Living in the End Times - February 1, 2016

For much of human history we have been entertained by the notion that we are living in "The End Times"

It makes us feel special. It makes us unique. It makes us matter. And it makes life a little less boring, really, when it comes down to it. 

And historically speaking we really think, or thought, we were living at the end. For example: 

• 50 years ago it was the Cold War. The specter of Nuclear War was serious apocalyptic scariness.
• Just about 100 years ago, the global economy first collapsed after World War I. Seriously nasty grim times.
• 150 years ago, in the US, the Civil War was ending. More US soldiers were brutally killed in that war than in all other US wars combined. An entire civilization had to be reordered. Man's inhumanity to man as on out door step. Again, not a great time.

Plagues, Famines, War, it is all there, and has been over and over. 

And every generation seems to have a narrative about how they will be "the last".

Usually, that has not quite been the case, though we've had to make some serious adjustments in how we manage, how we function as individuals and communities. We suffered losses, and horrible sorrows. And yet, we, as a species, have survived.

Climate change is easily apocalyptic too. When we look at the threats we will face our own survival can seem insurmountable. 

But like our history shows, we are amazingly adaptable as a species. 
We can adapt to this too. We may have deaths, sorrows, horrible conditions and losses (This would be why they call it "an apocalypse" people.) But with preparation, ingenuity, and hard work, we have a chance. 

Not everyone will make it. With our species exploding population on the planet, population dynamics suggest not everyone should survive, in principle. The carrying capacity of the planet is being seriously overstretched. 

And Mother Nature will win this. Have no doubt. Because she always does.

To us it is an apocalypse. To her, it is a shift. Our apocalypse is her rebalancing. 
That is terrifying. 
That is serious.
That is coming.
We will see it. 

We need to be ready. 

That I am posting this today, the data of the Iowa Caucasus, is only a little bit ironic. 
And this topic - of apocalypses and Mother Natures, is something I'll spend some time on here on this blog. So we can be prepared. 

Coming up next:
Packing your "go bag": The first step in being prepared

*Graphics from:
http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/52f9178d-00a3-4c1f-a7b9-14976b33ca7d/3b07446d-9570-4275-93f5-47a55d56d9b6.jpg

Housing for the masses?

This is something that I want to come back to soon, but as we face the specter of climate change we will be facing some serious challenges of housing lots of people.

It goes like this:

• Most major cities are in areas very close to coasts. 
• Sea level rise, due to global warming, thermal expansion, and storm surge, as well as ground water inundation is going to make living close to the seas and oceans more difficult. 
• Other people who live in arid areas will find there is not enough water available to sustain them and will need to move. 

These simple facts will result in mass portions of the population on this planet moving away from where they have lived for hundreds of generations to safer, more secure places. 

We see the problems  across the Middle East and in Europe with this with Syrian refugees today fleeing the horrors of their homeland. In Kenya, in Haiti, in refugee camps around the world, thousands of families are barely managing to survive the elements under plastic tarps, with no insulation or protection. The structures that are built are designed to be temporary. 

But when Miami is under water, when New Orleans has slipped into the Gulf of Mexico, or when London is awash in waters over people's heads, where are all those humans, those families going to go?

The horrors will be different from Syria today, but the same questions remain:

How do we house people? 
How to we make sure they are safe and even improve the environment of the area? 
And do we quickly build homes are more than "temporary"?

A friend of mine in Sierra Leone shared this with me on Facebook. 
I'm not sure it's THE solution, but it could be a start.

http://www.boredpanda.com/hobbit-holes-eco-friendly-houses-green-magic-homes/

I'm a huge fan of sustainable, low cost "green" building. I'll spend more time on this issue in the near future, but for now, we all need to start thinking about solutions to the challenges we will be facing. 

For more information on these structures, visit: http://www.greenmagichomes.com/main.php

(yes, I know, these would need to be mass produced, low cost, made from sustainable materials, have appropriate zoning, and infrastructure design and support, etc. - but it is a start, and that's what we need to start working on now. Plus hey, build one of these in your yard and you know your neighbors will all be super impressed - and building social capital is very important too.)


And if you want to learn a bit about my own green building project check out the blog I wrote about 8 years ago, as I was building my own environmentally friendly office space: 
http://greened-house.blogspot.com

Getting it done

Some days, just getting something done and finished is a real pleasure. Especially when it's been hanging over your head for so long you forgot what it felt like to have it gone. Nice!

Climate change and taxes

You don't have to like it, you do have to deal with it. 

It’s easy to feel like adapting to climate change is something that we can put off for a while. It’s not like it is REALLY URGENT. Sort of the same way that filing taxes can be put off until all of a sudden that April 15 deadline swings down on us, and we realize “Oh CRAP! I should have dealt with this weeks ago!!” Then we spend several frantic days collecting forms, trying to make sense of the mysterious language of tax codes and in the end, we either file for an extension or get it in at the last moment and pray we don’t get audited for failing to report Billy’s income from mowing lawns over the summer.

Of course the difference with climate change and taxes, is at least with taxes, we have a pretty clear deadline. Climate change, not so much. Some people are even bold enough to decide that climate change isn’t real. We will let them slide for now, only because there is a better chance that climate change is real than taxes are. Yes, of course taxes are real, but they are also man made and the chances of getting audited are much smaller than being seriously impacted by climate change. It’s just a matter of when.

The other thing about climate change adaptation is we are not really sure what we need to adapt to, how severe it is going to be, or even when it is going to arrive. Taxes are easier that way.

But like filing our taxes, that does not excuse us from suffering the impacts if we are not prepared.

So what do we need to do?

We need to start thinking about what the impacts are. We need to think about how those will affect us. Yes us. Yes, personally. Yes, our safe secure little world where today we can reliably get good coffee in a warm shop on a chilly morning, and feel relatively secure that there will be food we want to eat available that day, and probably we even can drink the water from our taps (well, except in Flint…).

We need to think about what we will do when disaster strikes in huge snow storms with power outages lasting days, when our infrastructure no longer can function and serve our basic needs, like making our water safe to drink, when our government is stretched to the limit and we have to fend for ourselves. We need to think about what we will do when droughts and heat waves parch crops across the world, and make prices soar for basic things like food and energy. We need to think about how we will manage when coastal communities flood and mass migrations of human populations drastically strain every fiber of the support systems designed to help them. We need to be ready to think about how communities washed away by floods and storm surges will rebuild and where. We need to consider how we will feed ourselves when basic foods are not available or when the pressures we feel to survive become unbearable.

Because climate change is coming, it is real and it will impact each and every one of us.

But for today, we can wait. We can put it off. Until it becomes more immediate and urgent. We have other things to do, like start preparing our taxes for this year.