In our age of spiralling climate concern, yet no sign of positive impact on observed climate heating, one barrier to effective action is that society does not currently perceive forests as climate infrastructure.
Urban planners already know they need reservoirs and a drainage system for water, an electricity grid for power, roads for transportation and parks for recreation. Many city planners have come to know of the benefit of having more trees for shade within urban areas, and to suck some pollutants out of the air. Currently, however, they don’t realise that cities can benefit from being adjacent to large forests, to benefit from their cloud-seeding and wind-generating effects. Discovering that a large forest can be important climate-modulating infrastructure, which could make hot cities more bearable, could transform the levels of support and finance for forest protection and regrowth.
Currently, most advocacy and policy on forest conservation operates within one of four concerns, or frames: first there are livelihoods, landscape preservation and tourism; second, there is watershed protection, third there is biodiversity protection; and fourth, more recently, carbon sequestration. All are important, but have typically been sidelined when big business wants to mine the land, farm massively, or expand a city. In our era of climate disturbance, those four reasons for forest conservation don’t generate the same political and psychological urgency as recognising the following truth: forests are part of the natural climate infrastructure that keeps regions cool enough to be habitable.
There is a substantial and growing scientific basis for that view. Forests alter evapotranspiration, atmospheric moisture, cloud formation, surface energy fluxes and rainfall. Key is the way that pollen and bacteria from large forests seed clouds, both above them, and far beyond, thereby adding to the Earth’s reflectivity. Another mechanism is called the biotic pump, where large forests can draw in air from oceans and send the moisture and heat into the atmosphere, also creating clouds.
Those processes combined seem to explain why, in tropical regions, deforestation has substantially disrupted regional rainfall and increased average and extreme temperatures. One example is Borneo, where prior to 2018, researchers “found a strong island-wide relationship between forest loss and increases in daily temperature and reductions in daily precipitation.” The cascading effects of deforestation in Borneo on more recent droughts and fires is clear, with a devastating loss of wild habitat and dangerous transboundary pollution.
Recent climate research is increasingly emphasizing these ‘biohydrological’ processes, rather than treating forests simply as carbon stores. Worryingly, and unacceptably, this aspect of anthropogenic climate change continues to be marginalised through a narrow focus on atmospheric carbon. If this is new to you, please see my previous two essays on the matter (on the basics, and on some implications). I also recommend the work of Dr Anastassia Makarieva.
As humanity is now a predominantly city-dwelling species, a key question within a heating world is not just whether some more tree-lined streets might help. It is whether some city-adjacent large natural forests could act as local and regional aircon systems. On this matter, there are various studies of cities in the tropics which indicate the cooling effects of forests, including studies which explain the specific processes involved in that, such as the generating of local winds. However, this subject has not yet received sufficient attention to document the process in policy-shaping detail. What would help is a comparative study of cities to identify differences in temperature averages and extremes in warm seasons. When adjusting for longitude, altitude, local typography, water body proximity, and urban size, such a study could provide valuable insight into the necessary size, proximity and maturity of a natural forest for it to seed clouds, drive winds, and transport heat. It is crucial work, and yet marginal to the mainstream climate agenda, and thus relatively underfunded.
Imagine if people and policy makers realised that large natural forests can be key for moderating excessive heat in their region? There could be a cascade of commitment to forest conservation around the world, involving city leadership, not just the national government departments focused on environment and land use. More people, in all walks of life, would begin to understand healthy ecosystems as key to maintaining their urban existence.
Imagine if a hot tropical city, such as Kuala Lumpur, decided to experiment with a reforestation project in its hinterland, and assess the results over the next 20 years? Currently, much of the land to the west of the city is palm plantation, which does not deliver any of the cloud-seeding effects of a mature natural forest. Yet there are patches of official forest reserves, which could be connected, assisted and expanded. Such a project would either deliver, and confirm, the benefits of natural cloud seeding, or, if not, it would nevertheless become a useful resource, a beautiful one, along with its intrinsic worth.
Imagine if more government officials became more aware of this role for forests. Regional and national planning processes could include large natural forests as key climate cooling infrastructure. As such, large natural forests could be regarded as being a far more valuable foundational asset than current ecosystem service assessments recognise. Such a realisation could re-invigorate cross border collaboration, including financial support, for conserving and restoring large forests in critical areas like Borneo.
But there is a barrier to this potential being unleashed. It is a barrier found within the studies, reports, agendas and even minds of people working hard on climate change. It is that the climate-cooling value of large forests is conceptually invisible because “climate action” was reduced to greenhouse-gases. That leads to another barrier for massive forest conservation efforts: neither climate policy nor land use policy recognises the importance of forest-based climate modulation.
The absence of care for the climatic role of large forests doesn’t aid the smartness of policies on other issues, like food security. In some countries, including Indonesia, forests are being cleared to enable more agriculture. This is explained as necessary to combat increasing food insecurity in the face of climate change. However, forest clearance typically increases temperatures regionally, damaging existing agriculture, and thus worsening food insecurity.
Recognising the role of forests in climate modulation would also make it more difficult to justify forest clearance for mining the metals for an ‘energy transition’. That wouldn’t necessarily stop decisions which are, in any case, driven by profit and greed. However, at least it would remove the false fig leaf of environmental ‘concern’.
The question before us is therefore how to overcome the barrier within climatology, and related climate policy, to unleash a ‘positive social tipping point’ in forest conservation for climate cooling.
Here is where it is key to note that the recent years of global temperature changes are inexplicable according to past consensus in climatology. That presents a window of opportunity for a reassessment of the comprehensiveness of our understanding of anthropogenic climate change. In that context, ignoring a more pan-ecological approach to climate dynamics, including ‘biohydrological’ cycles, is no longer tenable. Moreover, dismissing anything other than a carbon-only understanding as giving space to resistance from fossil fuel interests, would be to allow those interests to have polluted the clarity of scientific assessment and its implications.
The climatologists who interface with other fields of science, such as the Earth Systems specialists, could be an influential node between different fields of expertise to spread awareness of this matter. Therefore, if a few senior leaders, key reports, and conferences, in the field of Earth Systems sciences, all communicated this understanding that large forests can act as natural aircon systems, it could bring the environmental professions to a threshold of awareness.
One way forward is to create forest-climate demonstration and observation regions. In addition to major forest restoration activities, they would take measurements that explore connections between forest conditions and the heat, moisture, rainfall and water security in the region. They could also measure other potential beneficial impacts on air quality and on stable water flows. That would make the climate modulating functions of forests measurable, locally visible, and institutionally legible. If that demonstrated local climatic benefits, it would increase public demand and institutional investment. That would mean forest protection could move from being perceived as an environmental preference to being understood as a necessary form of climate infrastructure provision. As a result, forest protection efforts would start reproducing themselves socially in many locations around the world.
In an era of rapid climate change that is now damaging lives, not just landscapes, there is clear reason for a global wave of safe and nature-friendly experiments in natural climate modulation and adaptation. City leaders should not wait years for more research to confirm the specifics of size, proximity and maturity of a forest to achieve regional climate cooling effects. Instead, a ‘post-normal‘ approach to science is the wise one when stakes are high and delaying decisions has potentially massive and irreversible implications. It is an approach to climate science and policy that I outlined with Dr Rupert Read, in Chapter 1 of the book Deep Adaptation: Navigating the realities of climate chaos.
Once I became aware that large healthy forests can be key to reducing the increases in unpleasant and dangerous heat in some cities, while also seeding clouds regionally, I wanted to encourage more discussion about it. When I realised the potential power of city leaders in recognising that large forests can be essential climate infrastructure, I saw the need for this idea to be heard within the mainstream policy pow wows on climate change. That’s why I agreed for the co-founder of the Climate Cooling Initiative to pull me out of my rural life and efforts on deep adaptation, to return to the noise of big city conferencing.
So I’m off to Kuala Lumpur to present at the Global Tipping Points conference. It’s the first time I’ve attended a climate conference since 2022 in Egypt, where Dr Ye Tao and I warned of accelerating climate change and the coming heat spike from reduced cloud cover. I’m hoping that some people attending our workshop will already know our premise, or be open to it, and come up with other, perhaps better, ideas for how to remove barriers to massive distributed action on natural climate cooling. I’ll let you know what happens, on jembendell.com.
The farcical nature of some prepping activities can make rather dark comedy. Let’s face it, not many of us are suited to archery or skinning a rabbit! That’s why the movie “We’re All Going To Die” is such an engaging watch (view at the end). At the movie premiere in Berlin, I mentioned that anyone who seriously engages in personal prepping for either disasters or broader societal collapse, soon realises they can’t do it alone. That is demonstrated well by a popular collapse-commentor, Jessica Wildfire, whose blog portrays a roller coaster of attempts at prepping, giving up and enjoying the moment, to ultimately regarding prepping as a necessarily ongoing aspect to modern life. Many people are joining that ride, with the prepping sector booming by selling items like 6 months of prepacked non-refrigerated food. Even some friends and family who haven’t read my work on collapse have begun storing essentials and watching videos on how they might cope better in disasters. So I thought it a useful time to systematise and share some thoughts about ‘prepping.’
Discussions and initiatives have evolved in some parts of the world towards ‘solidarity prepping’ in communities and even ‘insurgent planning’ to prepare for disasters. That arises from a more collaborative mindset, but it can involve some of the same underlying emotions. In my experience, whether focused on individual or collective prepping, a rather grim defensiveness can pervade discussion. That also applies to some national level conversations about adaptation. Although it is reasonable to frame the environmental situation in terms of national security, that can promote a defensive mindset, and one where action seems like a burden to be taken on by good and courageous persons. That can be a short step away from imagining such people need to impose upon the rest of us for our own good. It is a reaction which, from psychological theories, I predicted would arise amongst collapse-deniers when they finally ditched the idea that tech, education and better policy would transition societies, yet retained the subconscious craving for a story that might suppress their despair [ref 1].
As we cannot know whether the form and pace of collapse is fully set, or its full implications for humanity and life on Earth, we can attempt to increase the chances of a lesser catastrophe. Waking up to the predicament doesn’t mean giving up on doing anything. In a speech that will be ten years ago this November, I explained the Deep Adaptation perspective for the first time [ref 2]. Since then I have not seen the goal as being to maximize the odds of individual survival. Nor is the goal about increasing the odds of community or national survival. Rather, I have been inviting attention to increasing the likelihood that we live kindly and cooperatively amid disruption, in ways that create possibilities for both humans and wider life, without any certainty. For the millions of people for whom that idea resonated, it has endorsed a shift from distraction to reflection, from stockpiling to capabilities, and from defence to relationships.
Over the years most of the leading volunteers in the Deep Adaptation movement didn’t focus on physical preparedness, with some local initiatives being exceptions. Efforts at relocalising economies and spreading soft skills for getting along with each other in stressful times have often been talked about. My own response was to change jobs and country, connect people on this topic, start an organic farm school, share more of my analysis on collapse, and throw myself into devotional music. It’s been quite a ride, and I’ve evolved a lot, but I don’t feel particularly well prepared as a result. Now I realise there could be more discussion of positive approaches to prepping within the Deep Adaptation movement. It is why prepping will be the topic of the next salon of the Metacrisis Initiative.
To help discussions and initiatives around prepping to be more generative, I’ve developed a list of action areas for real preparedness for societal disruption and collapse. It is a synthesis from a range of sources, which I’ll mention later. I am calling this a list for ‘rainbow prepping’. Perhaps it’s obvious why: when we see a rainbow after a period of rain, it is not only an impressive sight, but indicates a brighter time is coming after a storm. In the Abrahamic story of Noah, after the great flood, we read that God showed a rainbow as a promise to never again destroy the world with water. For me, seeing a rainbow is always a reconnection with my wonder at, and gratitude for, being alive and able to experience beauty. I’ve recently learned that in many cultures, across eras, the rainbow symbolised a connection between the earthly and divine. It represented a bridge between worlds in ancient Norse, Greek, Buddhist, Hawaiian and Japanese myths — perhaps many more. Contemporary usage expresses the beauty of diversity in areas where prejudice is sadly rife. I wish to honour all of that in my use of the term for how we prepare for collapse.
I recommend we treat the following action areas more like a ‘play list’ than a ‘to do’ list. By that, I mean we can ask ourselves what we are attracted to explore more. My aim is to help avoid the heaviness and anxiety of seeking to survive, and to encourage the people we engage with on preparedness to relate in that way. The fifteen action areas are sequenced for the mnemonic, not in order of their importance:
Residence resilience / Amusement sustainability / Income diversification / Neighbourhood involvement / Business localisation / Orthobiotic living / Water and food security / Practical skill acquisition / Relocation readiness / Ecological stewardship / Psychological wholeness / Political engagement / Information and interaction sovereignty / Needs simplification / Gumption promotion
Residence resilience
Whether you own or rent, think about long-term resilience, in all its dimensions. Firstly, consider whether your location will remain viable under climate, economic and political stresses. Consider improvements in passive heating and cooling, as well as multiple options for additional temperature moderation. Look into reducing potential damage from storms, fires, and floods, including initiatives in your neighbourhood. Have backup lighting, micro-solar charging, safe fuel storage, and a way to cook without electricity. Consider being involved in neighbourhood watch schemes and, if relevant, volunteer fire response teams. Get to know your local police. If possible, adapt your residence to be able to welcome people in need, overnight. If home is where the heart is, it’s time to manifest more of your views and values in your living space.
Amusement sustainability
You don’t stop wanting to enjoy life just because there’s stuff happening that you don’t enjoy. Now you can reduce your dependence on industrial systems for the ways you enjoy yourself, so that continues even when those systems become unaffordable to you, or disappear. Non-amplified live music, circle dancing, storytelling, poetry reading, potluck meals, offline games, improvisational theatre, drawing, painting, and more. Fun activities can calm nerves and open hearts. So they are not a luxury – they are part of your resilience. Put down your phones. It’s time to unplug your play.
Income diversification
When you rely on one main source of income, from work or investments, you are more at risk of economic disruption, and more easily silenced. You can assess how to do more work that will remain valuable as the formal economy contracts. Some of that might include the practical skills that I will list later. What we receive from others, and from the environment, is not only through monetary exchange. Growing things, swapping, and sharing, can all be part of income diversity. Could you reduce your outgoings and channel more of your income, or time saved, into that diversity, as well as other aspects of ‘rainbow prepping’? Multiple means of accessing your money is also part of this consideration, which suggests having more than one bank account, a crypto account, and securely storing some cash and precious metals at home.
Neighbourhood involvement
Strong social bonds can be more important than individual preparedness. Know your neighbours, join local initiatives, practise mutual aid, actively resolve conflicts, and generally become someone who contributes to your community. Schools, libraries, religious groups, cooperatives, and volunteer organisations might welcome your help. Explore ways of participating which you might enjoy. Then encourage more understanding within local institutions of the need for local leadership on preparedness for disruptions of various kinds. Promote initiatives for caring for people locally who need support but can’t pay for it and, soon, might not obtain it from the government. Trust is one of the most valuable forms of wealth during disruption, whereas the decline of trust in neighbours is an aspect of collapse itself: don’t be part of that collapse.
Business localisation
As part of shifting the emphasis of resilience from individuals to communities, we need to produce and buy as much locally as we can. Although various products and services are not suitable for local production, many are. For not being part of a globalised financial system, you can favour cooperative enterprises. You could join initiatives like time banks, tool and equipment sharing systems, savings clubs, and commitment pooling. If you are approaching retirement, consider how you can invest in local organisations in ways that might also generate a passive income if your savings and pensions disappear. Unless a community is knitting itself together economically, it’s only ‘cosplaying’ community, and won’t help during real difficulties. This agenda can also become part of your approach to national and international solidarity – promoting this approach everywhere.
Orthobiotic living
Our health is foundational, yet medical products and systems will become less available, affordable and reliable. Orthobiosis comes from two Greek words: orthos (correct) and bios (life). It is a fancy way of saying that “right living” is when we seek wellness by cooperating with nature rather than fighting it. That includes attention to mobility, cardiovascular fitness, deep rest, sleep, metabolic health, nutrition, gut health, disease vigilance, and complementary therapeutics, including herbs. Maybe you need to adjust priorities in life to release time and money for orthobiosis? Start with what you enjoy. Then get better at how to help the injured, whether yourself or others. Get a home medical kit, learn first aid, and keep spare spectacles (if you need them). Slowing your own physical decline will be good for everyone — it helps to be well to help well.
Water and food security
Without the basics, much of the efforts at preparedness in your household and neighbourhood will fall apart. So assess the vulnerabilities of the supplies you most rely on – drinking water and fresh food – with the aim of making those more secure. It is unlikely this involves self-sufficiency. Instead, participate in or support local efforts at food growing, help some local farmers, know local edibles,and learn food preservation. Then engage the relevant organisations that provide food and water at scale, to encourage their preparedness. Recognising the importance of the security of these essentials will mean attention to physical security, which takes us back to the matters of residence resilience and neighbourhood involvement. Yes, you might need to get political, and we will come to that.
Practical skills
As the era of cheap replacements and spare cash ends for many of us, practical skills become as valuable as possessions or money. If you ever had an interest in one of the following, now is a good time to learn: carpentry, plumbing, electrics, sewing, bicycle maintenance, fermentation, bee keeping, fire making, fire fighting, massage, holistic therapies, conflict resolution, group facilitation and non-violent self defence. Adopt an attitude of repair, towards clothing, electronics, furniture and appliances. Are you someone others will want on their team?
Relocation readiness
Unfortunately, many people need to move when faced with disruption. You can become better prepared to evacuate ahead of events such as fires, storms, floods, and military action. Longer term trends can also push a decision to move, such as the cost of living, crime rates, cultural regression, and political repression. Have clear thresholds for deciding when to leave, agreeing with family before a crisis hits. Transport plans, financial reserves, and payment options are important. Emergency international travel also benefits from planning: how well do you know where you would relocate to abroad, are your travel documents up-to-date, and how would you cope if capital controls were applied? Ensure you have multiple physical and digital copies of the various documents required for the administration of your affairs. It could also be useful and fun to maintain relationships with some friends elsewhere in the world.
Ecological stewardship
Whatever happens, the environment remains our source of life and our venue for choosing care over violence. You can reduce and resist both pollution and habitat destruction. You can support the regeneration of habitats, including reforestation, watershed restoration, soil regeneration, and help for pollinators. You can reduce and resist human cruelty to animals. You can joyfully refresh and share your wonder at being part of creation. You can do all of this locally, regionally and remotely, both practically and politically, without attachment to outcomes in unpredictably complex living systems.
Psychological wholeness
Anticipating, and living through, societal disruptions and losses, can trigger difficult emotions. We want to avoid making matters worse by our reactions and, better still, express ourselves positively because of the circumstances. Some ideas about life, as well as specific practices, can help you become more comfortable with uncertainty, change, and loss. Consider meditation, prayer, singing, time in nature, journaling, and community service. Make time to consider your values, and any meaning(s) and purpose(s) for your life. Also make time to have your own relationship with infinitude, which might, or might not, involve your sense of the divine and spiritual. Look for relevant groups, or set one up, to support such wholeness within a community.
Political engagement
You can choose to advance, not retreat, politically, due to your awareness of societal disruption and collapse. You can try to influence how politicians and officials realise the levels of destruction, the causes, and how to prepare for, and respond to, specific disruptions and breakdowns. You can engage in local government and national politics, to seek more policies that align with ‘rainbow prepping’ activities. You can participate in civil society groups, including religions and trade unions, to advance that agenda. Look out for novel political activities like people’s assemblies. It is worth remembering that, due to their use of force and massive budgets, little else will have an impact if governments become aggressive on behalf of agendas emerging from deluded or panicked elites. Engaging in politics doesn’t mean assuming collapse can be prevented, but attempting to reduce unnecessary suffering.
Information and Interaction sovereignty
Finding the information you need and interacting with the people and businesses you want to are both essential for coping with disruptions; both functions are highly fragile, due to modern technological dependence. Take steps to maintain your ability to communicate even if cut off (by a hack, physical disruption, or political action). Don’t rely on one global email account and one phone number for all your online access. Don’t rely on phones and cards for all payments. Keep physical records of phone numbers and addresses. Download maps and key files, and install a local version of an open source AI system on your computer. Maintain old landlines. Own micro-solar to recharge devices. In the meantime, don’t let either BigTech algorithms or mainstream media determine your information diet – actively seek out independent professional media sources.
Needs simplification
So much of what we are accustomed to is not necessary for our quality of life. So gradually reduce dependence on stuff and services you pay for. See how you can live comfortably with less energy, fewer new possessions, fewer trips in private vehicles, and a less complex non-seasonal diet. Go deeper into how you can benefit from a non-aquisitional mindset, where you need less certainty, control, savings, connections, contacts, and even less self-advancement. Notice any attachment you might have to the idea of having more children, or prolonging your own life for as long as possible. Become open to self-acceptance as the ultimate self-actualisation. None of this simplification needs to reduce your yearning for more equity and social justice. Change is easier when chosen rather than imposed.
Gumption promotion
In rapidly changing situations where we don’t have a standard answer or routine to follow, we will benefit from people around us being able to decide what is the best thing to do in a particular situation, and then do it with capacity and determination. That is ‘gumption’, and our educational and cultural systems have tended to reduce, not improve, it. In education that is formal or informal, for children or adults, there are opportunities for teaching more practical skills and approaches to, for instance, orthobiotic living, psychological wholeness, and amusement sustainability. Part of gumption is the critical thinking to avoid being manipulated into fear-driven herd behaviour or, in some cases, cults. Helping knowledge transfer between generations can be part of that. A good way to maintain and grow one’s own gumption is to try to help others with theirs. The impact is obvious: someone who trains ten people may contribute more than someone who stores ten months of food.
It took me almost as long to work out how to order these action areas into the ‘rainbow prepping’ mnemonic as it did to identify them. Hopefully, that will help more than myself for remembering them! The categorisation is a bit arbitrary. Perhaps you already noticed not only some overlap, but that actions in the different areas could reinforce one another. Good health helps you contribute to the community. Community improves food security. Live music and singing strengthens relationships. Practical skills support livelihoods. A sense of meaning and purpose can make hardship more bearable. I think this more positive approach to prepping aligns closely with the ethos of Deep Adaptation: preparing not simply to endure disruption, but to help create communities where people continue to experience care, dignity, creativity and even joy as industrial consumer society becomes less dependable. So I regard this list of fifteen action areas as a complement to the existing framework for Deep Adaptation: that comprises six Rs for inquiry into how to begin to respond to an awareness of collapse, and six qualities or orientations to recognise and cultivate in ourselves as we live into more challenging situations.
Since sharing this ethos in public, nearly 10 years ago, I felt reluctant to describe what we should do, as collapse affects everything in life and responses need to be developed locally and personally. That reluctance was also because I wondered whether a rapid focus on action might avoid the time needed to process the pain of realisation and allow it to transform us at a deeper level. However, as we enter the age of consequences and the discussion on societal collapse spreads, I am pleased to make this contribution to identifying what we could still be doing to help.
The ideas for the fifteen action areas I have listed in this essay arose from three sources. First, my own assessment of how to prepare. Second, what I’ve learned from people who have been preparing in their own ways. Third, what I have learned is being done around the world by the chroniclers of resilience and adaptation, including the Transition Network, degrowth scholars, Earth Regenerators, Global Ecovillage Network, Local Futures, Global Action Plan UK, and various Deep Adaptation initiatives around the world. With this framework I am re-packing a diverse field of endeavour into something that is, I hope, relatable and memorable for you whenever discussing collapse risk and readiness with people. I have benefitted from the process, as it now leaves me with the clarity that I happily prep for the rainbows I will never see, while enjoying those I do.
The ‘rainbow prepping’ concept inspired the cover of the German version of Breaking Together. The book is a free download for the duration of Kollapscamp 2026. I hope it helps initiate a translation-review team so we can get a better version out as paperback and audio in due course, with a progressive local publisher. Also until the end of August, there is a 25% reduction on the paperback in English, but only via Amazon (it returns to $22 in September).
Within the peer mentoring of the Metacrisis Initiative we will use the ‘rainbow prepping’ list of action areas as a means of self assessment, personal reprioritising, and commitment making. You might benefit from asking yourself: in which domains of ‘rainbow prepping’ would I like to play some more?
Later this year, I’ll share some of my own stumbling, humbling, and positive experiences of ‘rainbow prepping’ via my Instagram and Youtube (subscribe to either to be informed). If you are not part of the Metacrisis Initiative and would like to chat about this topic then the Deep Adaptation group on Facebook is one place to start… but don’t get stuck there (remembering your information and interaction sovereignty!).
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Guest article by John Foster, University of Lancaster, UK, and author of After Sustainability.
Note from Jem: In previous essays, I have criticized what I regard as the authoritarian sentiments and imaginations of some environmentalists. I have articulated an approach that focuses on freeing us from the manipulative and exploitative systems that accelerate environmental destruction. British Academic John Foster is one intellectual who I have debated on these topics. He penned a reply to my recent essay, and I am sharing it here to encourage dialogue about the future of environmental politics in a fracturing world. Over to John…
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There is a peculiar challenge in debating how a society should prepare for its own possible collapse. The usual rules of political argument – the cut and thrust, the simplification of an opponent’s position into a convenient label – begin to feel not just unhelpful but actively dishonest. When the stakes are this high, the window for meaningful action this narrow, and the situation so unprecedented, we owe each other something more than polemic. We need to accept that we can’t know what might work to reduce harm and give future generations of humans, and other species, a better chance.
I invited an essay from a conservationist who recently worked in the crucible of US politics, and is now seeking ways to bring more authentic attention to ecological realities.
By Aaron Vandiver
Over the past several decades, environmentalism has been driven far from its roots. What began as a movement grounded in ecological understanding, love for the living Earth, and resistance to industrial destruction has been reduced to a narrow technical problem: carbon emissions.
When, on this blog, Professor Jem Bendell explains a pan-ecological perspective, he is calling us back to a truth environmentalists once grasped intuitively. As Rachel Carson wrote, “Nothing in nature exists alone.” Forests, oceans, soils, coral reefs, and natural hydrological cycles are, as philosopher Charles Eisenstein puts it, the “vital organs” and systems of a living Earth. A mechanical climate model focused on atmospheric physics and emissions cannot capture this living dimension. As Professor Bill Rees put it in response to Jem’s essay, climate is not primarily a physical system but a “biophysical” one. Recognizing this requires elevating biology — life itself — to the same status that physics and chemistry have enjoyed in the institutions of science on environment and climate.
In this era of societal disruption and metacrisis, international climate summits provide us a Shakespearean display of the human craving for credible myths to avoid daunting truths. Four lanes of greed carve through one of the remaining lungs and heat-shields of our planet — and this month it speeds 50,000 souls towards reassuring each other that they are noble, not needy, and well-informed, not foolish. Earlier this year, the summit secretariat rushed to tell everyone that this new highway through the Amazon Rainforest would have been built anyway. They’d probably heard how new roads cause – and then enable – deforestation. The Brazilian government responded with some more commitments on rainforest protection. That’s promising, but they still give permits to dig up the Amazon for the metals under the trees. The mirage shimmering above the asphalt, seen by delegates as they approach the city of Belem, is a symbol for what passes as scientific curiosity, environmental care, and responsible leadership on the world stage in 2025.
Ahead of the latest tropical junket, I spoke with the Climate Emergency Forum about what the climate has been telling us through the crazy temperature readings over the last two years. The changes can’t be explained through carbon gases alone. There are various contributing factors — and an important one is that human activity has badly disrupted the biohydrological processes where large forests and oceans naturally seed clouds. I explained the need for a paradigm shift in climatology and related activism and policy, and mentioned my recent essay on the topic, where I summarise the evidence. As many people have followed my analysis on the topic since 2018, I thought it important to summarise my latest understanding — beyond ‘carbon-centrism’.
Not long ago, I sat across from a UN civil servant at a quiet café in Geneva. She had worked for over two decades in the UN system, from humanitarian relief to climate diplomacy. As she stirred her coffee, she confessed: “I feel disappointed, bewildered. Sometimes I wonder if anything we do makes a difference anymore.” Her voice was tired, but not bitter—more like someone watching a dam crack and realising she only had her teaspoon to stem the flood.
She is not alone. In conversations across UN agencies, I’ve been hearing similar expressions of despair. As institutions strain under the weight of cascading crises—climate chaos, ecosystem breakdown, spiralling inequality, violent conflict, and the abandonment of international law—many international civil servants find themselves in a moral and professional no-man’s land. They are loyal to the ideals of the UN, yet unable to reconcile those ideals with what they now see daily: the world is not just “failing to meet the SDGs“—it is unraveling.
A few months ago, I reconnected with a friend who I had worked with in initiative on ‘the sharing economy’. At the time, we were both ‘Young Global Leaders’ (YGLs) with the World Economic Forum. It was 2013, and we had volunteered our time to bring attention to how new technologies could be used to help everyone have a good life with less ecological impact. Personally, we were imagining a future of peer-to-peer resource sharing, community-based production, and cooperative ownership. Meeting up after years, we laughed that our work had oddly contributed to the World Economic Forum publishing the line that became infamous as a globalist’s dystopian injunction: “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Although we laughed, it was with a sense of ‘doomer humour’. My friend’s tone had shifted from a decade ago. She felt disappointment and defeat. “All we did,” she told me, “was write a love letter to the next wave of monopolists.” Her disillusionment was not unique. Many working in alternative economics—whether cooperatives, commons networks, or solidarity enterprises—feel similarly deflated. Despite huge efforts to get governments around the world to adopt policies to promote the ‘Social and Solidarity Economy’, the tide has been in the opposite direction. Monopoly capitalism has grown stronger, tightening its grip through unrestrained mergers and acquisitions, extractive digital platforms, and ‘techbro’ political interference. Now the big tech companies don’t compete in a free market, as they own the markets and can operate similarly to feudal lords. It’s why the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis labels this era ‘technofeudalism’.
It’s easy to feel like we failed. But that pain—of giving so much for so little change—is not a reflection of personal failure. It’s a sign of deeper structural shifts….
In my experience, it is rare to hear farmers from the Global South discussing their challenges and aspirations, and what might be useful support to receive from successful restaurateurs and resort owners. That’s why I’m delighted to release a short film that brings you the voices of organic and regenerative farmers in dialogue with others in the food business sector in Bali, Indonesia.
After 2 years of operation as a demonstration farm, school, and event space for organic and regenerative agriculture, at Bekandze Farm we hosted a meeting of organic farmers, distributors, NGOs and food retailers. The participants discussed why organic farming is such a small part of agriculture in Bali, despite the opportunities provided by the environment and the visitor economy. After discussing the challenges, we explored potential solutions for scaling organic farming on the island, and more widely in Indonesia. Achieving that would help all the people on the island, as it would increase their food security by decreasing dependence on agrochemicals. In that sense, organic and regenerative methods of farming are also methods of collapse preparedness, or practical Deep Adaptation.
The Ubud Food Festival concluded yesterday here in Bali, Indonesia. I spoke at an event on how to work better with nature to achieve greater food security. I was invited due to my co-founding of an organic farm school, and was pleased to attend as we encourage collaboration amongst restaurants to scale up organic farming. Our crowdfund to help with that is still a few thousand short of the necessary target. In preparation for the event, I drafted some notes on what I’d say. They follow below. If you can support us, please take a moment to contribute. Thx, Jem
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It’s a pleasure to be here with you in Ubud — a town that’s become an international symbol of nature-based spirituality, conscious living, and the pursuit of wellness.
Let me start with a question: How many of you would prefer to eat organic food, that’s food grown without any chemicals? And now — how many of you know that you always eat organic food here in Bali?
The one talk that I’m scheduled to give in the UK this year is at the Festival of Commoning in Stroud. My reason for that is my support of what Michel Bauwens describes as cosmolocalism [0] in the face of collapse, and what I term the ‘Great Reclamation’ of our power. It is best explained and illustrated by one of the organisers of the Festival, Dave Darby, in a guest article…
“All civilisations collapse in the end. The Roman Empire is long gone, along with the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Sumerians. Will the global civilisation of corporate capitalism buck the trend? Of course not, but how long does it have left? In such a complex system, it is impossible to predict when there will be a sudden shift, but there is good evidence that the process of breakdown has already begun. Damage to soils, water tables, forests, the oceans and climate is occurring alongside economic and political upheaval. No longer is this a theoretical matter about the distant future, but something we should be preparing for today. But how?
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