A change is coming

Randolph Seibold

December 23, 2018

fire bucket Look to your home-fires.

Following climate change and renewable energy for the past 14 years, seeing the steadily increasing real-world impacts, technological progress, and, ever so slowly, public concern and engagement, punctuated by brain-numbing climate conference wrangling…it feels like we may be at the edge of a major shift in focus. A return to the home-fires. To local watershed logging issues. To interface forest-fire tending. To gardening. To conflict resolutions, or engagements.

The threats of Climate Change may have finally become real enough to activate our “ancient brains”, the instinct-based survival mind of the human pre-history, as described here exceptionally well by Dan Gardner. Up until now, its been very difficult to grasp the existential threat, for several major reasons. But now, real-world, full-blown survival crises is almost right on top of us, and we may suddenly find ourselves running and leaping and falling all over ourselves to start practicing not climate change mitigation, but the until-now mostly vaguely-referenced climate change adaptation piece (by far the shorter write-up of the two on wikipedia here).

viking family home fire But interestingly, that will not for most people’s part mean they’ll drive less, eat less meat, or forgo their next trip to Hawaii. It means they will start to ready their own defences, whatever that means for them. From billionaires buying retreats in New Zealand and Montana, to homeowners digging deeper for that extra disaster insurance, to the homeless managing their footwear more conscientiously, its time to get ready.