Units of Survival

Right now, an atmospheric river is driving up to 100,000 evacuations in Washington. It's yet another climate catastrophe, a warning for the rest of us. Honestly, the word "warning" feels insufficient. At some point, you cross over from "warnings" to "consequences." We've been in the consequences phase for a minute or two.

I've been working on the next phase of the guide. It's going to focus on growing food. I've already got 10 pages done, but they need illustrations. I'll be focusing on a typical back yard, but I've also been reading about forms of gardening that suit apartments and urban spaces. I'm also going to focus on hardiness zones. We're not just talking about growing food now, but growing food in the future, when the places we live have different climates. As the guide expands, we're going to talk more about protecting small crops from floods and heat waves. It's not just an urban homesteading guide. It's a homesteading guide for a rapidly changing world. For all we know, you or your grandkids could be growing coffee in their back yards. Isn't that... exciting??? Okay, maybe that's not the right word.

Anyway, I'll have the first chunk of it up next week.

Meanwhile...

If you haven't heard, the German Physics Society and German Meteorological Society are now warning the world that we could breach 3C of global warming by 2050. That news came shortly before my last post tried to summarize the climate research up until now, putting us on a path to 2-3C by 2050 or sooner.

Honestly, it's just more confirmation of what we already know. But some of us need the reminders, to keep us grounded. So many others have checked out. It might feel good to live free from reality, at least for a little while, but it's not healthy, and it creates a loop of toxic positivity that drives you nuts.

If you look around, do all the smiling faces really seem authentically content with the lives they're leading? I don't think so. Some of us have achieved a balance between all the various emotional states we go through every day.

That's where I want to be.

As the world burns, this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner sits on a podcast with the MAGA president's son, openly bragging about how much oil and other natural resources her country has for the U.S. to exploit. The media calls it an "old" video, because she made those statements in February. That's not exactly old, even if early 2025 feels like another lifetime. It takes a lot of nerve to talk like that as every indicator we have tells us the planet is in chaos. There's a heavy dose of irony in awarding the world's top peace prize to someone who openly invites social and economic policies that will drive yet more war, suffering, and death on unprecedented scales.

She's not the only one. As we've discussed on here plenty of times now, the world's richest corporations and their billionaire overlords are abandoning their climate pledges. They're not doing it quietly, either. Even Bill Gates, the face of liberal concern about the climate, has recently declared that we care "too much" about this issue, and we should focus on other things. (Like artificial intelligence.)

This week, I stumbled across an article where a popular journalist makes a very revealing remark about the day's politics. He said he finally believes something many of us have been saying for years, that fossil fuel companies knew very well how bad the climate crisis would get, and they invested billions in lying about it. In his exact words, he believed we were all tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists... until now.

Well, cool...

You know, I'm not interested in starting more confrontations at this stage in my life. And yet, I think it's worth commemorating this attitude.

That's how we've been treated for the last decade, or even the last two or three decades. Our supposed allies, the very concerned liberals and progressives, called us tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists. They called us doomers. They lumped us in with the anti-vaxxers and climate deniers. They said we weren't worth listening to.

Now they're finally starting to get it.

Ironically, we have moved on.

The time for energetic protests has ended. It's never time to give up, but it's time to do something else. We face a different set of choices now than we did 15 years ago. You know what those choices are, and I'm making mine. I'm a teacher and a writer at heart, and these illustrated guides are my path now. I'm still staying informed about politics, but shouting about Trump all day on the internet feels increasingly futile.

We're in the units of survival phase now.

It's time for us to form our groups, online and off. It's time to build the knowledge and skills. It's time to divest from the noise. It's time to build trust. Those expensive bunkers won't be worth a can of beans if their residents don't have that.

So, that's it for now. By next week, I'll have an epic illustrated gardening post to share and develop further. If you've got food growing tips, especially for smaller spaces in cities, feel free to share them in the comments. Even if you live in a more rural area, your advice is welcome and it could help. I'll use it all.