New ways of living together sustainable and equitably will inevitably emerge in predicable, unpredictable and in unexpected forms and on an ad hoc basis. Our existing major institutions are not up to the task of massive adaptation and the speed that will be needed.. 

Several organizations are studying how smaller-scale institutions can organize and survive what is coming. We are aware of the Post Carbon Institute's Resilience program. It is primarily focused on local communities. The Synergia Institute emphasizes transition strategies and cooperative efforts. Other groups are concerned with survival when present institutions are shattered or become ineffective.

 One of the most critical adaptations and decisions most individuals will make sooner or later is joining what we call ClimateSafe Villages, which are designed to be highly resilient, sustainable, and functional eco-communities. If you have not read about our four ClimateSafe Villages models, please do so here or click the logo below.

We are not going to avoid the climate change and other coming global disasters. We will not find technological solutions that will let us continue to live as we do now. Our institutions are unprepared even to find adequate solutions to living in today's predicament.

With the breakdown of familiar institutions and the resulting major disruptions in everyone's life, I think it extraordinarily important to look within ourselves to avoid anxiety, attain equanimity, and find peace of mind. To do so, we must ask: How can we be more human and humane in a turbulent world where each of us will face new conditions of life?

How might we reassess what it is to be human while living in a collapsing civilization? What are some humane ways a person might adapt to the existential predicament before us? How can we, as individual humans, live in a world in which our actions and our current belief systems are failing? Below I list the thoughts of several people and one climate change organization that are deeply concerned about the collapsing societies in which we live. They have accepted that life within the next decades will present many challenges and have suggested how individuals may adjust to continuing to live humane lives.

1. Jem Bendell is a professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria, who presented a paper in 2020 called Deep Adaptation. It stimulated the basis for a worldwide forum discussing the societal questions that arise with destructive climate change. He calls it an ethos of being engaged, of how to support each other, of how to engage in productive dialogue, and how to determine priorities. His book, Deep Adaptation, and YouTube videos expressing his views are available. Bendell writes, "Deep Adaptation is a framework for exploring ideas for how to attempt ... what we call the four Rs … These are all questions because we are in a very new situation where the expectation of simple answers given to us by somebody else are not going to help as much as we exploring together how to be and what to do. "

The essentials of Deep Adaptation are the four Rs. The Four Rs are questions we should always ask before acting to lessen our impact on Nature:

2. Richard Heinberg is a writer and journalist who is an authority on fossil fuels, their uses, and the politics and economics of their development. He is an expert on "peak oil," and the impact fossil fuels have on nature and human society. He is a senior advisor to the Post Climate Institute, contributing a column to its blog each month. The most recent of his over 40 books is simply called "Power." From this book, I extracted the following, Sixteen Words of Advice to Young People in the 21st Century.

3. Al Urquhart. I am writing this article to alert you to some of the best ideas for living in the chaos that will soon affect most people on Earth. If you want a context to see how deeply you are embedded in these changing times and why it is necessary to humble yourself to the realities of earthly ecology, I suggest joining Environmentalists Anonymous, an informal practice in which I have engaged myself for almost 40 years. 

 

Environmentalists Anonymous. (Easing the emotional pain of living in a collapsing society.)

The ten steps are a way of reconciliation: 

Step 1. We Admit that we are powerless over our exploitation of the environment--that our lives have become unmanageable. If we are to remain sane and healthy, we must find a way to recognize both (a) the life and culture in which we have lived and (b) that we are part of a system in which humans and the environment are not opposed. The realization that we are merely part of a naturally evolving and ecological world is a humbling experience for those of us raised in the traditions of The Enlightenment and Modern beliefs, which stress the power, rationality, and individuality of humans and humanity.

(Gregory Bateson wrote: "The self is but a small part of a much larger trial-and-error system which does the thinking, acting, and deciding." (If you want a name for that power, I suggest Gaia. Gaia is the primordial goddess who personified the Earth in Greek mythology. The Gaia principle proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.)  

(Re Steps 4-10. If we accept this new fundamental perspective, we can actively and honestly become part of it by physically acknowledging and, wherever possible, rectifying the wrongs we have done in the past, not perpetuating them today and avoiding them in the future. Additionally, through learning and meditation about Gaia and bypassing this message to others, we may awaken ways of gaining greater sanity within our communities.) 

Hello. My name is Al, and I am addicted to exploiting the Ecology and Evolution of the Earth. (Al is a member of the Job One for Humanity Advisory Board. More information on his background is found here.) 

Being satisfied and at peace with the many new and limited conditions you will experience as climate change conditions worsen will be critical to maintaining your emotional and psychological well-being. Job One for Humanity also has excellent advice on the essential importance of "changing the way you think and feel" about your relationship with nature and the many lifestyle and livelihood changes you will have to make to survive what is coming and live in the new post-climate change collapse and extinction world. 

Unless one also changes their thinking and feelings about nature and their old way of living and working, they are highly likely to feel unhappy and dissatisfied and repeat the same mistakes that have created the climate change nightmare we now find ourselves in. Reading the following two books is crucial if you want to evolve your thoughts and feeling to an optimal place for personal survival and the survival of any team or community you might get involved with. 

The more everyone in your group understands the new attitudes and ideas of these two books, the more they will be on the same page, and the less complaining there will be about losses and changes from your old unsustainable lives.

Make it a requirement to read:

Overshoot, the Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, By William R Catton Jr.

This book goes into some of the most profound deep causes of the climate change and environmental emergencies so powerfully that everyone concerned about climate change and our environment must read this book.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse, Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity, by Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen

This book dives even deeper into the human causes of our current climate emergency (even deeper than our highly recommended Overshoot book) going back almost 10,000 years. You may be pleasantly surprised and challenged by what you discover in this timely and soulful book.

It is based on a credible overview of climate and environmental science. It will help you quickly evolve your thinking and feelings to the new reality of our global climate-driven collapse process and what comes next.

It is a must-read for everyone you think will be there with you trying to survive what is coming. It will not only help put everyone on the same page, but it will also help produce the emotional and psychological stability required in your family or group to survive the suffering, death, and the many climate change-driven primary and secondary consequences that are no longer avoidable. Do not skip reading this book!

And finally,

Being a contributing and dependable member of a well-prepared, resilient eco-community will be the final step for any wise preparation and adaption program for you, your family, or your business. Without some form of eco-community membership, you will face a cascade of hardships, mostly alone. You will not have many necessary resources and will not be adequately ready for the climate change emergency and our 11 other major global crises.

Click here to see the now independent ClimateSafe community project Job One helped to create to help you make good decisions about finding and joining the right eco-community.

 

Action Step 17: Additional critical climate change resilience-building factors for your home or business.

Here are many climate change resilience-building actions you must be aware of for your home or business to survive. Some are new, and some have been discussed previously but are worth mentioning again in new ways because they are critical. The following list will make a lot more sense if you understand the essential frames of time and waves of climate change consequences that you will be experiencing over the following decades. (Our most updated climate change consequence timeframe document is in our member's section, found here.)

a. Have a Secure Water Supply: Water is life. It would be best if you were on a land with an abundant, safe, and dependable long-term clean water supply. A human can live three days without water and then dies. If the water is polluted are infected with bacteria or viruses, you will get sick, suffer, and probably die from most waterborne problems. You will also need water for a steady food supply from your garden and any animals or fish you may farm.

b. Heat management: As temperatures continue to break all previous records, all types of energy-efficient air conditioning and air cooling technology will be critical to survival for homes and businesses, particularly for older populations. A state-of-the-art air conditioner will be essential as temperatures soar and break all previous records. This cooling is because heat domes and heat waves will become more common and last longer. 

All new construction homes should also have basement areas for emergency cooling, food storage, and to deal with rising heat and regular power outages. In the later climate change phases of increasing heat and as mega-wildfires arrive worldwide, building or buying super-insulated, underground, bermed, or mostly underground homes could also be a wise way to handle multiple climate change risks. 

c. Wildfire Management: As global heat rises, we will go through a several-decade period with many of the world's major forests burning wildly simultaneously. Living in a highly forested area unless you have a fireproofed, underground, or bermed home will be a hazardous investment and a risky bet for your future. You will have to worry about wildfires if you live in a forest. You must also carefully check the prevailing winds during the fire season, even if you live miles away. This wind direction issue is because massive forest fires near you will produce so much wildfire smoke you will repeatedly be lining under hazardous air quality conditions. Some existing homes can be retrofitted to minimize fire dangers.

Fires will become one of the biggest problems as global warming temperatures soar and droughts turn foliage into tinder. All homes and buildings must be fire-resilient in areas where fires will regularly occur. If they are near a forest, there will be a clearing of at least 100 yards or more between any building, and it's the nearest trees or foliage. Also, all homes and buildings in high-risk fire areas should have other exterior watering systems that will keep these homes and buildings wet and protected from flying embers if a fire is in the area or passing through. 

There is no way to completely escape the fire risk in the future as temperatures soar, especially if you are near dried foliage or forests. If you're in a fire-prone area, you will need to fireproof all building roofs and walls and create high-quality wildfire smoke removal systems. The same high-quality smoke removal systems should also be purchased to remove other increasing pollutants from the worsening air quality you will breathe.

d. Wind Management: Increasing heat will also mean increasing and sporadic wind and wind speeds almost everywhere. It helps to think about the seldom discussed climate change increasing wind consequences like this. Our atmosphere will increasingly "boil and churn" as it continues to warm each year, much like you would see an increase in water boiling and churning as the heat is increased under a pressure cooker. 

This "pressure cooker" wind-increasing effect is because the top layer of our atmosphere acts like a pressure cooker lid keeping most of our climate change warming inside our lower atmosphere. Increasing winds worldwide will eventually become one of climate change's most damaging and consistent consequences. 

For example, the western coast of the United States will have significantly increased 70-100 miles per hour wind events. If you live in a hurricane cyclone area, you must also prepare for the coming category six hurricane or cyclones with 180 240-mile-an-hour winds. Many locations will now be subject to wind Derechos of 100 mph or more.

Our high wind future means that our buildings and homes must now be designed or refit to withstand those higher winds depending upon your area. More and more, you will see concrete or steel reinforced homes, land termed houses, or even more undergoes buildings that will also be safer against heat and fire threats.

e. Rain Bomb, Flooding, and Drainage Issues: There will be massive rain bombs dropping weeks or months' worth of rain in hours or days. Be sure you have superior drainage systems and are not too close to rivers or lakes that will massively overflow their 100-year flood plains with high water marks during these episodes. Start thinking in terms of 1,000-year floodplains. If you are looking at a valley with a river or all of your nearest local stores and supplies are located in a flood plain, think carefully about moving there even if your hand will be safe because the flooding will trap you where you are and keep you from the additional supplies you may need. If you live in a 1,000-year flood plain, we advise that you consider relocation (aka managed retreat) because you're going to flood out over and over again

Part of solving future drainage issues will be installing sump pumps in every home or business 3 to 4 times larger than the current sump pumps. Massive rain bombs of up to 30 inches of rain over 48 hours will produce enormous water amounts that will fill your basements, overflow your sewer systems and the lowest areas after major rain bombs.

Drainage issues also involve the quality and size of drainage systems near your home or business.

f. Dehumidification: You will need the best dehumidifier you can buy in many areas. This is because many places are already experiencing high temperatures and extremely high humidity, which makes working outside nearly impossible. The human body cannot shed heat through sweat when the humidity is too high. When it cannot free enough of this heat, it dies. Because more heat causes more evaporation which causes more humidity and moisture in the air, do not neglect high-output dehumidification for your home or business.

g. Energy Independence: Your home or business building or remodeling must include plans for sustainable energy through wind, solar, or other sustainable, nonpolluting sources. It would be best not to rely upon existing energy delivery companies and structures as the climate worsens. There will be many energy shortages, delays, and price hikes. Additionally, we must stop polluting our atmosphere with fossil fuels.

h. Drought Independence: You will also need extensive water storage and water capture systems in drought-prone areas.

i. Compensating for Ongoing Global Crop Failures, Lowered Crop Yields, and Soaring Food Prices: There will be widespread failed food distribution and food insecurity issues. Food prices will keep soaring. 

You will eventually need to buy and store a year's worth of food. You will also need to sustainably grow or raise through four seasons most of your fruits, vegetables, animals, legumes, etc. You will need to have a good growing season and soils for your organic garden and farmland unless you are going to do permaculture, which can take 1 -3 years to establish. 

Working towards food independence is one of the most critical long-term factors for survival. Not only will traditional food supply distribution break down, but we will also have to develop sustainable agricultural practices that can survive extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme storms, fires, etc. 

In some cases and in some locations, this may mean growing food indoors using grow lights and other technologies to allow for four-season food production no matter what the outside weather might be. You will also need to utilize grow lights and some vertical hydroponics and larger-scale aquaponics or other new farming technologies inside specialized grow buildings. 

Soil quality building will also be a critical skill you must understand. Here is a helpful site for soil quality information: https://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/ .

j. Food Storage: You will need a safe and stable year-round cool and always dry food storage or food preservation type cellar. Ideally, a basement or cellar dug into the ground can maintain a reasonably consistent cooler temperature year-round food storage without using any energy to cool it. 

k. Land Location, Isolation, Security, and Defensibility: If you and your children want to live as long as possible and ride out most of what is coming, you must carefully consider the factors of the location's isolation and defensibility, which equals its security level. Napoleon did many bad and foolish things, but he said something powerfully true. He said, "Geography is destiny." Therefore, the final relocation, migration, or managed retreat geography (location) you pick to live in will become your climate change destiny. Choose wisely and carefully. 

Over time, as global warming accelerates, crops fail, and mass migrations, criminality, and conflict rise keeping yourself and your resources safe will become your biggest survival issue! Your eventual location should be distant from any easy mass migration route. Increased civil and criminal unrest will happen first in large urban areas and then along the easier-to-take mass migration routes to the global warming safer regions above or below the 45th parallel North or South. The more isolated, difficult to reach, and the more defensible the land is, and the safer it will be for the longest possible time! An example of defensibility is only having one narrow, winding road leading to your land. Trees surround your land's perimeter, and you can put a gate in front of your entrance. Or, your land is in a canyon with steep walls and only one entrance.

In this document, the Job One member's only section describes many of the best cities and micro-climate areas within the US for land, homes, and businesses. This document also discusses the pros and cons of other regions worldwide.

And the bitter truth about about final location is this, no matter where you pick as your final location you will need to have a back up emergency bug out plan for a new location in case that location is eventually overrun. In prepping, there is a saying, one is none, two is one, and three is two. This means always backup your backups!

l. Sea Level Rise and Coastal Land and the Thwaites Doomsday Glacier Collapse Issues: If you are considering buying land, a home, or business near any ocean coast around the world and want to have this land for long-term survival, you will first need to factor in the correct level of sea level rise. With all types of global ice and snow melting, we predict that the correct level of sea level rise will be as much as 2-3 feet by 2050 and sea level rise by as much as 6-9 feet by 2100. 

It also would be best to allow some calculation for the worst and most likely arriving climate tipping point, the predicted collapse of the Thwaites "doomsday glacier" in Antarctica. It is about the size of England or Florida.

This glacier will produce an initial 2-3 feet of global sea level rise over several decades once it breaks off and collapses into the sea. An article in the Smithsonian magazine predicted at worst; Thwaites could collapse as soon as 3 to 5 years from 2022. But more likely, this collapse may be several decades away.

After Thwaites breaks off, the glaciers behind Thwaites on the Antarctic mountain range will begin sliding off the mountains into the sea. These other glaciers will raise the global sea level by about another seven to ten feet over the following decades. The speed at which huge pieces of this glacier are already breaking off has increased by six times over the last 30 years.)

When the Thwaites doomsday glacier does break off, it will also threaten the coastal infrastructure (roads, hospitals, food stores, sewage and water treatment facilities, ports, energy transport or generation, etc.) So if you are buying land near a coastal ocean area for long-term survival, be sure you allow for correct the height of the ground above the predicted sea level rise and for the loss of all services close to all low-lying infrastructure that will be inundated.

For example, in the United States, Galveston, Texas, is looking to build a $30 billion seawall because of rising sea levels that will flood it regularly. The problem is that the sea wall they are contemplating building is based on a gross underestimation of sea level rise and timeframes. This means that even those who think they will be safe behind this new seawall will have a rough time. So think carefully when you purchase land or migrate to an area close to the coast. As a general rule, if you are going to live near the coast, we recommend you by land or relocate to an area at least 25 -35 feet above the highest previously recorded flood or storm surge, or tsunami. 

m. Cold Spells: as paradoxical as it seems, climate science has predicted severe cold spells will occur suddenly as the jetstream moves and other climate change-related conditions change worldwide. If you live in an area affected by cold spells, you may also need an emergency backup and a nonpolluting wood-burning stove. These new nonpolluting wood stoves exist, but they are about $6,000 or $7,000.

n. Other Critical Construction, Remodeling, or Emergency Preparation Factors: Remember to include in your building or remodeling plans to properly insulate your home to get your home or business as close to net-zero energy use as possible. You will also need an underground room or basement that stays close to the ground's temperature at 6-8 feet deep, which will maintain about 52 degrees F in most areas. If you do not have a basement or storage room for storing food, you will need energy-efficient air conditioning systems because of increasing heat spells. This is particularly true and important for older adults, young children, and infants. Both the elderly and the very young have poorly developed or degenerated sweat glands that do not remove heat from the body as efficiently as the sweat glands of adults. Life could be lost quickly if your air conditioning goes down in an extended heat wave or heat dome and you have no underground room to stay cool.

We also recommend having your well as a dependable water supply backup and an on-site water purification system. We also recommend having a septic tank. At some point, water, power, and sewage from the local area will all be affected. 

In emergency preparation, there is a saying that "one is none, two is one, and three is two." This means you must have multiple backup systems and critical parts redundancies to increase your independence and long-term survivability.

o. Allow at least 2-3 years to build or to remodel climate change-resilient old homes or businesses, or if you are relocating, create a new climate change-resilient home or business once you have found it: To do everything listed above or below, you will need to allow at least several years. This time delay is because there are already shortages of critical emergency and adaptation supplies you will need. Additionally, getting building or remodeling contractors to do the required work with the current weather extremes, seasonal changes, and other work scheduling challenges will take time and patience. Lastly, for most new gardeners, getting an organic garden or your garden's permaculture working right will take a few years. 

We suggest looking into fire-resistant or fireproof net-zero prefab homes if you want to cut that three-year time down. Prefab homes have come a long way over the decades, and if you carefully inspect what they are made out of and their claims for fire resistance and energy efficiency, etc., you should be able to find a quality net-zero prefab home at a reasonable price that can be delivered right to your build site.

p. Jet Stream Condition: The stability of the jet stream in your area or its variability or its motion in and out of your area will be a significant factor in radical weather changes and extreme weather conditions for your area. Check the most current projections for your area's jet stream location and condition before migrating, relocating, or doing a government-funded manage retreat.

This jet stream issue will also be made more difficult by high unpredictability as other climate tipping points are crossed, which also can affect the jet stream. (Click Here for a link to a new IPCC report that contains many new illustrations for projected weather worldwide.

Please be aware IPCC reports are usually 20-40% underestimated and incorrect because they do not include many of the scores of climate change tipping points in their computer modeling. Click here to learn more about the IPCC's history of underestimation.)

q. Local microclimate Issues: Suitable microclimates can be found within and outside our designated global warming safer areas. For various reasons, many areas within generally safer regions are not suitable microclimates. It will take additional work to ensure you are in a safe and usable microclimate.

Among the many microclimate factors is having a decent tolerable local climate now and as global warming accelerates. You also will need to ask yourself if most of your party can endure this new micro-climate. For example, will you and they be able to tolerate its normal or worst humidity levels, annual days of cloud cover, yearly days of wind or rain, annual snowfall amounts, average monthly temperatures, or various insect issues (mosquitos, ticks factors, etc. Annual worldwide weather patterns can be found at weatherspark.com.) As you are discovering in this list, many environmental, climate, and social factors contribute to creating physical and psychological well-being in your new location.

r. Build local greater community climate change resilience. At some point, ClimateSafe Villages or other wise independent communities must reach out and help educate their local politicians, local government agency officials, zoning boards, etc. on the local danger areas they must preventively address to build full local community climate change resilience. Click here for the list of critical local community-level resilience-building issues that must be openly discussed and completed before more major climate change tipping points are crossed in your local community. This page has everything you need to get started on this essential action.