Common Text Study Guide

Each year Loyola chooses a Common Text for all first-year students to read before the Fall semester begins. The book chosen for your incoming class, by a committee of current Loyola students, faculty, and staff, is Not Too Late edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua. Not Too Late is a compilation of essays by leading activists, innovators, and scientists working on climate change and environmentalism.

During Fall Welcome Weekend, the Class of 2028 will convene on campus, and you will discuss the Common Text with your academic advisor, who is also one of your professors, and your fellow students in your Messina group. It is important that you read the text with care and come prepared to discuss the ideas presented in this study guide. The Common Text is intended for reading by everyone in your class and may be included in Messina course discussions, tests, or assignments during Fall and/or Spring semester. Messina will also sponsor events throughout the year to address themes raised in the text.

Before you read

1. What do you know about climate change in 2024? What sources do you get your information from?
2. What do you believe you can you do as an individual to make the world a better and safer place?
3. What are some struggles or concerns that exist in your community that are specific to where you live?

While you read

1. What are some ways climate change is impacting your community?
2. Why is science and scientific information sometimes difficult for those who are not scientists to accept?
3. What is the benefit of reading, watching, and listening to a variety of sources and a variety of experiences regarding global issues like climate change?
4. How is climate change impacting different communities and different parts of the world in different ways? What are some common experiences with climate change across the world?

After you read

1. Climate change can feel like a daunting and overwhelming problem to address. What are some ways the essays in Not Too Late are focused to inspire hope?
2. What are some of the connections between the essays about the science of climate change? What are some connections between the essays about the impact of climate change on Black, Indigenous, and people of color? What are some connections between the essays about young people and their ideas and potential for innovation?
3. Why are climate science and environmental science questioned (and sometimes attacked) by business and government interests, as well as others, and how do we sift through the claims and challenges?

Engage Further

1. The editors of Not Too Late have made an engaging and useful website to explore all of the topics covered in the book’s essays. Find resources including a study guide, a guide for action, and more at their website at www.nottoolateclimate.com.
2. The United Nations offers some clear actionable steps everyone can take to help make a positive impact on our environment on their website.
3. An area of South Baltimore is home to some of the worst industrial toxic emissions in the United States where a group of high school activists began fighting for better conditions more than a decade ago. Towson University professor Nicole Fabricant chronicled their efforts in her book Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore. Hear more from activist Shashawnda Campbell and Dr. Fabricant in their talk at a Baltimore bookstore. 
4. Activist Leah Thomas connected effective environmentalism to a commitment to anti-racism in an essay for Vogue magazine in 2020 that echoes some of the essays in Not Too Late.

5. The environmental movement as we know it today was kick-started by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1963. Read more about Carson’s life, work, and her role in sounding the alarm about climate change and human impact on the environment. 

6. Photographers are working to document climate change around the world and you can see some of their work in this article from National Public Radio.

Questions?

Contact the Messina Office at 410-617-2669, messina@loyola.edu, or browse the website for a list of academic and support services available to Loyola students, including helping you make the transition to campus and college life.