Practical Steps To Prepare For Climate Change

Jul 29

There is a lot of bad advice concerning climate change. Most of it pertains to what you can do on an individual level to reduce your carbon footprint (e.g., recycle, use less plastic, don’t fly, etc.). I even wrote one of these back in the day about urging people to fly less (be gentle).

This advice isn't all bad, but it individualizes a systemic problem. A third of the world's carbon emissions come from just 20 companies. You should still try to recycle, especially if you belong in a country such as the US that contributes to a disproportionate amount of those emissions, but it's madness to assume that consumer choices alone are going to magic this problem away. Climate change is perpetuated by some of the most powerful people on the planet, and stopping it will require removing them from power.

The enormity of this task causes many people to resort to nihilism, but that's not helpful either. We need practical advice, not simply to mitigate future climate change (an increasingly difficult task), but to deal with the number of carbon emissions we have already signed up for as a species.

This short list will not suddenly make the world better, but it might help you sort out some things when it comes to dealing with the catastrophe that is to come.

Know Your Neighbors

The first thing to consider with climate change is that it's a story of failure. Not just the political failure of our government refusing to act, but a failure of infrastructure. It is a power grid collapsing and leaving a household to face a winter storm with nothing but what it can burn to stay warm. It is a fire raging across a state, cutting homes off from firefighters. It is local governments not giving people the resources to start over after a tragedy, leading to a flood of internally displaced persons in towns and cities across America.

There is a chance that you will be impacted by a climate catastrophe over the next few years (if you haven’t already), and when that happens, public infrastructure will fail. At that moment it will help to have some friends. Not someone on the other side of town or the state, but someone on your street or in your building.

Our society has atomized us so much that many of us do not have a sense of local community. A new study out of Harvard claims that 36% of all Americans report serious loneliness. This isolation makes our response to climate change that much worse. Many of us do not have the connections and community bonds necessary to help us overcome massive disruptions, and it shows when disasters strike.

For example, during heat waves, organizations and governments often recommend checking in on vulnerable persons to see if they need assistance (e.g., seeing if their air conditioning is working, offering to drive them somewhere, etc.). The elderly, in particular, have poorer circulation and are hence more vulnerable to our increasingly warming planet, especially those who live alone. A 2012 study from the CDC reported that when it comes to deaths from excessive heat exposure, “most of those who died were unmarried or living alone,” and climate change is causing that number to rise even more.

A lack of human connection impairs people during moments of crisis. It not only prevents us from knowing the valuable information needed to prepare ourselves for disasters, but also prevents us from pooling our resources together to weather the immediate aftermath. People need more than a plan for climate change. They need a community so that a disaster does not have to be a tragedy someone suffers alone.

Get to know your neighbors (and expand your existing bonds with locals in your area if you have them) because these will be the people who you will have to rely on when the proverbial shit hits the fan. Make a plan to introduce yourself to them. If you haven’t already, knock on their door, say hi, and ask about their days.

Get Used To Less

Many times the way that cutting waste is advertised to westerners is reducing our carbon footprint so that we can do our part in stopping climate change. This idea is not terrible — just because our systems of consumption are awful doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to reduce your waste — but as we have already covered, individual consumer choices are not going to solve climate change. They are especially not going to do anything to mitigate the emissions we have already signed up for as a species.

There is another reason you should try to reduce your consumption, though, and it's because you will have to do so anyway. Climate change, at least in the short term, is going to mean fewer resources. It means less space, food, and all the other luxuries of life. I find it amusing that people have been pointing to shortages in things like lumber and asking when the supply chain will “correct itself.” It’s not. These shortages are the new normal, especially when it comes to food. As the United Nations cautioned several years ago:

“There is no doubt in the evidence and conclusions of more than 1,000 global and regional studies, that a temperature rise of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius will generally mean a loss in yield of a number of crop varieties, both in the tropical and the temperate regions. An increase of 3 to 4 degrees later on in this century will have very severe consequences for global food security and supply”

In the short term, we will have fewer resources, and since our economic system is very inequitable, it will mean most people will have to deal with less. It’s going to be far easier for you if you try to adjust to this future reality now, while you have the training wheels of “society” on, than during roving blackouts and water shortages. Try to change your patterns of consumption. Ask yourself if you really have to throw so much away? Are there items and tools that you can purchase, make, or ask for to supplement the things you do buy? The more you transition away from our fragile, global supply chains, the better.

This request is not one to reinvent the wheel. Poor black, brown, and indigenous people have had to deal with these challenges for centuries. I would look to these communities for knowledge. For starters, check out Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, Leah Penniman’s Farming While Black, or Dina Gilo-Whitaker’s As Long As Grass Grows. There are centuries of wisdom in these texts, generously preserved.

This knowledge has been ignored by larger society at our own peril, and now we will need it more than ever.

Participate in Alternative Economies

Many economists and business leaders like to wax poetically about how the market is very good at adjusting to disruptions like climate change, but if anything, this last decade has taught me that capitalism is very fragile. The entire global economy was disrupted recently because a single container ship got clogged in the Suez Canal. The 1300-foot Ever Given prevented the passage of billions of dollars in goods, forcing ships to redirect around the tip of Africa and elsewhere. That was one disruption, and it exacerbated an already stressed supply change. What happens as this system gets pushed more and more to its breaking point?

Capitalism almost always fails in the face of disaster — supply changes get disrupted, power grids go down, and then very few people give a damn how much money is in a bank account that you cannot even access. I am sure there will still be people trading stocks and cryptocurrencies as the world burns, huddled in bunkers deep underground, but most people will not be in such a privileged position. Even if only for a couple of days or weeks, people will have to exist in a world where capitalism (briefly) no longer exists.

It will benefit you to begin engaging in economies that will survive disruption. The most obvious one is the gift economy, where people give and receive items freely without an expectation of exchange. Gift-giving economics are varied in size and scope from competitive ones where people try to out-give each other to charity to mutual aid, where there is a reciprocal exchange of resources and services for a group or communities mutual benefit.

To that last point, mutual aid is the one that most readily emerges in the wake of disasters. We see it time and time and again whenever calamity strikes. The early 20th century was filled with mutual aid groups, particularly from communities of color, trying to fill in the gaps in government services. Mutual aid societies swelled during the influenza pandemic, and we saw an uptick again with the COVID pandemic. When governments fail to provide their citizens with the necessary resources to survive, more often than not neglecting marginalized people in the process, these citizens are usually forced to step up to take care of themselves.

If you are curious, there are plenty of resources to help get you plugged into an alternative economy. You might want to check out Mutual Aid Hub to see if there is a mutual aid group near you, or just Google it. Other groups that might be engaged with such aid are Rotary Clubs, local charities, or even churches. I would also check out your local Buy Nothing Group to access a simple, online gifting economy.

Engage in (local) Politics

As less and less land and resources become available, there will be a strain on resources. Local politics have always been contentious, but they will get even more so as prosperous towns suddenly have to deal with influxes of internally displaced persons and refugees. The Institute for Economics and Peace claims that we will reach one billion internally displaced persons by 2050.

In many ways, this trend has already started. Tens of millions of people have become displaced the world over, including in the United States as well. In her essay A Climate Dystopia In Northern California, author Naomi Klein described how an influx of displaced persons from Californian wildfires (as well as other, slower disasters) had pushed one college town to resort to draconian measures. The town of Chico, California, moved from having a relatively progressive city council to going red. Within an election cycle, they began enforcing more stringent anti-homelessness measures that swept the unhoused out of the public eye. In 2020, an estimated 20 unhoused people died in Chico due to these policies—in essence, one local town’s city council election literally cost lives.

The political decisions happening on the local level will not only decide the resources allocated for refugees and internally displaced persons, but also resources that you will come to rely on in the days and years ahead. Will companies continue to be able to pollute in your local river? Who can access fish in them? Who will be able to pick and grow food on public land? Will your tax dollars go to sustainable infrastructure and renewables or economic developments that line the pockets of a few?

These have always been pressing questions, but as the hunt for resources becomes more heated in the years ahead, they will become matters of life and death for people not used to grappling with these questions in these terms. We are not going to be able to rely on fragile, global supply chains forever. The resources we have in our region are increasingly going to have to sustain us, and the distribution of these resources is under the purvey of mostly local governments. While some of my readers may have had the privilege to remain oblivious to the goings-on of local politics, that will quickly become less advisable in the future.

For example, governments have always leaned on individuals to access resources such as oil and natural gas. There is a long history of local governments weaponizing the power of “Eminent Domain” (i.e., the government seizing private land and converting it to public use) so that they can build pipelines or even private housing developments. We have no reason to think this policy will not be employed in the future for increasingly more scarce resources such as water and arable land.

Though many state governments have passed laws restricting this type of behavior, it’s doubtful this reticence will hold in a resource-starved world. As space becomes more crowded, businesses will feel the need to develop already owned land, and one of the few ways to do that is through the power of Eminent Domain. There will be immense pressure on local governments, both from the business community and activists seeking to increase affordable housing and other public infrastructure, to use this power. Who gets to wield this and other local powers will be something that will directly impact your day-to-day life, and this fight is still very much up in the air.

What do you know about your local government? Is it a city or town council? A county commission? How many members does it have, and which ones do you like? More importantly, what groups and organizations are petitioning these leaders to fight on your behalf? These are the questions you will need to answer in the months and years ahead or risk having your resources divvied up by others.

Don’t Move Alone

This point is not so much an instruction as it is a warning — if you can help it, do not move by yourself. There is a possibility that many of us will do all of the things I have already mentioned — consume less, become enmeshed in our local communities, participate in alternative economies, engage in local politics, etc. — and will still have to move. Climate change is massive. We cannot prepare for some things as individuals: oceans will rise, regions will burn, and some of us will have to pack our bags as a result.

If you have to move — and the possibility is high — do not move by yourself. The previous era of globalization glamorized the idea of traveling to a new part of the world. It made us believe that we could find a home in any city, even if that were only ever a true fantasy for the rich. Travel became so ingrained in pop culture that for many privileged people, it was part of their personality. Peruse any dating website, and you will see “travel” listed as a favorite interest or activity.

We live in a different world now.

If there is one point you get from this article, it’s that at least for the foreseeable future, we will be living in a more tense world. Fights for resources are getting more pronounced, and xenophobia is increasing worldwide, including in the United States. I pray that we will be able to reverse this trend — all is not lost — but it would be foolish not to be apprehensive about how this new world will treat outsiders, even privileged ones with money.

If you have to move, go someplace where you know people.

If you cannot do that, try to move with people that you do know.

Do not fall into the globalist fantasy that anywhere can be your home. You will fare better as a community than as an individual. The lie of the jet-setting citizen of the world has always been difficult to maintain for everyone, and I suspect it’s going to come crashing down in the next couple of years as xenophobic movements continue to push perceived outsiders out of their communities.

Find Joy In The Small Moments

This next decade is going to suck. I don’t think most people have truly processed the level of change and disruption that will happen in the years ahead. So many people are rushing to “get back to normal” or to “build back better.” They don’t realize that normal, such as it was, is not coming back — and there is a good argument to be made that we shouldn’t return to the conditions killing our ecosystem anyway.

2020, in many ways, was a great training period because every year going forward is going to be like these last few months. It will be an era of political instability, rising tides, burning forests, and constant death all around us. There is no escaping this reality, and although we might push towards a better future yet, the battle to get there will be immensely difficult.

Yet life cannot only be a struggle to survive. If the sole thing you are focused on is subsisting, then it will be a sad life. Take as many breaks as your economic circumstances allow: go to a party with a friend and complain about the world; journey to our shrinking beaches and do laps in the warming water; plan board game nights with your neighbors; crack a joke; dance; have so much fun that you briefly forget that we are all dying.

It’s going to be these fragile moments that sustain you through the hard years ahead. Please take advantage of as many of these moments as you can muster because we might not have that many of them left.

This list is not the most optimistic one that exists when it comes to dealing with climate change. The present state of neglect leaves little room for a rosy picture of changing the world through recycling and reducing plane travel. Humanity might eventually rebound and fix the mistakes that brought us here, but in the meantime, we will have to try to be practical. We are going to need to get to know our community, get involved in local politics, learn to do more with less, participate in alternative economies, and make sure we do not move into new communities where we are strangers, easy to be picked off and blamed by other more xenophobic towns and cities.

Notice that none of these bullet points are telling you to give up. Nor are any of these pieces of advice instructing you to hoard resources in underground bunkers. We should not take on the weight of the world by ourselves. It’s only through community that we have any hope of survival.

Climate change is terrifying because it's a word that tells us rather directly that the world we know is moving on to something else. The climate is changing —not only in terms of our ecosystem, but also politically, spiritually, and maybe even economically. That is scary, but change also brings with it the possibility of a better state of affairs, or at the very least, a less shitty one.

We shouldn’t pretend like things aren’t going to be terrible, but hope is there — if we can harness the change on the horizon.

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