Climate chaos is here and we need to talk through our options, choices, decisions, and plans, then share if we’ve got anything we think can help with survival. Each week I’ll present a question or a topic that’s about something every one of us is likely to face, and see if we can figure out ways to deal with it together.
Last week’s question was Do You Stay or Do You Go? This week’s question is:
What’s Your Timeline?
From glaciers melting to species extinctions, everything is changing, and the rates of change are increasing.
- When do you think your life will permanently flip to a new reality due to climate chaos?
- Are you preparing for this change?
- Why do you think this is the timeline?
My Timeline
I think we’ve got 2 years until a major permanent change in the U.S. due to climate chaos. Timelines will not be the same everywhere — Sudan, for example, probably flipped a decade ago due to desertification, Haiti was flipped by 2006 by deforestation. The specifics will also be different in different locales inside a country — coastal Bangladesh is already permanently changed, while the northern areas bordering Myanmar and India can sometimes still seem to be within a “normal” range. Some shifts will only be clear after the fact, when no repair, no replacement, and no going back to “normal” ever happens.
My “Calculations”
Some of this is just gut, but it’s gut based on rates of change added together, divided by the “it’s all happening faster than anyone predicted” factor, producing a rough average that seems to fit what I’ve been observing.
The big things I’ve been following are the AMOC, ocean acidification, the polar vortex, the current mass extinction event, melting permafrost, desertification, pollution (especially light, industrial chems, plastics, endocrine disruptors, nanoparticles, toxic heavy metals, nitrogen, and smoke), carrying capacity, the melting cryosphere, invasive species, disease vectors (and host-jumping associated with deforestation), and weather and infrastructure.
What’s surprised me is that I think the first huge and permanent change Americans will notice is going to be in transportation. Weather events do damage and kill a lot of people, fish go belly up across an entire ecosystem, plants and animals and snow and ice disappear, but it’s transportation that we’re going to actually notice first.
I’m guessing that:
- multiple catastrophic weather events will combine with
- poorly built and/or maintained infrastructure made worse by
- a lack of money (exacerbated by lack of insurance and reinsurance for local municipal bonds) and
- extreme heat events
to start doing significant damage to transportation across the U.S. in the next 2 years.
Planes will have a much harder time flying due to clear air turbulance and heat, longer freight trains will have a greater chance of catastrophic derailment, and roads will be hotter or surrounded by fire or blocked by floods or landslides.
How I’m Preparing For This
We’re trying to get out of here while moving across country is still relatively easy. There are family issues making this a longer process than we’re comfortable with, but we’re working on it. We’re planning a much more circumscribed and locally-centered life at our destination.
Specifically, we’re planning to grow as much of our food as we can, reduce our consumption to things that are locally recyclable or compostable, and focus on our new community. We’re assuming that the age of getting whatever you want from whatever distance away is over.
What’s Your Timeline?