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We humans have shown ourselves to be a highly adaptable species. Unfortunately, as we industrialized, more and more of our adaptations have become based on chemicals and large mechanized equipment that have turned out to be deadly to other species and to ecosystems. We are now waking up to the reality that we can’t afford this.

Examples of maladaptive adaptations:

For dealing with mosquitoes (or other insects): blitzing an entire yard or community with chemicals — which then kill off the dragonflies, frogs, birds, and other natural predators of mosquitoes. Meanwhile some mosquitoes themselves inevitably survive the spraying, and continue breeding but without the predators to keep them in check.

For dealing with power outages: Each household cranking up a gas generator to power its appliances and stuff. (Maladaptive because, for example, fuel supplies can be disrupted; because it’s dangerous to keep containers of gasoline sitting around; because gas generators create noise and air pollution; and because it fosters individualism rather than community spirit.)

What other maladaptive adaptations can you think of?

Examples of adaptive adaptations:

For mosquitoes: Nurturing healthy ecosystems which offer natural “pest” control. Relying on screen doors, screened porches, mosquito netting, “mosquito clothes” (light-colored, lightweight pants and long-sleeved shirts).

For power outages: Learning how to do without electricity so it’s not a big deal when the power goes out. Eating up the food in your freezer when you hear a hurricane’s coming in the next few days. Neighbors teaming up to cook and share food throughout the neighborhood. Setting up ONE generator for everyone in the neighborhood to charge their phones. Sharing matches, oil lamps, candles, hand-cranked lanterns.

What other adaptive adaptations can you think of?

Someone in the Deep Adaptation group posted an article that talks about how more Americans are seemingly ignoring the risks of climate change and moving to high-risk places.

Over the years, some of my fellow permies and prepper types from around the country have asked me how I can live in Florida, especially right on the coast.

I moved to the Atlantic coast of Florida from Texas back in 2010. I did it to fulfill a lifelong dream of living at the beach. And also to live within an easy bus ride of Orlando, where I had been flying several times a year to teach courses.

BUT, AND, I also moved here to be of service — to cross-pollinate the permaculture design knowledge that I had gained in Austin and other previous places where I’d lived; and to serve as a node of awareness and practical skills regarding climate adaptation and (if necessary) managed retreat.

For what it’s worth, I am more concerned about drought and desertification — even here in Florida — than I am about floods and sea-level rise. Not that the latter aren’t concerns too of course.

But, when it comes right down to it, I don’t feel there are any places that are “safe” from the risks of climate change. The news reports over the past few months of 121-degree temperatures in Canada, and deadly heat waves in chilly northern Europe, and drought and wildfires in Minnesota, and so on, serve as evidence of that.

75 degrees this morning!! Luscious!! And yesterday got down to 77 — first time it’s been below 79 in a good while, and it is amazing how those couple of degrees make a huge difference in sleeping comfort!!

79 or above, I don’t even want a sheet on me. Just sleep on top of sheet. 77, I feel cool enough for a sheet to be pleasant and maybe even necessary. 75 this morning after last night’s big rain, I actually luxuriated under two layers of sheets!

Our normal nighttime low temperature here this time of year is 74. Nighttime lows this summer have consistently been 79 or above. When nighttime lows stay high (one night this week our low was 82), it’s rough on people, plants, pets, and wildlife. Bodies need a chance to cool down.

My suggestions: Keep as many trees as we can. Plant as many more as we can. Prioritize heat mitigation, not beauty, as a landscaping strategy (and beauty will follow). Minimize new pavement. Avoid allowing bare soil, except small patches for ground-nesting native bees. Catch rainwater during heavy rain periods and distribute it to the earth-sponge during dry periods.

Something crossed my mind that I never thought of before so I Googled it. “What happens to string-trimmer string.”

From John Quinn in Earth Island Journal, this article “Strung Out” is eye-opening:

“When they came on the market in the early 1970s, the pollution from their small engines was obvious. Since then the immediate air pollution has improved. But they are still significant sources of neighborhood noise pollution, a problem they share with their equally ubiquitous cousins, leaf blowers.

“The most serious pollution problem associated with the string trimmer, however, may be the easiest to overlook — it has to do with the nylon string that gives the machine its name. This nylon is a synthetic polymer, a disposable plastic item, and string trimmers use prodigious amounts of the stuff. In the course of mowing, the string is worn away and is spewed into the environment as the line whirrs around at speeds up to 28,000 feet per minute.”

The article has a lot more info – very worthwhile read.

On a related note, I read about a cemetery in Antwerp, Belgium, that gets mowed by a farmer with a flock of sheep. The sheep cut the grass while also presumably contributing organic fertilizer. Sort of the opposite of what happens with mechanized mowing.

I always hate to see and hear loud mechanized equipment in parks and cemeteries. By the way, the cemetery I read about is a military cemetery. This bodes well for the future of grasscutting businesses that are built on four-legged, living mowers. If the standard of neatness they achieve is good enough for a military cemetery it should be good enough for any cemetery or park.

This morning I used a string-trimmer (borrowed from a neighbor) to cut the grass of the elderly man across the street who we all help look after. The trimmer I borrowed is a battery-powered one, which makes it much quieter and less smelly than the gas-powered ones.

The other day I read about a grasscutting business in the UK that uses only scythes and other hand-tools. They call themselves the Trim Reapers. This is pretty much my ideal!

Over the past few years I have tried various hand-tools for cutting the inevitable grass, but none has been satisfactory. Push-mower, scythe, sling-blade, grass shears. The blades get dull really fast (or were never sharp in the first place), and I don’t have the knowledge or tools to sharpen them. If we had a blade-sharpening business in the neighborhood, that person would always have steady work. There was an itinerant blade-sharpener in this part of the state — a homeless guy on a bicycle who had pedaled all over the country — but he passed away.

Update: Just now I found this article from Rachel Koski Nielsen at dengarden.com, about mowing with a scythe. Ms. Nielsen gives a lot of good info, and includes 1) a very helpful short video from One Scythe Revolution that shows very clearly how to hold the tool and position your body; and 2) a video from Paul Wheaton on how to sharpen and peen a scythe blade.

Update Sept. 15, 2021: I googled “eco-friendly string-trimmer string” and found this brand Biotrim that is supposedly biodegradable.

For awhile now, I have really been trying to encourage people to collect rainwater. It’s one of the main ways to make our households and communities more resilient to drought-flood extremes, and to self-insure against water shortages (including shutoffs due to contamination etc.).

My home setup is extremely simple, just a few barrels lined up under the roof line. (When the rain stops, I cover the barrels to keep out mosquitoes, and to protect lizards and other yard-babies from falling into the water and drowning).

The latest addition to my setup is several 40-gallon tubs, which can serve as a nice cool tub to take a dip, and then the rainwater can be dumped out to water the trees & shrubs. Each tub can fit a couple of small kids or one mediumish-sized adult. 40 gallons is about 150 liters. The other morning after we’d had a big rain that filled the tubs to the brim, I put my bathing-suit on and climbed into one of the tubs, soaked in the cool water immersed up to my neck for 10 minutes or so. It was lovely!

If you have kids, the rainwater tubs can be mini swimming pools and also an opportunity to teach math skills!! Kids who like water will quickly learn exactly how much rainfall equates to a full tub! OK, I confess – I’m like a kid in this way!! I get super enthusiastic watching the tubs fill, or trying to gauge how full the tubs willbe when I get home, if I’m out somewhere and it starts raining.

I also have one very large tub, a 110-gal, which can serve as a small swimming-pool for kids or a soaking tub for two adults!

To see photos, visit the post on my Deep Green Facebook page.

One of my favorite rainwater collection resources is this rainwater catchment calculator from Innovative Water Solutions. Super simple and handy for homeschooling/unschooling lessons, and for your own calculations. The calculator is very versatile. It says “enter the total annual rainfall for your area,” but you can also just as easily enter the total from just one storm, one month, etc. And where it says “enter your roof area,” you can also enter the roof area of, for example, a shed or gazebo you are thinking of building. Lots of opportunities not only to contemplate your next investment in preparedness, but also to come up with a variety of math exercises for the kids!

Additional Resources:

• Rainwater Harvesting Guide for Beginners (blog post by Rob Greenfield, Nov 1, 2021). Contrary to widespread misconceptions, rainwater collection is not difficult, illegal, or expensive. And it’s a great thing to do whether you live in a dry climate or a rainy climate. And preventing mosquitoes is easy. (I keep trying to tell everyone all of these things, but if any of you are still not convinced, Rob’s article will be a great help to you!)

• I’ve made several posts about rainwater collection here on this blog; you can find them by searching “rainwater” in this blog’s search field. Happy Harvesting! Enjoy helping to restore the natural water cycle while obtaining lovely free fresh water from the sky.

People like to talk about being “self-made,” and not owing their success to anyone but themselves.

I have come to believe there is no such thing as a totally “self-made person.” This idea that any of us succeed on our own is to my mind a bizarre and toxic artifact of hyper-individualistic societies such as we have in my country, the USA.

When I lived in Japan, I was impressed and humbled by the extent to which people were always thanking and giving credit to everyone who had helped them at various stages of life.

It took me a long time to realize how much I owe other people for everything good in my life. Ancestors, family, teachers, bosses, co-workers, friends, neighbors …

I can’t think of anything I’ve achieved in a bubble, “totally by myself” without anyone else’s help or beneficial influence — and that is OK with me!

This is not to understate or devalue the achievements of people who have overcome great adversity to get where they are.

But, the people around us are a huge factor in who we are and who we become.

In his fascinating bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell shows how the time and place in which we are born can be a far more powerful factor in our success, than any amount of personal talent or even diligent practice.

Gladwell’s list of the 70 richest people throughout history, which appears at the beginning of the book, was fascinating. (Cleopatra’s wealth dwarfed Rockefeller’s, among many other interesting finds.)

Out of the 70 people, 14 of them — 20 percent! — were born in the United States in a single decade in the early 1900s. Also, a disproportionate percentage of Silicon Valley moguls were born and grew up in a small geographic radius and unique social climate that featured opportunities most people never see.

“What does climate-resilient wealth look like?” That’s a question someone asked in the Socially Conscious FIRE group (Facebook) the other day. And it’s a question that I’ve thought about a lot myself. And an implied question that’s been weaving through many conversations lately in the climate preparedness/adaptation community.

Following is a short list off the top of my head. This is not meant to be complete, or to imply that a person can’t be resilient or ethical without cultivating the forms of wealth on this list. Humans are fundamentally creative and we find our own ways. That said, I hope you find this list helpful in formulating your own thoughts and in initiating community discussions.

What I see as the best forms of climate-resilient wealth, not in any particular order:

• Some sort of occupational skill that is not likely to go away regardless of what happens with the planet. The know-how to practice an “energy descent” version of your profession. A version that is not dependent on centralized systems, large mechanized equipment, etc. You could start practicing this with your existing occupation, or you could start training for an additional occupation that draws you. Carpentry or land management with hand-tools and without industrial chemicals; sewing by hand or by pedal-powered machine, are among the oft-cited examples. But we’ll need energy-descent versions of every occupation. Having a steady way to make a living, which includes a plan for making a living in one’s old age, is a greater form of wealth and security than any amount of stockpiled money or other stockpiled material investments can ever bring. I think this fear of not being able to make a steady livelihood in old age (or the equivalent of a livelihood — having a useful and needed function that makes people want to have us around) is the real existential malaise that underlies our frantic efforts to stockpile massive amounts of money or equivalent (which never end up making us feel safe). “Being useless once we get old” is a dysfunction of capitalist/consumerist/industralist/financialized society. By reclaiming real forms of wealth, we can get ourselves and society beyond this illness.

(One example of a gentle old-age livelihood would be teaching the trade you practiced in your younger years. Another would be sharing your wisdom through storytelling/writing. Or watching children, or tending animals. Or tending a shop. Or mentoring young people.)

• The know-how to live largely without money. Depending on money for everything is expensive!!

• Portability. Obviously some professions and essential activities require heavy tools but even if the tools of your trade are much larger than needle and thread or even shovel and sickle, there are ways to be pretty portable if you cultivate sharing networks.

• A deep relationship with the place you are in. A sense of responsibility and love and caring for that place — even if you know you are only there temporarily; and even knowing that you might have to permanently evac even if you had intentions of being there for life. Check out the writings of Wendell Berry, Mary Dejong.

• Fruit trees, nut trees, overstory trees, and other trees. Perennial vegetables. Locally adapted seeds. Healthy soil. Rainbarrels, solar ovens, and other tangible durable goods. Even knowing you would not be able to take this stuff with you if you have to move, the experience you gain in the meantime by building these natural forms of wealth will be portable and adaptable to any place.

• Tools, cookware, durable food containers, general household implements. Choose good quality (often available from garage sales and thrift shops), and avoid the temptation to stockpile more than you need. This can be challenging I know. But when I start seeing extra cookpans and other stuff I didn’t remember that I had, I know it’s time to reassess and possibly give away or sell some things.

• Family. (Even if you and your family members live far apart, you can still be emotional wealth, experiential wealth, practical support, and possibly also material wealth to each other.)

• Friends. (Same comment as for family.)

• A neighborhood with a sense of connectedness, where people look out for each other (no need to be best buddies or super-likeminded; it’s just simple basic mutual aid and concern).

• Ability to connect with people across different views, ages, backgrounds. Conversational fluency in at least one language other than your own can be a great asset here. But even with few words, or without speaking at all, we can expand our connection skills.

• Having some money (or labor, or both) invested in a regenerative business enterprise (permaculture farm, local composting business, micro-kitchen, teaching enterprise, toolmaking shop, bicycle repair shop, micro-publisher, etc.) without expecting any financial return on your investment. Investors’ expectation of reaping a financial return undercuts the longterm viability of regenerative enterprises, and keeps us stuck in the mode of economy where everything is financialized. It’s a sick economy, expensive in many ways for us all. And we really need all the regenerative enterprises we can get. Together with the socially connected neighborhood, regenerative enterprises are a building-block of resilient households and communities.

• A place where you’d be welcome to go to live if you have to leave your current place. Important note: I am not talking about a vacant piece of land, or an unoccupied extra house you are stockpiling as your backup place, where no one is living unless and until you move there. (That kind of hoarding creates real-estate price pressure and other suffering in local communities.) I’m talking about land or a house that is already occupied by fulltime resident(s), who have a knowledge base of local skills and connections, and would welcome you to join their household – community.

• Having such a place to offer other people.

• Physical health.

• Mental health. Including tools/practices for integrating past trauma, processing emotional reactivity, being emotionally stable (which does not mean we’re not going to have strong emotions; just means having healthy ways to face and process them).

• Spirituality; some kind of belief in transcendance; interconnectedness of life.

• A sturdy acceptance of your own mortality, and of the reality that risk is always present in life.

• Books – not only practical manuals but also stories — worth investing in even knowing you might have to evac without them.

• Education; learning. Whether academic or hands-on; formal or self-taught. In Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison said education is the most portable and flexible investment we can make. And my mother said, “Education is never wasted.” I could not agree more. I have had the blessing of many different kinds of education, and have used it all extensively, even my supposedly “useless” major in English Lit and minor in Sociology have proven absolutely indispensable. My alltime best investments in education have been Permaculture Design Certificate courses and The Avatar® Course.

• Earth-based skills merit a category by themselves: Knowing how to grow, forage, hunt at least some food. How to catch and use water. How to turn “waste” into compost; build soil. How to passively catch and use solar energy. And so on and so on!

• Hands-on experience living & working in many different climates, bioregions. And places with different social climates.

• The ability to live happily and peacefully in very close quarters with other people.

• Sense of humor and the ability to make people laugh, cheer people up.

• Flexibility and adaptability in general. This is probably the #1 most durable form of wealth. It’s available by training your mind. Flexibility and adaptability of the mind will lead to ability to navigate change in your physical surroundings and external circumstances. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is treating resilience as a purely material gig. It’s quite the opposite.

How about you? What’s in your “portfolio” of climate-resilient wealth?

P.S. Almost none of the above kinds of wealth are things you have to be born with or luck into. Almost all can be deliberately developed.

P.P.S. You might have noticed I don’t have money, gold, stocks, mutual funds, or investment properties on this list. That’s because no amount of any of these things will make you more resilient. They can actually make you more vulnerable. And furthermore, because of the opportunity cost of amassing and protecting these things, they can actually undermine your efforts to build true climate-resilient wealth. I’ve written about this before and will doubtless do so on many more occasions in future. (Not that it’s necessarily wrong to have or want these things; just that 1) we can’t afford to keep putting them ahead of community and the other stuff we really need — the stuff we are so tragically deficient in; and 2) money is less durable than most of the things listed above, and if you have even a few of the kinds of wealth listed above, you might be surprised at how little you feel the need to stockpile financial assets.)

Further Reading:

• “Are You Thinking in Sustainable Stores of Value?” (Laura Oldanie, Rich Resilient Living.) “As I progress in my wealth building journey, I find myself drawn more and more to resilient and tangible forms of wealth. Not only do many of them seem more sustainable to me, they also bring me more joy and meaning, while simultaneously helping me further distance myself from the extractive, life-depleting, soul-sucking economy within which so much human activity takes place. This has led me to focus on cultivating stores of value. I was first exposed to the concept of stores of value (at least it was the first time the idea stuck!) during my permaculture design course (PDC) about ten years ago. …” Laura, a friend and fellow Florida permie, always offers a “wealth” of tips and inspiration on how to live abundantly yet simply, while cultivating economic resilience and being part of the solution to major world problems.