An upcoming book linking Tolkien’s saga with today’s environmental crisis
The forests burn. The people struggle against the forces of environmental destruction. Activists keep hope alive when all signs point to an inevitable defeat. These themes are found both in The Lord of the Rings, one of the most important books of the 20th century, and in the words and actions of the environmental actors today.
Where the Roots are Long: The Lord of the Rings and the Modern Environmentalist Movement is an upcoming book by Derek Caelin that explores the epic fantasy novel and its linkages to environmentalism throughout history up to the present era. Derek argues that the The Lord of the Rings, despite belonging to an earlier era of environmentalist thought, can inform, console, and inspire people fighting for a sustainable world today.
What is the status of the book?
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Status Update: August 2026
Despite my early hopes I now think it’s impossible to tie Tolkien’s philosophy to the modern environmentalist movement without providing a global survey of environmentalism from the Industrial era to today. It will have to be a sketch. As Ramachandra Guha warns: “To write a global history of anything, let alone a complex and widespread phenomenon as environmentalism, is to be savagely selective.” I am re-writing the first section. Word count: 58,000
Excerpts
Topics
Tolkien’s Environmentalism
What was Tolkien’s environmental philosophy, how is it reflected in The Lord of the Rings, and where does it stand in the broad sweep of environmentalist thinking throughout history?
- The roots: Tolkien’s love of trees.
- The beauty of Middle Eath and its connection to our own world
- The Conservationists in post-industrial England
- Stewardship and Christian concepts of wilderness and duty to nature
- The personhood of nature: how forests, mountains, and rivers are treated as people, from New Zealand to Ecuador, from the Mountain of Caradhras to the Ents and the Old Forest.
- The attitudes of characters towards nature, and how natural elements integrate with culture. From the Hobbits in the Shire, to the Elves and their forests, to the Kings of Gondor and their symbolic reverance for the white tree.
- Ethical perspectives on environmentalism, anthropocentric, biocentric, ecocentric. Deep Ecology & Social Ecology.
Environmental Action
How might modern environmentalists world take inspiration from characters and cultures from The Lord of the Rings?
- Living in harmony with nature: the Hobbits and Elves incorporate the natural world into their dellings. How do Middle-earth cultures compare with our own earthen dwellings and living structures.
- Sustainable management: The Entwives and agriculture. Tom Bombadil and light-touch management. Gimli and Conservation in the Glittering Caves of Aglerond. The Elves and their dream of preserving all things unstained meets the modern regenerative agriculture and ranching movement.
- Defending nature and restoring it: Sauron and Saruman, and the threat posed by industrialization and overconsumption. The Ents rising up to destroy Isengard, and the debate role of violence against property.
Hope, Despair, and Action
The heart of this book. The Lord of the Rings is filled with characters who confront despair and either succumb to it or rise above it. Topics include:
- The coming darkness: a comparison of the crisis in Middle-earth and our risk in the face of a changing climate.
- Despair as a weapon: The Nazgul, the Palantir, and the Words of Wormtongue. How does despair take root in modern changemakers?
- Responses to despair: denial, subersion, abdengation, and action. I draw parallels between characters in the book and trends in the modern dialog on climate change. From “brightsiders” like Saruman who assume things will be better under the dark lord, to people who refuse to take action, like Denethor, to the people who press on to take action despite a sense of hopelessness, like Frodo and Sam.