In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Native American author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes of the “Honorable Harvest” as a means of maintaining a habitable Earth for future generations. Discussing energy, she reflects that “[it] does not mean we can’t consume the energy we need, but it does mean that we honorably take only what is given. The wind blows every day, every day the sun shines, every day the waves roll against the shore, and the Earth is warm below us. We can understand these renewable sources of energy as given to us, since they are the sources that have powered life on the planet for as long as there has been a planet. We need not destroy the Earth to make use of them. Solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy – the so-called “clean energy” harvests – when they are wisely used, seem to me to be consistent with the ancient rules of the Honorable Harvest.”
