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alexsteffen.bsky.social
We're not yet ready for what's already happened. Award-winning writer and climate futurist. Foresight and strategies for life in a planetary crisis. Podcast and newsletter: https://alexsteffen.substack.com/
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Study validates experience on the ground: wealthier households making longer moves away from climate risk. (Suspect that $$ younger/liberal households are disproportionately relocating away from brittleness, but $$ older/con moving towards sunbelt hides signal.) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Predatory delay on climate and sustainability usually comes from those who want to keep dirty profits flowing. PD on risk and ruggedization is mostly coming from those who want to block discussion of losses in value on the assets they own. We often still treat the latter as if it were harmless.

This is what we today call an extremely dangerous heatwave. This is also what people in fifty years will just call summer.

Important update paper from @glenpeters.bsky.social and others, showing rate of warming now .27ºC a decade. essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

We Americans are sailing our ships heedlessly into the wild dark storm of climate brittleness, and the Trump gang's answer is to smash every compass they can find.

This thread is worth your time.

Hey folks, a question: If you were going to recommend just one recent book on water and climate change, what book would it be? Why? Thanks!

The responsibility to protect American families from climate disasters has largely been dropped into our own laps. Very few of us are ready for this. Most of us don't have the personal resources we need to ruggedize our lives without major public investments. This is going to get ugly.

And this is just Mother Nature’s opening bid.

"There was a time when it was comfortable to believe that this crisis was something that would happen to future generations, in other places, and somebody else would come up with some plan to deal with it. That time of cozy procrastination is done. Climate chaos is here and worsening fast."

New podcast! Unfortunately, setting out in life now means plotting a life-path through a world defined by unprecedented planetary crisis. alexsteffen.substack.com/p/crisis-adv...

Did we stop talking as much about the Carbon Bubble because stranded assets are no longer an economic threat? No, we've just grown aware that the risk to climate-brittle assets — indeed the entire economy — is vastly larger. Good paper: www.sierraclub.org/press-releas...

"witness a qualitative regime shift from a world dominated by individual climate-related hazards and impacts to one where compound occurrences become the norm." #discontinuity agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Many places embrace the climate strategy of "hope for the best, wait for Feds to come when the worst ends up happening." That's now clearly a recipe for lost insurability/ creditworthiness, crashes in brittle assets, shrinking community capacities and unofficial abandonment. So that's going well.😐

New podcast! Unfortunately, setting out in life now means plotting a life-path through a world defined by unprecedented planetary crisis. alexsteffen.substack.com/p/crisis-adv...

Here in Washington state, 3,866,398 acres are on the line. This includes some of the most carbon-dense forest in the world, with immeasurable value for climate resilience, biodiversity conservation, and human health and well-being.

Did we stop talking as much about the Carbon Bubble because stranded assets are no longer an economic threat? No, we've just grown aware that the risk to climate-brittle assets — indeed the entire economy — is vastly larger. Good paper: www.sierraclub.org/press-releas...

You can't understand the behaviour of US elites - Democrats being too timid, Republicans debasing themselves, bureaucrats who behave like pushovers - without reference to the constant threat of political violence that has come with MAGA. Every day is January 6. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...

The threat of MAGA violence is one of the major shaping forces in American politics today, and our political discourse has never reflected it.

"witness a qualitative regime shift from a world dominated by individual climate-related hazards and impacts to one where compound occurrences become the norm." #discontinuity agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Many places embrace the climate strategy of "hope for the best, wait for Feds to come when the worst ends up happening." That's now clearly a recipe for lost insurability/ creditworthiness, crashes in brittle assets, shrinking community capacities and unofficial abandonment. So that's going well.😐

I find it sooo depressing that this idea is still has to be explained to people, 30+ years after advocacy for sustainable urbanism first took off.

I find it sooo depressing that this idea is still has to be explained to people, 30+ years after advocacy for sustainable urbanism first took off.

"The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

Decisions once made by "parliaments and congresses are now being brought to the kitchen table. That’s what failure looks like." The devolution of responsibility for climate response from nations and treaties to towns and families is a theft of the future. alexsteffen.substack.com/p/most-of-my...

this is just like the parable of the scorpion and the scorpion

Great thread. Our brittleness stems from past failures and new discontinuities extending deep into every natural system around us. We're going to need millions of people working on forest health, wetlands restoration, fire management of the WUI, etc — and that work will go on for decades.

Decisions once made by "parliaments and congresses are now being brought to the kitchen table. That’s what failure looks like." The devolution of responsibility for climate response from nations and treaties to towns and families is a theft of the future. alexsteffen.substack.com/p/most-of-my...

As perfect an example of predatory delay as you are likely to find. As hot days grow hotter and more frequent, the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA) and their allies are working to sabotage cool roof requirements. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The only real hope for the tens of millions of Americans now living in places with growing climate risks, brittle assets and dwindling capacities is bold climate action—and a massive Federal investment in triage, retreat and supported mass-relocation. No one is planning to make that investment.