In this Presidential Address, the author wants to turn our attention to an interpretation of identity that invites us to rethink our relationships with each other and with Earth. First, the author will briefly discuss recent work by OVPES colleagues, Lauren Bialystok and Bryan Warnick, to provide some background and initial framing of key educational questions related to identity and climate change. Then, the author will discuss several essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson to elucidate a concept of identity rooted in a Transcendentalist metaphysics. As a way to show how this concept of identity spans generations of the American literary tradition, the author discusses Alice Walker's collection of essays, "Living by the Word," to illustrate what identity looks like when the human self is deeply connected to the nonhuman other. As the author sees it, there is little hope for educating our way out of impending climate catastrophe if our conceptions of identity remain predominantly human-centric, limiting identity to metaphysical and ethical worldviews void of inter-species identification.