Let’s go beyond facts, figures, and frightening forecasts. Let’s tell a story about a better future.
In late October, I had a phone conversation with a long-time friend who now lives in a retirement community in a town 20 miles from Ashville, N.C. Ashville has the regional hospital for western North Carolina and northern South Carolina. Hurricane Hēlene hit there on September 28. By the time of our conversation, the hospital still did not have hot and cold running water. There are many things the hospital could not do, so there was great pressure on the local hospitals which hadn’t those capacities before. She is relatively well-to-do, as are the other residents. She could drive into town, where the main street did not have a reiver running down it, so the buildings were intact. But the streets on either side were demolished. “I really can’t imagine,” she said, “what it must be like for those store owners and residents who are not well off, to see their places totally destroyed, and to not know how they will recover their lives. I can’t imagine what the fear will be like the next time a hurricane strikes.”
I’ve known her and her late husband for many years. Every time a hurricane would strike North Carolina, I would email to ask how they were doing. “Don’t worry,” he always replied. We live in the western part of the state, and high in the mountains. Hurricanes will not bother us.”
They were surprised. It was something that was not supposed to happen. That’s what climate change will be in the future. Except that we know that these things we don’t think will happen to us, will happen oftener and more severely than in the past.
Try to imagine what it’s like to try to recover from something like that, particularly if you’re not well off financially. Then try to imagine what it’s going to be like the next time, and the time after that,
Probably as you read this story, there are all kinds of things that run through your mind, to make it not so bad the next time, possibly relocating, all those kinds of things.
Paradise, I think, would be not to have to run. To be able to stay in a community that otherwise works well, and to be reasonably assured of safety. And not just safety, but to be assured of the ability to flourish. I leave it to you to think of what else may go on in that paradise, but I think it indicates what we must do. Just go through your own list. What would it be like to live under that fear, to protect yourselves and your family, and to create a community that will not only survive, but flourish. That’s what we need to be aiming for.
I think the evidence is that our warnings about the worsening of disasters which we already experience, are not convincing anyone. Facts and figures don’t do it, because they are received by only the mind, but not the emotions. To inspire people to act, we need to tell them a story of what it might be like once we have not only cut back on global warming but worked our way through the disasters to a new place; to have a secure life, and to flourish. We need to tell stories that will show people something they would like for themselves: what it can be like, based on what we know now, to get through this disastrous future.
So we need to look beyond the disasters and set goals. I think this is best done by telling a story.
So here is a story. I hope we can use it, and others, to motivate people to change our current ways for the sake of a very desirable future.
A Place
Everyone wants a place in life. You know what a place is? It’s when you get up in the morning and greet your family, or your friends in person or remotely, it matters to them that you are there. They would care if you were not.
A place has several contexts – you feel you can rely on the public systems to work well so they don’t require much attention from you. You feel accepted in your social context –no one es you for your differences, you don’t judge them either. You feel safe, secure, delighted to accept the new day.
That’s a place.
Now, after decades of climate disasters, you have come through, working right through them to get beyond just recovering for a while, and then rebuilding in the same old way.
You flourish. We flourish.
We became quite precise at predicting dangerous weather – all of it: drought, floods, winds/hurricanes/derechos, blizzards, intense heat—and built for it. We designed whole communities* that could withstand the hurricanes across the infrastructure: no one will be washed away, nor our houses nor businesses, nor streets, nor fields, nor pastures. We learned to build so that heat could be resisted with minimal energy use. We recovered from the traumas of the disasters, and built new, so we would not suffer again as the earth, seas, and skies punished us. We learned how to farm and pasture without destroying again.
We are very good at saving forests from fires, even the years-long underground fires, and became very good at managing the reusable resource of wood.
We found all the deep underground, ancient channels that naturally carry water long distances underground** and now use them to move water from areas of abundance to areas of drought. We learned to let the seas do what they want in their natural realms, and we stopped trying to change them and their life-forms. We built soft, natural surfaces to replace hard surfaces as much as possible, to receive the waters without flooding. We welcomed back the beavers and the natural salt marshes and wetlands, no longer building our abodes too close to water and flood zones.
We learned to live and work at night sometimes, when daytimes are too hot.
We use sustainable electricity while we continue to reduce the carbon we produced before the disasters. Only enough for our needs – we abandoned the consumer economy with its devouring appetite for growth. Our “economy” is designed to help everyone flourish, including the disabled, confused, and incapable. There are no “misfits.” Everyone fits in. It’s not just for the high-achievers and competitors.
We learned that wars are what governments and factions do when they can’t solve their own problems. Now we have too few young people to fight, and we learned not to fight with remote weapons and computers either. If someone wanted to host a war now, no one would attend.
We expect to have more children, but not as fodder for war and cheap labour. As we age, we will need their help, but we will not have it by dominating them or demanding it. We will ask, and we will hope to deserve it so that it is freely given.
We learned how to lead without dominating and taught our government officials and politicians how to do that. Government now exists only to help everyone flourish, and to foster beauty. Governments learned to fund this better economy, to fund all costs of adaptation, recovery, and survival in the early days of disasters.
We strictly watch how we use the rest of the world. We flourish, but not at the cost of anyone or anything else in this world. We live in mutual regard so that all flourishes.
And we have a place.
* Florida neighborhood stays strong after hurricane hits disaster-proof homes: ‘We have to adapt’
** Paleorivers are deep underground channels carved long ago by glaciers. They and hyporheic zones (beds under the bottoms of rivers which can receive overflow, filter it, and let it run down their lengths to other places and bubble up some distance away), can move waters from flood areas downstream to dryer locations. See Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge by Erica Gies.
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Glenn Brown was an ethics consultant with primary interest in corporate responsibility for environmental concerns including ethics standards throughout supply chain rt.
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