How We Build Climate Resilience
How We Build Climate Resilience
On Hurricane Helene, preppers, and defeating individualism.
Real quick up top: I’m now giving all my Substack income to help Ghazal and her family survive in Gaza. In September 2024, we donated another $100! Thank you so much to my paid subscribers! If you want to help too, consider upgrading to the paid tier; if you do, you’ll get four hot takes per month instead of two.
By now, you’ve likely heard about Hurricane Helene, the “natural disaster” that has ravaged the east coast of the United States. Right off the bat, please see these mutual aid donation links and give money where you can. In general, giving directly to mutual aid funds is more impactful than giving to larger organizations like the Red Cross since mutual aid provides boots-on-the-ground help rather than giving a portion of that money to staffers, building rent for some office somewhere, etc.
In my own social media circle, the aspect of this event that has received the most attention has been the absolute destruction of Asheville, North Carolina. We’re used to climate news centered around things getting gradually hotter every year, or a building’s foundation gradually eroding into the ocean over a long period of time. We’re also used to seeing extreme weather events affect coastal towns, so Floridians rebuilding after a storm is nothing new to us. Asheville is special because a) it’s hundreds of miles away from the Atlantic Ocean and b) the damage was so sudden; one day there was a city, the next day there wasn’t. If it can happen to Asheville, it can happen anywhere, and it can happen fast.
As an individualistic society, our first instinct when hearing about “natural disasters” is to become a “prepper”. Prepping, the act of stockpiling food and supplies in one’s home in case of an apocalyptic scenario, is typically associated with extremism-induced paranoia, especially among the far-right. Make no mistake, you absolutely should create a “go bag” with supplies such as shelf-stable food, a first aid kit, small solar panels, and more. However, there is no need to buy three years of baked beans and store them in an underground concrete bunker, as long as you have one thing: community.
You may have noticed my use of scare quotes around “natural disasters”. That’s because the first thing we should recognize is that there is nothing natural about these increasingly-violent storms: this is climate change in action. The core idea necessary to building climate resilience is that climate change is already here. It’s not some far-off event that we will have to deal with some day. More importantly, climate change is a phenomenon brought about by humans. Specifically, it was brought about my greedy, capitalist, extractivist humans from the Global North who got incredibly rich while the rest of the world has to deal with the consequences. If we are to tackle extreme weather collectively rather than as individuals, we should be challenging the power structure that produced and maintains the wealth of those who commit these crimes against humanity.
Politics aside, let it be known that we are more likely to survive when we work together. We assume that when apocalypse breaks out people simply start murdering and looting each other “Walking Dead style”, but this could not be farther from the truth. Reporting directly from Asheville, writer and activist Margaret Killjoy shared her experience of how people are collaborating to save one another…
Yesterday I waited by the back door of a grocery store with a fireline of people collecting the food that was going to otherwise be thrown out. There wasn’t a line of people waiting to take it home personally, which would have been fine, but instead fifteen cars of people connected to probably half a dozen different mutual aid organizations, constantly discussing which small town’s distribution hub currently needs fresh produce, or water, or insulin.
Mutual aid looks mostly like meetings, spreadsheets, Signal loops (group messages), wellness checks, and deliveries. Deliveries by car, by truck, by ATV, by dirt bike, by pack mule, by helicopter, by foot. Neighbors who don’t even like each other are knocking on each other’s doors and making sure everyone has what they need.
…
Outside Firestorm (the anarchist bookstore), someone wrote up bilingual instructions for making and using dry toilets using 5 gallon buckets, sawdust, and pipe insulation (for a seat). She expected to give away a couple. Within 2 hours, she’d given away more dry toilets than she’d brought, because people saw what she was doing and went and got her buckets and pipe insulation, and meanwhile, a man who owns a sawmill was driving around looking for people who were going to need sawdust for dry toilets.
She emphasizes that things are still far from perfect: destruction is still everywhere and they are still counting the bodies. This doesn’t take away from the fact that “decentralized coordination” is very much working. The lesson: resilience against climate change is built collaboratively, not individualistically, so get to know your neighbors and make a plan together!
If you’ve seen other coverage of Asheville, you’ll know that it’s the libraries and bookstores that are serving as the best community spaces for information and resources. This is by no means a new idea; allow me to introduce you to the idea of climate resilience hubs. Borrowing from the USDN Resilience Hubs website…
Resilience Hubs are community-serving facilities augmented to support residents, coordinate communication, distribute resources, and reduce carbon pollution while enhancing quality of life. Hubs provide an opportunity to effectively work at the nexus of community resilience, emergency management, climate change mitigation, and social equity while providing opportunities for communities to become more self-determining, socially connected, and successful before, during, and after disruptions.
In other words, they’re community centers that double as places to go when disasters happen. I see it as the responsibility of all citizens, public officials, scientists, and progressives to be invested in the creation of a resilience hub in their area.
Luckily, people are already getting started: check this site to find hubs near you! There are tons of resources on how to get started on the USDA website. There may also be grant opportunities in your state; Massachusetts just committed $52 million in climate resiliency funding to local communities. Speaking of Massachusetts, Northampton and Springfield have already started work on their hubs, with surely more on the way. There’s a lot more to be done to adapt our infrastructure to climate change, but it’s good to see that states that are heavily investing in their infrastructure are already getting started!
This model of understanding climate resilience is great, but missing from the diagram above is an emphasis on shared governance. One horrific piece of the Asheville disaster was this incident where police officers prevented people from getting perfectly-viable food. It must be said that police protect property, not people, and that those characterizing disaster survivors as “looters” are engaging in elite panic, in other words trying to deliberately sow division and discord to serve their own agenda. People seeking food during a disaster (“looters”) are not criminals, they are merely trying to survive. This emphasizes the need for deep democracy and shared governance as opposed to a police state run by the wealthy, who remember, are the most responsible for climate change-induced disasters (one could say that they are the real criminals!)
There is also division among people who aren’t fabulously wealthy: I’ve seen a lot of sympathy for people in the South affected by Helene, including from the likes of Killjoy who recognize the importance of solidarity. At the same time, there have also been dismissive liberals who believe that Southerners, by virtue of being conservative, deserve to face disaster. “You got what you voted for!” This is obviously wrong; nobody deserves to have their home destroyed, no matter their political affiliation.
On the other side of the political aisle, there is a growing conspiracy (spread by Donald Trump, naturally) that FEMA aid is being disproportionately given to non-U.S. citizens. This is false. FEMA has been part of the Department of Homeland Security since March 2003, and while there are funds in DHS to help states house migrants, that money is separate from FEMA’s disaster relief funds. Those affected by Helene can apply for an immediate $750 as well as additional aid through the FEMA website. This is rumor represents clear anti-immigrant bias rooted in racism.
Climate change does not acknowledge borders and neither should we. You have more in common with any immigrant than you do with Donald Trump. You are also much more likely to become a climate refugee than a billionaire. Similarly, you are not better than Republicans for having the correct opinion about climate change; we are all human and we all have a responsibility toward one another. We, the People, must learn to stop fighting one another and save our heat for those who started this climate crisis and continue to benefit from it; the capitalist class!
My hope is that the events in Asheville and elsewhere will mobilize people to get involved in their local communities. We’re always stronger together!
Currently Reading
My department is hiring! If you’re looking for a tenure-track position in Chemical Engineering, come be my colleague!
In AI news, two Harvard students used Meta’s Wayfarer smart glasses in tandem with facial recognition software to dox strangers on the street. The students did this experiment without sharing their code to demonstrate the dangers of AI and encourage people to protect their privacy online. They even made this handy guide on how to delete your information from the Internet and how to do a credit freeze, which I will be doing immediately!!
Related: Jordan Harrod’s review of smart glasses throughout recent history.
Taylor Lorenz just went independent and started User Mag! Lorenz is one of the only journalists talking about the Internet in a productive, non-dismissive way right now. Her work is invaluable, go check it out!
In case you see more student arrests during the one-year anniversary of October 7th, here’s my guide on how to support student protestors.
Watch History
A fantastic deep dive into online psychology non-experts and accusations of narcissism.
An essay on “makeover scenes” in movies and how they reinforce patriarchal beauty standards.
A longform piece on solidarity and how it’s supposed to cost us something.
Two videos about how technology alone will not save humanity (we need political analysis/change too)!
An investigation on why everything on Amazon’s storefront is incredibly cheap and comes from brands nobody recognizes.
Bops, Vibes, & Jams
The new beabadoobee album, “This Is How Tomorrow Moves”, is truly special.
“Smitten” by Pale Waves checks all my boxes for modern, queer pop-punk.
And now, your weekly Koko.
That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content.
In solidarity,
-Anna
I had so many things come up for me as I read your piece and I am still processing... A quick note to say that I appreciate your doing this work as I focus on a different part of the hydra in my day job as a psychotherapist and as a writer (on the side). I especially appreciate the links to resource building on the ground we can do now (the resilience hubs, go-bags, etc.) and the AI information on the need to (again/still) protect our online life. Also, the link on solidarity, YES! (insert little pumped fist and heart emoji).
Most of the article rang true to me, especially the importance of community to resilience. It’s curious to me then that you exaggerate the devastation of Asheville. While significant portions of the city were destroyed by the floods and essential infrastructure (water, electricity, gas, sewage) damaged, the downtown and higher elevation neighborhoods remain intact. There is no need to exaggerate. It’s bad enough as it is.