Des Casey is set to launch a book to drive environmental issues, particularly the climate change conversation, in workplaces.
The retired mental health worker says for many years he has been concerned about the changes happening in the natural world, and in recent years he had thought about climate challenges and looked back at how they related to his working life.
After jotting down his thoughts and compiling 14 essays about how more people can manage climate change impacts, his book Nature’s Future Our Future will launch at Pūtangitangi Greenmeadows Centre in Stoke on 4 April at 5:30pm
Des, who lives in Nelson, says the book will provide employers and employees in all industries an avenue to raise their awareness of how climate change and other environmental issues are connected to workplaces.
“The book is about closing that gap between what we do in work, and what is happening in the natural world. There’s a lot of people who are concerned about what’s happening in the natural world and what’s happening to nature,” he says.
“There’s more and more awareness of what we should or shouldn’t be doing. Eight of the 14 essays are examples of different occupations and how they could set about creating a movement of change in both the thinking and activity around managing climate change, and the environmental challenges generally.”
Des says his additional hope for the book would be for people or organisations who lead occupations to come out publicly to people within their workplaces that there is an environmental crisis and the need to address it is urgent.
“I think if that started to happen more, the challenge would then go out to political, economic, and commercial systems.”
