Episódios
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Hey folks—
If you feel, right now, like you are waking up to a magnitude of upheaval you didn’t expect — if you feel really unsure about what it means and what you should do to manage the resulting chaos in your own life — you are not alone.
Working through this sudden collision with planetary reality is work we will all be forced to take up in the next few years.
In this podcast, I unpack discontinuity, and the ways in which it demands new thinking. That need for new thinking can leave us with feelings of personal discontinuity and alienation from our surroundings... and of a sense of disconnection from the futures we once imagined for ourselves and our children.
This presents an opportunity, though. Discontinuity is not devastation; disaster springs from our unwillingness to acknowledge it. We can reimagine the lives we’re building to thrive in discontinuity — just as we can rebuild our communities to increase their durability and capacity for change. The loss of continuity is not the end of the story, it’s the beginning.
In a strange way, letting go of the world we expected to have can give us back a future we want.
Alex
PS: My next crash course in personal ruggedization will begin at the end of the month. Details in my next newsletter.
- This new podcast, When We Are, is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast and other podcast platforms around the world, should that be your preferred way of listening. Please subscribe, rate and review.
- My work was mentioned in two news stories last week, one in The Atlantic about the breakdown of sense-making in social media and one in The Guardian about the California fires. Also, though this piece didn’t reference my work, regular readers will notice a lot of my regular themes: That Giant Sucking Sound? It’s Climate Change Devouring Your Home’s Value. Finally, a reader asked where they might find this interview I did back in 2022: How to ruggedize your life and prepare for... whatever comes next.
- I have a recent piece in Mother Jones, Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It.
- Stay connected on social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky
- Check out my books: Worldchanging and Carbon Zero
- View my TED Global talks on sustainability and cities.
- I’ve spoken with the media hundreds of times. I was featured in a NY Times Magazine piece, "This Isn't the California I Married" and My writing was the jumping-off point for an episode of This American Life titled Unprepared for What Has Already Happened, as well as the podcasts Without; The Big Story; Everybody In the Pool and 99% Invisible’s Not Built for This series. I also spoke recently with PBS News Hour about why there are no climate havens.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe -
Hey folks—
How do I remain an optimist about the human future, even as the planetary crisis worsens?
A few thoughts.
Alex
PS: A little more to chew on:
* More here on the mythological universal conversion event, and how we might think more clearly about the future.
* Why real optimism springs from grasping what fights are now winnable and why outspoken optimism is actually critical to winning those fights.
* The long-running debate about whether “optimistic” or “resolute” is the right description of this stance, and whether “steely-eyed optimism” splits the difference.
* I’ve written many times about how predatory delay is not only a strategy for playing out the end of the unsustainable, but is itself as a waning industry, for example here.
Reminder: My next live Ruggedize Your Life: the Basics class (a concentrated introductory course for planning a personal climate strategy) will be held a week from today, on Thursday, January 30th, from 11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time. (Yes, class will be recorded.)
Click the button below to save your spot:
- If you like this new podcast, When We Are, please rate, review, follow and share these episodes. Thank you!
- Stay connected on social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky
- I have a new piece in Mother Jones, Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It.
- Check out my books: Worldchanging and Carbon Zero
- View my TED Global talks on sustainability and cities.
- I’ve spoken with the media hundreds of times. Recently, I was featured in a NY Times Magazine piece, "This Isn't the California I Married." My writing was the jumping-off point for an episode of This American Life titled Unprepared for What Has Already Happened, as well as the podcasts Without; The Big Story; Everybody In the Pool and 99% Invisible’s Not Built for This series.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe -
Estão a faltar episódios?
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Hey folks—
We’ve moved from the era when avoiding the planetary crisis was the most pressing mission on Earth, to one where avoiding further catastrophe is now a subset of the challenge of responding to a climate and biosphere now in crisis.
Could there be a better time to have unchecked corruption, reinvigorated predatory delay and a general collapse of competance in Washington, D.C.?
In this impromptu podcast, I talk Trump, the lost Orderly Transition, and why reactive, forced climate response is so costly, unfair, and zero sum. Luckily, reactive, forced climate response seems to be mostly what we’ll get for at least the next half decade.
Here’s the Bill McKibben quote I bumbled:
"The most important news of last week, though you would have had to search hard to find it, was that the carbon dioxide monitoring station at Mauna Loa recorded the biggest single-year growth in co2 in its 66-year-history, rising 3.58 ppm."
Apologies as well for the work-from-home moment at the end. (My family happily and unexpectedly tumbled in the door to announce the end of my work day.)
To brighter days and better news…
Alex
PS: I’m teaching another Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics class on Thursday, January 30th. Details here.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe -
“We know we need to move, but how soon do we need to do it?” is a question I get a lot.
There are no simple answers: every personal climate strategy is a unique set of solutions for a particular set of problems. But some of the key questions we need to ask ourselves are:
* What are we gaining by staying put? Are there future events (e.g., a child’s graduation, retirement, a job promotion) we’re looking to see through before we go?
* What are the costs of climate relocation, and will we be more or less able to meet them later?
* How close to a moment of loss in value and capacity (or even catastrophic direct climate impacts) is the place we are now? How late will be too late?
In this delightful brief tour of the tempo of discontinuity, I try to answer those questions by suggesting three basic indicators.
Which ‘indicator light’ is flashing where you live?
- Alex
A bunch of you have asked when my next personal ruggedization classes will be. I’ll be more formally announcing this in my next letter, but my next live Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics class (a concentrated 101 in planning a personal climate strategy) will be held on Thursday, January 30th, from 11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time.
If you know you want to take the class, click the link below to save your spot:
Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics
Thursday, January 30th, from 11:00 am - 1:00 pm Pacific Time.
Class will be recorded and the recording sent to all registered participants the following week.
More soon.
Alex
- My next Crash Course on Personal Ruggedization will be in February, details to come. (You can read a description of the last course here.)
- Stay connected on social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky
- I have a new piece in Mother Jones, Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It. (I don’t write the headlines…)
- Check out my books: Worldchanging and Carbon Zero
- View my TED Global talks on sustainability and cities.
- I’ve spoken with the media hundreds of times. Recently, I was featured in a NY Times Magazine piece, "This Isn't the California I Married." My writing was the jumping-off point for an episode of This American Life titled Unprepared for What Has Already Happened, as well as the podcasts Without; The Big Story; Everybody In the Pool and 99% Invisible’s Not Built for This series.
- I have a new podcast, When We Are, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast and other podcast platforms around the world. Please check it out, rate, review, follow and share these episodes. Thank you!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe -
In this brand new When We Are podcast, I discuss why our concept of “natural disaster” — a sudden and unexpected calamitous natural event bringing great loss from which we then recover and return to normal life — is less and less useful for understanding the world we now live in.
I also briefly discuss the movie Jaws.
Please note that When We Are is now available on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and other platforms, if that’s how you prefer to do your listening.
Please also help me spread the word by sharing, or rating and reviewing the show wherever you listen.
Want to tell someone about this newsletter? Please share.
Thanks,
Alex
- I have a new piece in Mother Jones, Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It. (I don’t write the headlines…)
- Stay connected on social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky
- Check out my books: Worldchanging and Carbon Zero
- View my TED Global talks on sustainability and cities.
- I’ve spoken with the media hundreds of times. Recently, I was featured in a NY Times Magazine piece, "This Isn't the California I Married." My writing was the jumping-off point for an episode of This American Life titled Unprepared for What Has Already Happened, as well as the podcasts Without; The Big Story; Everybody In the Pool and 99% Invisible’s Not Built for This series.
- Visit my Bookshop shop to get John Vaillant’s Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World and discover some of my other top reads.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe -
Hey Folks—
This is episode zero of my new casual podcast for subscribers.
Give it a listen to find out more (it’s about 10 minutes long).
Here’s the show description: “The climate crisis is no longer something happening to other people, somewhere else. It's changing all our lives, right now. Few of us are ready. Join renowned climate futurist Alex Steffen and guests as we show the patterns behind the chaos, learn how to build smart climate strategies, and laugh at the absurdity of daily life in discontinuous times.”
If you like it, you’ll also be able to add it to your podcast feeds on many platforms.
I hope you enjoy When We Are!
—Alex
- I have a brand new piece in Mother Jones, Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It. (I don’t write the headlines…)
- Stay connected on social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky
- Check out my books: Worldchanging and Carbon Zero
- View my TED Global talks on sustainability and cities.
- I’ve spoken with the media hundreds of times. Recently, I was featured in a NY Times Magazine piece, "This Isn't the California I Married." My writing was the jumping-off point for an episode of This American Life titled Unprepared for What Has Already Happened, as well as the podcasts Without; The Big Story; Everybody In the Pool and 99% Invisible’s Not Built for This series.
- Visit my Bookshop shop to get China Miéville’s The City & The City and discover some of my other top reads.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe
