4 Part Recipe to Survive Climate Change with Grace

First, some context.  Inspired by the recent and dire IPCC climate report from Incheon, I have decided to publish this.  It was first drafted after three months of living under constant threat of my home being covered in lava, and watching as my community and landscape were forever changed.  It has been shaped by nearly 20 years of working towards environmental solutions to the great human-induced climate change, and thinking a lot about how to manage what we fail to avoid.  The lava flow was not a climate related disaster but a natural disaster nonetheless, and that is how climate change will be felt – as a series of natural disasters, becoming unrelenting.  There are many physical solutions we can use to correct the imbalance, some of which can be found on this website, but this is a thought piece, a few things I have found to be important in surviving climate change with grace.

Love.  Fear cannot provide lasting inspiration, love can.  Love of what we have or what we desire, is more powerful than fear of what we don’t.  A beach you love, a child you love, their future, fight for that.

Community.  When disaster strikes and when it is time to rebuild, community makes the process easier, enjoyable even.  In calm times community can add fullness to life.  When material things are few we can still feel rich, and this can help reduce the overconsumption that is partly responsible for getting us into this planetary mess.

Tolerance.  Ruined infrastructure, rising seas, and failing crops will force many of us to find refuge elsewhere.  We’ll be increasingly forced to share space with people that look different, that smell different, that speak different, and treat each other different.  Tolerance makes this more comfortable to manage, helps to avoid conflict, and leaves the door open for new discoveries.

Non-attachment.  Loss can be devastating.  Increasingly we will lose the places we revere, people we love, our material possessions, and patterns of life.  Learning to let go of the world and more fully embrace the moment can allow us to take the changes more gracefully.

– Josiah Hunt,
Founder and CEO of Pacific Biochar Benefit Corporation