Gentle Decline 2/11: Reports and Retrenchments

We need to talk about the IPCC Report, and what the world is going to do about it.

Hello. Welcome to all the new readers coming from Christopher Brown’s Field Notes! I hope Gentle Decline meets the high expectations he’s set.

So, obviously, the big news of the week has been that the 6th IPCC report is out, and it’s looking kind of grim. The best explainer I’ve seen is by Eric Holthaus, if you’re in need of a brief and vaguely optimistic summary. The question that I’ve heard most from people is “what can I do?”. The short answer, per Emily Atkin of Heated, is anything. The longer answer is, well, longer.

[Gentle Decline is an occasional newsletter about climate crisis, and - more to the point - how to cope with it. You can support the newsletter via Patreon, Ko-fi, or by buying some of the seriously classy merchandise. The spotlighted product for this issue is the Gentle Decline Enamel Mug. Hard-wearing, serviceable, really kind of nice to drink from. Acquire one forthwith.]

It’s also worth noting, before I really get rolling here, that the IPCC report contains nothing new, and that this is the first time - in the 6th report - that it has put the blame on humans. Because the report passes through so many hands, and needs approval from so many people, there is a fair degree of watering-down going on. Not in the actual numbers, but in the language around them. Bear that in mind if you’re reading it, or reading coverage of it.

Onward. There are two major things to do right now. The first is to try to put the brakes on the actual changes, so that we get the minimum warming we can. The second is to prepare for the things that will happen with the warming we are now inevitably getting. The second is kind of what this newsletter is all about, so I’m going to go into that in more detail, and therefore deal with the first thing first.

There isn’t a lot we can do at the purely personal level. Certainly, continue to recycle, minimise the flights you take, plant some trees and pollinating flowers, and don’t cut your lawn in any given year until at least June, and preferably July, in the Northern hemisphere. Use public transport. To be honest, if you’re reading this, you probably know and do these things. But your personal carbon footprint is a feint from the fossil fuels industry, pretty close to being a hoax. The level at which change has to happen is corporate and governmental.

The readership of Gentle Decline is getting to the stage now where, just on plain statistics, some of you are going to be in control of some degree of decision-making in corporations or government bodies, from local to national level in your various countries. So while I’m advocating for everyone else to write letters, you’re actually able to, well, make those decisions. Make changes. Cut down on aspects of your business that produce emissions, ensure people travel less for business and for gods’ sakes don’t start re-opening offices after the pandemic; let people work from home whenever possible. Encourage it, even. In government, work towards compulsory emission reduction for corporations - and I mean the kind of compulsory which results in businesses being closed down if they don’t cooperate, not just paying fines. If you work in the fossil fuels industry, well, at this stage I think you’ve a moral duty to sabotage it.

For the rest of us, it’s back to pulling on that one lever we all have: public opinion. Write to the companies of which you’re a customer.

“Dear X;

I’ve been a customer of [company] for [number of] years. Obviously, I’d like to remain so. But the time has come that I need to choose between [company] and its competitors based on which is doing the most for the environment. I’m sure you’ve seen the IPCC report published on August 9th. What I want to know from you is: what changes are you making? I don’t want to know about things [company] has already done, or your policy statements. I want to know about concrete changes you’re making to reduce [company’s] emissions of greenhouse gases.

Yours sincerely,
[You]”

Feel absolutely free to copy and paste that, and also to make any edits that suit you. Companies, unlike politicians (at least in Ireland) seem to read and heed email, so you can send that in to their public-facing email address, and also any corporate emails you can get hold of. Similarly, if you have friends or family in decision-making positions in companies, now is the time to call them (or text, WhatsApp, email, whatever) and go, “Hey. I’m worried about the IPCC report. What’re you doing to help with that?”.

Equally, you can write to your democratic representatives, and also your heads of government, environmental ministers, ministers of finance, and anyone else you feel like who might be able to make changes. Paper letters are more effective for politicians in Ireland; your mileage may vary.

“Dear [Representative];

The IPCC report published on August 9th is a matter of grave concern. I would like to know what changes will be made to enable [country] to reduce its emissions as a matter of urgency. Carbon taxes don’t appear to be working; according to figures from the IEA, the only thing that has reduced emissions in recent decades has been the pandemic, and they’re already rising again in 2021. Please let me know what changes will be made.

Yours sincerely,
[You]”

And then it’s a matter of taking to social media and to the streets, writing to newspapers, generally making noise. Make it very clear that reducing emissions will have to be first priority for any politician, or your vote will go to someone else.

So. Having dealt with that, let’s look at the practical stuff you can do yourself. The main thing to say here is that nobody knows what way things will fall out. It’s pretty hard to predict the weather a week in advance; predicting how the the climate will go, years ahead, is a lot harder. But we can say that it will be, on average, warmer; that it will be more chaotic; that sea level will rise; and that there will be second-order effects like wildfires. There is also the consideration, for those of us in Europe and on the East Coast of the United States, that the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation), aka the Gulf Stream, is pretty certainly going to stop sometime in the next century, which will make both areas colder - Europe more so - and provide even more sea-level rise in eastern North America.

Things you can do fall into three broad categories: skills (“Grow Food”, in my 3 Rules), physical preparations (“Move Inland”), and organisation (“Be Generous”). It is utterly impossible for me to cover everything in those categories in one issue, and indeed, that’s broadly what this newsletter is all about. But I’ll attempt to give some pointers, and you can read through the back issues while I get to future ones.

My expectation for the era of climate change - which we are now pretty solidly within - is that there will be a slow decline in the availability of technology and what we vaguely label “advancement”. There are multiple reasons for this, which I’ve largely talked through way back in Volume 1, Issue 4. The overall gist, though, is that in the absence of fossil fuels (which might be due to them being taxed into a financial stratosphere, made illegal to some degree, or later on just running out) and in a world where global trade is just not as available (which is happening right now, mostly due to the pandemic), the technology we can actually rely on is that of pre-World-War-I, with the addition of telecommunications. Back then, our fossil fuel reliance was on coal, which was mostly for forges, steam trains, and ships; we can mostly get around these with technology we’ve developed since.

I am not about to say - quite - that we all need to learn how to operate scythes and bee smokers. But I do think that anyone who is thinking about the future has a responsibility to learn some skills which will be useful in it. This is sometimes, mostly jokingly, called a “post-apocalyptic skillset”, and you can learn it from historical re-enactment, back-to-the-earth movements, traditional crafts groups, and so forth. Exactly what skills will be useful isn’t knowable, but if you look at things which were done before 1914, that’s a good grounding.

Obviously, you can’t know all the things. I can cook, I can sort-of grow food, I can do some carpentry, I can light a fire in almost any conditions, I’m a decent storyteller, and I can at least keep afloat in water. I cannot make baskets, my sewing is no more than functional, I cannot knit, crochet or naalbind, my woodcutting is downright primitive, and while I know some of the theory of beekeeping, I’m somewhat allergic to bee stings, so I haven’t learned more. But - and this is covered more under organisation - I know people who can do all these things. The main point here is to have some skills with which, were you transported to the early 1900s, you could make a living. I hope it won’t be that bad, but it would be remarkably stupid, knowing it could be that bad, not to be prepared.

(This year’s experimental-containers potato harvest. I’m now happy with the approach, and down to optimising yields)

There’s a sort of side-note here that learning new skills is a skill in itself, and many of us in the 21st century lose it in our twenties. Witness, for example, the amount of protest, complaining, and downright whining when people are asked to master a new social medium like TikTok or Discord, and that’s a _very minor_ skill. So if you’re learning something new (and I do mean learning it, not dilettante-ing on the edges of it), you are at the very least keeping that bit of the mind in good order.

Additionally, there is an emotional skill in acceptance of and coping with the changes that are happening now and coming soon. I’m honestly not well-equipped to instruct anyone in that; my particular sort of not-diagnosed-but-almost-certainly autistic brain doesn’t take a lot of account of emotion. I will instead refer you to Britt Wray’s Gen Dread newsletter, and specifically a recent issue, Resources for working with climate emotions.

Next, physical preparations. The biggest one is to assess the place in which you’re living, and work out whether it’s suitable for the longer term or not. I’ve written about housing in a climate-proofing context in Volume 1, Issue 14 and in a pandemic context in Volume 1, Issue 23. Most of that writing is in the context of places to move to, rather than from, and little enough of it deals with preparation in place - I’ll address that more in future issues, and there’s a lot to say about it. I’m also going to be looking at local-level physical preparations.

However, circumstances may arise - fire or flood, say - in which you need to get out quickly. For this, you need a “bug-out bag”. The basic concept here is all the stuff you need for 72 hours or so when you can’t get home. In the continuing cascade of back issues, see Volume 1, Issue 7, right at the end. Obviously, in a period where few enough of us have left home much for 18 months, it’s worth checking in on that. Falling more under organisation, you also need a place to go - it’s good to have this actually arranged in advance, rather than turning up on someone’s doorstep, or indeed having nowhere to go. Contact a friend or family member who lives somewhere geographically distinct from you (as in, they won’t be affected by the same fire or flood), and go “hey, if there’s a disaster in my area, can I come and stay with you for a few days?”.

And this brings me round to the wider concept of organisation, a lot of which is around community. I’ve been building communities, online and off, for pretty much my whole adult life, so there are aspects of this that I find difficult to explain. The main point is, though, that being a rugged individual who can make it alone is nonsense which absolutely does not exist in reality. You don’t have to build a community, though, in order to be part of one - there are plenty out there. Your local allotment group, seed-savers club, historical re-enactment group, men’s shed, knitting circle, and fishing club are all communities, and all of those have relevant skills. I’ve written about community and networks in Volume 1, Issue 19, too.

The main thing is to talk to people about possible issues, and you don’t need to be doom-and-gloom about it (although there’s a line floating around in my head about one of the advantages of preaching to a choir being that there is a choir). “Hey, I’ve been thinking about growing cabbages”, “hey, I’ve been thinking about flooding”, “hey, I’ve been reading the IPCC report”, “hey, I’ve been thinking about growing flax for linen”, and so on. You can then, later, get on to “so, seeing as there’s an inevitable level of disaster coming, would you like to cooperate further on getting sorted in advance?”.

The absolutely essential part here is to share your resources: information, preparation, and when it comes down to it, space, supplies and food. If we don’t share, if we’re not generous, we really are doomed.

Alright. That’s enough for now; I have two future issues pinned down, and there’s enough reading in this and the linked back issues for nearly anyone. If there are things you’re concerned about in dealing with climate, if you’ve counter-arguments for anything I’m saying here, or if you just want to say hi, hit reply.

[Support this newsletter (and Commonplace, its food-related sibling) and allow me to keep on eating while I hammer on the keyboard and stare at the sky. Patreon is here, and for those thinking more of the one-time coin in the hat, Ko-fi is available. And the merchandise shop is here. Major research contributions in this and all issues by Cee.]