After thinking about this, I just can't get myself to wrap my head around the topic. The more I think about it, the more trite my thoughts seem. I *do* feel it's an important topic, but I still can't quite think through it... But here goes what pops into my mind...
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I regret the use of the words "small" and "big." I should have said "easy" and "hard," which are different.
As for the "gloomy" tone, I believe we are at an inflection point for many things and the current political upheaval, in the US and UK most notably, have created challenges, yes, but also created many opportunities for breaking long-standing logjams. We are living in a make or break period, similar to maybe 1936-1937, where what we do in the next decade will have profound impact on the future. I am betting on "make" because I think that's the only reasonable way to move forward.
Resilience is an interesting word... we talk a lot in our community about "resilient landscapes" in the context of wildfire. It basically means not a landscape that won't catch fire, but one that can catch fire without catastrophe, a landscape that burns, but not that hot. It doesn't mean it will survive a crown fire though. It means a landscape that will avoid crown fire.
I look at resilience in that way. Not from a prepper perspective of getting ready for the crown fire, but thinking about maintaining some personal and community resilience to avoid the crown fire. For many issues, I think we are too far gone, but better to work the forest before the fire than after...
Personal reslience
1. Live within your means. Again, I'm not thinking of societal meltdown. If that happens, I don't have gold or some other asset like that buried in the back yard. But as a more general rule, I try to spend less than I earn and keep a reserve of money for a rainy day. I realize not everyone can do that and there have been times when we could not, but I do believe knowing that you can get by on less makes you much more resilient. I would even say that knowing you can live on less makes you happier than having all the things you would have if you spent it all. But maybe that's just me.
2. Filter - Read less news (a struggle for me). Mostly it doesn't make any difference and it doesn't broaden my mind.
3. Connect - Seek diverse relationships in your community. We started holding "come one, come all" events at our house for our whole neighborhood, which has had some longstanding fairly acrimonious divisions based on local politics (e.g. the sewer system) long before the 2016 elections. People who hadn't ever met or who had, but hadn't spoken in months or more all said it was really nice to see neighbors on a winter night. I think face to face meetings with non-like-minded people helps build more resilient communities (and your personal resilience by broadening your social world).
4. Disconnect - Find time for quiet. The current "cult of productivity" is often detrimental. Time to meander both mentally and physically, is crucial to having the reserves you need and to being creative. Packing more production into less time is the devil's game. Lots of studies are starting to show that, at least for creative work, unstructured time is key. Also, that unstructured time is your reserve for when the sh## hits the fan and you need to max yourself out to stay afloat. If everything is already optimized, there's no slack and the system fails. Natural systems are rarely optimized for production. They are optimized for resilience and survival.
In terms of actions easy and hard you can take... again, I pay attention mostly to climate and to US politics, so some things I'm *trying* to do and sometimes succeeding at tend to fall into those categories.
Easy changes (general)
1. JOIN
Join groups who support causes you believe in. If you want politicians to support your causes, you have to be there in numbers for them when it counts. When politicians cross the Koch brothers or the NRA and look for help, they usually find nobody has their back.
2. DONATE
This is for the US, but I have already started donating for the 2018 cycle. Right now is crucial for grassroots candidates. If you want a political system that isn't bought and sold by big money, small money needs to get in very early. By the start of 2018, it's much too late (I started donating in my congressional district back in May). The money candidates had by June 30, 2018, determined the support they would get on the national level, with a second cut on Sept 20. I'm trying to reward people who are personally committed to a solution, but are willing to compromise and get a partial solution. People who don't make perfect the enemy of better.
Easy changes (climate)
I have climate on my mind a lot lately, so I'll start there. I think there is nothing that will pay benefits to societal resilience like stabilizing the climate. People spend a lot of time thinking about LED lightbulbs and recycling, but these are really minor changes compared to the Big 4 decisions we make:
- what we eat
- how much we fly
- how much we drive
- how many kids we have
I find the last one hard to process, because if we're talking about the survival of the human race, "have no kids" is not a solution. And for those of us with no kids who still hope to maybe collect Social Security, no kids = no Social Security.
But the other three are potentially easy changes with large effects
1. Eat more plants
A recent study claimed that if the US made no changes at all except substituting beans for beef, we would by that action alone meet the Paris accord promises. In other words, no change in travel, in energy production, in eating chicken, dairy, etc. Just changing out beef for beans would do it. That's not going to happen, but it's really easy for people to cut back on beef. Another recent study said that the rising methane emissions are almost entirely due to the increase in global consumption of beef. Beef is really rough on the planet because of the digestive system of ruminants.
There are, by the way, some plant-based foods that have high carbon footprints - asparagus airlifted from South America, for example. But beef is an easy one, because the very nature of cattle means that even local beef is going to have a huge carbon footprint.
2. Fly less, drive less.
This is tough because after a long time of really wanting to avoid this except for visiting family, I realize that taking trips is important to Theresa's happiness. So my compromise there is to buy carbon offsets for my travel. Yes, we can't offset our way out of this, but at least it makes a nudge in the right direction.
3. How we source our energy. That comes close to the Big 4. If possible, switch to grid-sourced renewable power. This depends on where you live. Most places in California, it's easy. Other places it varies from the default (Kellogg, TX or Burlington, VT) to impossible.
In California, this takes about 10 minutes through PG&E or Marin Power or others. Basically, you're doing what Google and Apple do when they go "100% renewable" which is to say they are buying a certain about of renewable energy, but in periods where there is a lot of solar available, that power is being sold to regular customers and when the sun is down, Google is buying power off the "old" grid. Until we have good storage, this is how it will be and one fo the reasons it is currently hard to get past about 30% renewable electric. Big storage systems will have to come online to change that.
The way this works is that California imposes standards for the "renewable energy portfolio," meaning a percentage fo electical generation that has to come from renewables. When you sign up for one of these programs, the utility is not able to count your allocation in their renewable portfolio, so it forces an incremental increase. This costs us less than $25 per month with an anverage of 5 users on the system.
4. Use less.
This one I struggle with... the pile of cardboard that accumulates from deliveries is horrifying at our house. I wish I could make more progress there.
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I feel like that's scratching the surface on a tiny number of the meanings one could give to building resilience... But I need to turn to some other things tonight
