What Can You Tell Youth Afraid of Dying from Climate Change? Part 2

This is part 2 of What Can You Tell a 17 Year Old? These posts are based on the two part series on this topic by Steve Gencko

In Part 1, he discusses two questions youth should consider about this.

• What predictions can you rely on?
• What will give your life meaning?

The questions in Part 2 are:

• What skills and mental habits will you need?
• How will you live?

I’m just going to outline what Genko says in his article. You can find a fuller explanation of all of this there. I will then discuss my concepts of how to build communities for the (near) future we are facing.

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What skills and mental habits will you need?

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How will you live?

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The havoc from increasingly violent storms and development of large areas of drought will increasingly overwhelm our economic and political systems. Millions of people will no longer receive payments from employment or social safety systems. Financial institutions will fail. Military, public safety, and governance systems will break down. Municipal services such as water, power, transit, sewage and trash processing will fail.  Food will no longer be available in grocery stores. We need to begin to prepare now. Not wait until the day water is no longer flowing from the faucet. Not wait until more of us are left without critical infrastructure. Not wait until millions are forced to flee coastal cities as the oceans flow into their streets, or flee wildfires, or areas with lethal heat, medical services including medications are no longer available. We’re already seeing the collapse of political and economic systems.

The Midwest

We are faced with two broad problems. How to adapt our own lives to deal with these changes, and what to do about the flood of people who will be migrating to the Midwest.

Since we will soon not be able to depend on municipal water and power, transport of food from distances, schools and hospitals, many will be forced to move to rural areas where they can live and grow their own food.

The Choice

It would seem we have two choices.

1. One is to narrowly focus on the best we can do to prepare ourselves and immediate community to adapt to the coming changes.
2. The other is to also work on ways we can help the many people who will be coming to where we live to learn, adapt and thrive as well as possible.

In the coming chaos we can help our own safety by welcoming climate refugees, instead of building walls against them.

Disaster Preparedness

This model is in part written from my Quaker viewpoint. As Friends, we will make the second choice, to care for those who will be displaced. This will be like disaster relief work, only on a scale never seen before.

We first need to learn how to adapt to this uncertain future ourselves. Part of that will be to network with others, both to learn from and to build a network to coordinate the response to the needs of the climate refugees.

Building Communities-My Vision

We need to build model sustainable communities. (See my posts: https://jeffkisling.com/?s=beloved+communities). I believe spirituality, whatever that might mean to you, will be an important factor in how we can adapt and live with each other during the collapse.

There have been numerous such experiments in intentional community. But this model must be created with the intention of being replicated many times over with minimal complexity, using locally available materials—a pre-fab community.

Pre-fab components

• Community hub with housing and other structures
  • Simple housing
    • Berm houses
      • Sometimes referred to as Efficient Earth-Sheltered Homes (https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/efficient-earth-sheltered-homes)
    • Straw bale houses
    • Passive solar and solar panels
    • No individual kitchens, bathrooms or showers (community ones instead)
  • Stores, school, meetinghouse
  • Central kitchen, bathrooms and showers
• Surrounding fields for food and straw
• Water supply
  • Wells, cisterns and/or rain barrels
• Power
  • Solar, wind, hydro, horse
• Manufacturing
  • 3 D printing
  • Pottery
  • Sawmill
• Communication
  • Radio, local networks
• Transportation
  • Bicycles
  • Horses
  • Pedal powered vehicles
• Medical
  • Stockpile common medications
  • Essential diagnostic and treatment equipment
  • Medical personnel adapt to work in community
• Spiritual
  • Meeting for worship
  • Meeting for business

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