My brain has been churning through a couple of ideas for blog post or, more likely, longer articles for a couple of weeks now. Keeping these pages open in my browser serves as a reminder, but I need to actually start the process of actually sifting through the ideas and generating a coherent response.
This issue is consuming more and more of my attention, but I can't say that all that attention has resulted in any significant action -- thus the title of this post. What am I going to DO?
Solderpunk and StackSmith offer some practical thinking about these issues. I agree that the actions of millions of individuals will almost certainly be more directly effective than trying to prod the massive institutions of government and commerce into making the rapid changes required. However, I don't believe this is an either/or choice, it will require a both/and response (see the quote for a view from "an expert").
It’s improbable that 8 million people would be able to file out of New York City to carve out a bucolic life in the woods, of course. Disaster preparedness in the US is often framed around ideas of the go bag and the hoarding of food and water, but climate breakdown is largely a test of systems in place rather than an individual’s ability to defy the worst.
⋯
“Learning to start a fire is a useful skill to have and having extra water on hand is a good thing to do, too,” said Samantha Montano, an expert in emergency management. “But in Jackson, for example, you’re looking at an extended period of time without safe water. Flint is another extreme example of that. “You can’t stockpile enough water for that length of time, so the problem isn’t solvable at an individual level. The problem is rooted in poor policy decisions over decades.”
Montano said that the US “is not at the point” of system breakdown from climate change or other stresses and that it will be societal action rather than the ability to live in the woods that will maintain that status quo.
“There are a million ways our actions and policies can intervene on climate impacts – if everyone just makes individual decisions for themselves it won’t be a happy ending for most people,” she said. “If we work together and protect systems from breaking down, we have a much greater likelihood to make it through the worst of climate change.”
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📅 c: 2022-09-14 21:48 ✏️ e: 2022-11-20 20:18
🏷 tags: #climatechange #crisis #personal #adaptation
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