time, some of the posts originally published on the IV Words blog and Knights of the Climate Covenant website, also point out the fact that we still have time to slow global warming and ensure a livable future, but that the window is closing rapidly.

“Climate change doesn’t care who we are, where we live or how much money we make,” Fredricks said, “and it’s altering things around the world in ways that are devastating to human habitation. In a sense, the human race is a disease on the face of the planet; once Earth is able to rid itself of us, it will heal and life will continue. We just won’t be here anymore. It can go that way. Or it can go the other way, too, if enough people begin doing the right things and, more importantly, stop doing the wrong things.”

Knights of the Climate Covenant is a nonprofit community of environmentalists and an advocacy organization that works to get more everyday people to identify as climate activists and engage them in curbing global warming and countering climate-change denial. New Knights sign a promise – The Climate Covenant – to do everything in their power and within reason to reduce their own carbon footprints, as well as those of their communities, countries and other nations. The organization currently has members in five nations and 18 U.S. states.

“The book is part of how I keep my own climate covenant,” Fredricks said. “People who read climate-related blogs already understand the existential nature of the danger and how little time is left to change course.

“So far I’ve been preaching to the choir, but now ‘The Climate Covenant’ is reaching new readers.”

Fredricks collaborated on the book release with Drive to 3.5, a business that works with climate bloggers and other climate-crisis content creators to build their grassroots communities by amplifying their voices. The objective is not so much to sell books, but to increase traffic to IV Words and Knights of the Climate Covenant, add to the ranks of climate-related blog readers overall and get them talking about the climate crisis and, ultimately, build the 3.5 percent of a population needed to force lasting political change.

“Drive to 3.5” is a reference to research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at the Harvard Kennedy School who studied political protests and found that ensuring significant and lasting political change requires active participation by about 3.5 percent of a population. 

That’s the key focus for Drive to 3.5, say co-founders Keith Patterson and Susan Scrupski, who celebrate the debut release in their Climate Action Series with “The Climate Covenant.”

“Even as climate-change-related system changes and disasters are causing damage and death all over the world, too many people still don’t see, or don’t want to accept, what we’re up against,” Scrupski said. “We have a workable, grassroots strategy that will address that. 

Patterson added, “Our mission is to amplify climate content creators and bloggers like Martin as a means of building that 3.5 percent we need on the streets and in legislative chambers across the country, taking positive action to ensure our planet is livable for our children and grandchildren.” 

“The Climate Covenant” is available in eBook and print on Amazon. eBook downloads will be free September 22-24, 2021, and during several additional days each quarter thereafter.