Richard Klein
The Climate
Within Us
Leadership, Integration, and Regeneration
in a Warming World
About the Author
Richard Klein is a counsellor, retreat facilitator, and co-founder of the Youth Climate Corps.
For over 15 years, Richard directed the Mountain Waters Retreat Centre in British Columbia, a refuge for healing and nature-based learning. He hosted programs on trauma recovery, somatic therapy, meditation, and regenerative ecology, welcoming teachers such as Gabor Maté, Eckhart Tolle, and Stephen Buhner.
Earlier in life, Richard spent a decade running a large-scale tree-planting company in British Columbia. Before the age of 30, he had helped reforest hundreds of square kilometers of land, built his own timber-frame home, and become a father of three. These early years shaped a hands-on philosophy of resilience, learning through difficulty, and trust in the body.
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The Climate Within Us
Key Points
1. The climate crisis isn’t just out there—it’s inside us. Climate anxiety, overwhelm, and freeze are nervous system responses that deserve care, not shame.
2. Personal healing fuels environmental healing. When we do the inner work, we show up clearer, steadier, and more powerful in climate action.
3. Regenerative practices—nervous system repair, somatic grounding, inner listening—are essential for long-term climate engagement.
4. Climate leadership begins within. When we shift from reactivity to embodiment, we lead with integrity and connection.
5. Healing our relationship with the Earth means healing our own disconnection. The climate mirrors what we haven’t tended to in ourselves.
6. Collective climate action becomes more sustainable when it’s rooted in inner stability, shared meaning, and nervous system co-regulation.
Author’s Note by Richard Klein
Why I Wrote This Book: A Life Rooted in Nature, Community, and the Call to Act
I have always found myself drawn to nature. As a kid, I remember summer-long camping trips across North America. As an adult, I’ve often preferred exploring trailless routes up a valley rather than following a well-marked path. On a number of occasions, I’ve travelled alone into mountain wilderness on multi-day journeys, learning to trust, to observe, and to experience myself as part of the living world—not separate from it.
I believe that we have entered a new period of transition and ferment. Ecologies are under increased pressure from rising temperatures and new cycles of drought and flood. Disruptions buffet a global economy conditioned by 250 years of fossil fuels to expect continued exponential growth. We have attempted to wallpaper over economic disruption with expanding debt.
It is as if we are walking a precarious ridgeline through thick fog, the way ahead unclear. A kind of societal rite of passage is leading us away from what we have come to know and into a new territory, where our narratives and habitual ways of doing things no longer take us where we wish to go.
