We are moving past the idea that Climate Change is sometime in the future, maybe after we are dead, or maybe sometime in our life, to realizing that it is happening now. Here we are faced with raging fires in Colorado and California- taking out whole communities, to floods in Europe, Asia, and America, to hurricanes in the Philippines. Not only that, but here in America, as the leader of democracy, we are seeing signs of social breakdown – voter rights shutdown, industry sheltering, cutting social programs, stalemate of crucial change-making proposals.

Social breakdown begins with repression of public voice, monopolizing of power, and breaking of the legal system of justice. We are heading there at warp speed as the capitalist moguls use influence on the political system to keep their power.

A paper from British professor Jem Bendell called Deep Adaptation: A map for navigating Climate Tragedy, is moving beyond lets-not-go-there to we-are-going-there-so-get-ready. He motivates his readers to think deeply about what we really hold dear and how we can change our own focus to what matters.

“Unlike the growing prepper movement that prioritizes personal survival at all costs, Deep Adaptation calls for adaptive responses that spring from solidarity with all life, which requires an expanded sense of self and kinship.”

 He places not just personal survival on the list of actions, but he advocates using a set of values that will heal the problems that create global warming.

“Part of my motivation for staying engaged after my DA paper went viral was to contribute to kind ways of responding to increasing feelings of vulnerability. Not only ways that are kinder than a ‘Mad Max’ future of violent crime in a lawless society. Ways that would also be kinder than a ‘Major Max’ future of totalitarian governments using fear to generate public aggression towards independent thought and behavior. This is because I value human rights as central to what society means and therefore any suspension or denigration of such rights is an aspect of societal disruption. Worse still, if such rights remain curtailed by power and undefended by much of the public, then that represents a societal breakdown. Something which, in hindsight, might be considered an aspect of societal collapse.”

This paper is worth reading in order to cope with the future as it descends on us.