The coming unpleasantness - and what to do about it

Walking off the mornings bout of anxiety - fatigue? Caffeine? The pressure of living? Past all the cars, my thoughts turn, as they do, to catastrophic climate change and what to do about it.

The amount of exhaust belching into the atmosphere is staggering. I wonder if there's anything approaching road scale real time air quality data? There's smog reports - there might be proxy measurements, like the heat given off by the cars - you could put IR cameras at intersections and estimate the pollution per car. And then put it on a map, and allow overlays like the cancer death equivalents, or global warming death equivalents. Some way of creating a feedback mechanism - it was the traffic speed sign that got me thinking of it - and how feedback like the calorie counting seems to lean on behaviour more effectively than just ’wanting’ to change something.

And the catastrophic climate change scenarios, the real ecosystem collapse, mass famine/resource scarcity leading to wars, refugees, breakdown of civilization type thinking, perhaps still near the surface because of the coffee, or random malaise, gets you thinking of the kids, and how much of a bring down it will be if we leave them a fucked sandwich...

So I ponder the compound scenario, where somehow we've managed to become self sufficient, and sufficiently remote, or armed, to not be overrun by the starving masses...and it's a bit of a non starter, because where does that lead? If the kids don't go crazy growing to adulthood in isolation then what do you do? Go on mating tours ranging for spouses? Finally suggest in breeding? The train of thought stops long before THAT station.

So then it's urban based survival strategies, and while previously my first instinct was ’well, I'm big. I'll loot and steal what we need’ - it plays out a little differently while we're still in the stroller years, or it's too harsh to ponder having one of the kids get their head blown off beside me as we're trying to steal from our neighbours - so the thinking becomes more ’bunker’ or speakeasy. Some urban model for weathering the storm.

And it all really gets me thinking about sustainable communities - or more precisely resilient, climate shock proof, sustainable, defensible communities - and what that would look like.

So perhaps it starts with a greenhouse? On the house or better yet on the school - and energy sources - solar, geothermal, biomass - until the neighbourhood is producing more than it consumes - so it doesn't need gas cars and can provide electric scooters or rickshaws or snowmobiles...
Which gets me thinking of Open Source Ecology, and getting the school to twin with some developing community in need - to fundraise a maker lab, build some open source tractors...to put a bit of effort into something, to not feel so impotent in the face of it all. Because wouldn't it be nice to feel hopeful. And have some reason to?