Reading to my grandson Emery as he nods off. Like most grandparents, I wonder what the world will be like when my grandkids are older. It will be 2089 when Emery is the age I am now. The world seems so precarious now; what will it be like then? Will life be better or worse? Will we even be here? Drawing by Jenny Hershey. Follow her on Instagram @deeofo.
Any way you slice it, keeping warming below 2°C requires an immediate, massive, and global mitigation effort. With each passing day, it’s less likely that we’ll succeed. Indeed, over 90% of Earth scientists believe we’ll surpass this threshold.
Here’s an idea that’s simple and beautiful but goes against both the myths of the mainstream culture and our deepest mental habits. It’s this: don’t be afraid, and spread love every chance you get.
Peter Kalmus, climate scientist at NASA, from his book Being the Change
Cows wander through a date tree orchard in the Imperial Valley near Brawley, California. Photo by Michael Chase. Follow him on Instagram @mjohnsonchase.
When I set out on my first solo-biking adventure in 2015, I had no idea I would remain enthusiastically committed to long distance biking seven years later. Nor did I imagine I would have the good fortune to share many trips with an enthusiastic and equally curious biking partner who is also an excellent illustrator. Jenny and I both hope our occasional blog posts enrich your life (as they do ours) in some small way. Traveling at the speed of a bicycle is great exercise, and it’s an in-your-face way to experience how a place actually feels. It also provides a very intimate experience of the natural world, which is especially important in an age where most of us (at least in the Global North) are mostly protected - even isolated - from our rapidly changing climate and increasingly degrading environment.
After trips to Wisconsin to see my kids and grandkids over the Christmas holidays, we drove Jenny’s car to El Paso (stopping for a few days to bike in Big Bend National Park), and then took Amtrak to Los Angeles with our bikes to visit my brothers Chris and Steve for a few days. Our plan was to ride our bikes from Anaheim back to El Paso. We only made it to Tucson.
We rode by a Cattle Manure Power Plant south of Brawley in California’s famed Imperial Valley. The plant is now abandoned, after opening twice over the last 30 years to great fanfare under two different private companies - one of whom claimed they would help local cattle ranchers dispose of manure by turning it into electricity under a contract with Southern Californian Edison, and another who was going to also process King Grass for the biofuel market. Unfortunately, the first project was plagued by a massive rainstorm that made manure retrieval and processing impossible, and the second was closed after an earthquake in 2010 damaged the processing plant. Photo by Michael Chase. Follow him on Instagram @mjohnsonchase.
After some very long rides (over 85 miles), mixed with several brutal days riding into intense and unremitting easterly winds while climbing several thousands of feet in elevation, Jenny and I decided that it would be best for us to rest up in Tucson, and then take the train back to El Paso from Tucson for a more leisurely return to our car, where we would car/bike our way back home to New York City (I had been hoping to ride Highway 9 along the New Mexico border through historic Columbus, NM into El Paso, but that will wait for another trip).
Lizzie is a takeout restaurant hostess in Canyon City, California, with a complex story about the many people for whom she is responsible. She patiently listened to Jenny express frustration over the lack of regard drivers demonstrated toward us on Gilman Springs Road on the way to the Palm Springs desert. We were unavoidably placed in a very dangerous situation (having been directed there by a bicycle mapping program I don’t think we’ll continue to use). We found ourselves several miles up a canyon when the shoulder disappeared on a narrow two-lane road, with high winds and cars passing feet away at 75 miles an hour showing no intention or interest in our situation or safety. We were forced to walk our bikes over a rumble strip trying to avoid traffic on our left and thorny bushes on the right. Nobody stopped or slowed down. The indifference of drivers to our situation was stupefying. After listening to Jenny’s story, Lizzie said “That’s so sad. What’s going on in people’s heads? We’ve lost our humanity with traffic. It’s as if it’s no longer human beings driving those cars”. Then, she offered to bag up extra chips and guacamole (which turned out to be excellent) for our ride into Palm Springs the next day. Drawing by Jenny Hershey. Follow her on Instagram @deeofo.
Deciding to change our plans wasn’t easy. Jenny and I have different strengths and limitations. We both felt challenged and each reacted differently. But like all collective human endeavors, we had to accept our limits as we confronted our own personal challenges and devise a bail-out strategy that worked for both of us. In the meantime, we rode through many diverse industrial and agricultural environments and basked in 650 miles of extraordinary natural landscapes during our ride from Anaheim to Tucson.
“!Hay zanahorias. Muchas zanahorias!” Workers near the road express their pleasure over the harvest to Jenny. Drawing by Jenny Hershey. Follow her on Instagram @deeofo.
It’s easy to love the sheer rawness and massive scale of the American southwest, especially as seen from a bike. Where there is water for irrigation (delivered through a system of canals from the Colorado and Gila Rivers) green fields of lettuces, cabbages, broccoli, sugar beets, carrots, alfalfa, wheat, king grass and countless other plants stretch into the horizon on endlessly flat terrain. In every direction lie mountains - craggy and massive, brown, apricot, and hazelnut in full sunlight, gray, impersonal and barren under cloudy skies. Where there is no water, barrel-cactus covered flatlands fall into the horizon, ubiquitous washes create carved out ridge-lines that delight the eye and ominously warn of floods to come, and Joshua trees and Saguaro cacti stand like regal gifts from Diego Rivera. The sun can be unrelenting (thank God it is January), and the wind can be deafening. The rare absence of wind results in a silence more peaceful than a Buddhist retreat. These physical polarities get under one’s skin like dirt under one’s fingernails. And it’s impossible to get enough of the warm afternoons, especially when the sun slants lower in the sky and casts a golden glow on all it shines upon, even trash.
Field workers in the Imperial Valley. Photo by Michael Chase. Follow him on Instagram @mjohnsonchase.
Manuel, a hard working date farmer from Calexico, CA, tends to a date palm orchard about 20 miles from his home. After telling us what the trees behind him were, he explained to us that dates are harvested once a year in August. Manuel also does agricultural work in the adjoining border town of Mexicali, Mexico, and has traveled back and forth between California and Mexico for years. He worries about the heat and extended drought in his region, and how it will impact crops in both countries. Drawing by Jenny Hershey. Follow her work on Instagram @deeofo.
During the recent months American environmentalists have been hyper-focused on the passage of the climate provisions in the “Build Back Better” act. Hoping to finally address climate change at a policy level that approaches the scale scientists tell us is required, climate activists were seriously disappointed by recent setbacks to the bill’s passage. Other occurrences haven’t added comfort: in mid-January the news broke that the hottest eight years ever recorded have occurred in the last eight years, and US emissions jumped in 2021 over 2020 levels, making our national goal of a 50% reduction in 2005 CO2 levels by 2030 further out of reach. Yet, these troublesome headlines are only part of discouraging news. Bloomberg just published an article about the potential of Kuwait becoming too hot for people or wildlife in a few decades, and NPR just published an article and video about how a climate change-induced drought in Kenya and nearby Uganda is parching landscapes, killing livestock and creating a humanitarian crisis. And only a few days ago, Weekend Edition published a story and video footage about a crippling drought now underway in Iraq. It’s sad to say there is little that is surprising in such reports, and it is easy to cite so much other alarming news (such as unprecedented high temperatures and decline of sea ice in the Arctic, and the rapid melting of the Thwaite Glacier in Antartica).
We met David on a dirt road near Eloy, Arizona. A road safety and maintenance manager for 35 years, David helped us avoid some dangerous paved roads without shoulders by directing us down some safer dirt roads. He pointed to one area and said teasingly, “Oh don’t go down there—the locals will shoot at you just to mess with you.” He suggested a course for us that he would confidently cycle with his wife. We deeply appreciated his kindness as we made our way to safer terrain.
It isn’t my intention to be depressing, but rather to lay a foundation for what I’ve been thinking about on this trip. Now that meaningful action on climate change appears stalled once again in America, it might be time to think more deeply about the potential consequences of climate chaos. In January of 2020, I wrote the following in a blog post titled Getting Real About Global CO2 Emissions: ….current science tells us that global carbon emissions MUST be cut in half over the next ten years for us to maintain a climate anywhere close to what we humans have enjoyed in our comparatively short time on earth. In that post I worked through the most recent science on the carbon budget climate scientists tell us we shouldn’t exceed to stay below a 2°C rise in global temperatures. However, global emissions have not decreased in the past two years; instead they have increased, making what we have to achieve in the coming years even more challenging. This has happened even though we achieved a slight aggregate reduction of GHG emissions in the US (a 10% drop in 2020 versus a 6% rise in 2021), and the successful enactment of a few nationally determined contributions (NDC’s), as outlined in the Paris Accords, most particularly by the European Union.
Current CO2 levels today are at the historically high figure of 417 ppm, which is 50% higher than at the beginning of the industrial revolution. In other words, in spite of lots of incredible efforts by millions of activists and sustainability professionals, hundreds of corporations, countless NGO’s and other agencies, and many national governments and world government organizations, we aren’t yet moving the needle downward on GHG emissions. Not yet, anyway.
Hope is an extraordinary thing, and there are new reasons to be hopeful every day (such as the recent creation of the Clean Energy Corp by the US Department of Energy). Still, I often hear others say that while they aren’t optimistic we will deal with climate change successfully, they are hopeful regardless. I feel the same way, and savor living each day with the future in mind far more than I despair over what we may have already wrought.
Yet, a persistent thought nags at me from the back of my mind, a thought that until now, I have only expressed to my closest friends. What happens if we fail? What happens if the world doesn’t get it together to stop our use of fossil fuels soon enough to avert catastrophe? What happens if we unwittingly set in motion one or a few climate tipping points (if we haven’t done so already), and climate chaos arrives suddenly and violently? What might that look like, and when might that happen? How will civilization respond? Will it be game over? Or might we rebuild something of value out of the rubble of a wounded, mangled or even collapsed civilization?
Jenny met Derek in Tucson outside a Walmart store. Recently released from prison, he is currently homeless. Jenny needed someone to watch her bike while she shopped for dinner, and he needed someone to keep an eye on his cellphone as it charged while he shopped. They negotiated an exchange: Jenny watched Derek’s phone while he shopped and Derek watched Jenny’s bike while she did. This unlikely exchange resulted in a long conversation with common ground on many subjects. As Jenny began to leave, she told Derek he was a good man, and to stay strong no matter what others said about him. He had served 2.5 years in jail for possessing narcotics. He believes he has paid his dues, and he dreams of moving home to Atlanta to be close to his daughter and opening up a car detailing shop. Drawing by Jenny Hershey. Follow her on Instagram @deepfo.
I’m not alone in wondering about such outcomes. I suspect many readers of this blog have had similar fleeting thoughts. As it happens, there is a growing body of literature and activist thinking by writers (especially scholars) who are wondering (out-loud) if civilization will indeed collapse as climate change gets worse. The most well-known version of this literature is based on a paper published in 2018, and a subsequent book published in 2021 called Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos, edited by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read.
Some of the leading scholars of this approach are already convinced civilizational collapse is inevitable, and believe climate chaos will arrive in the next few decades. Others aren’t as certain the collapse of civilization is imminent, but strongly believe we should consider it a potential outcome for which we should make preparations. These perspectives are not intended to be nihilistic, and no scholar is suggesting we should refrain from doing all we can as quickly as we can to mitigate climate change. But Deep Adaptation does argue for a deeper accounting of adaptive processes. It is simultaneously a concept, agenda, and an international social movement. It assumes that extreme weather events and other related climate stressors will increasingly disrupt power, food, water, shelter, and social and governmental systems. The word deep in this context indicates that strong measures are required to adapt to an unraveling of western industrial lifestyles. That agenda includes values of nonviolence, compassion, curiosity, and respect, and a framework for constructive action. This agenda was recently featured in an article in Inside Climate News.
Seen near Fort Hancock, Texas. Photo by Jenny Hershey. Follow her on Instagram @deeofo.
The term deep adaptation follows a logical naming sequence. A few decades ago, activists and scientists talked about mitigating the negative impacts of GHG in our atmosphere by finding alternatives to carbon-based fuels and increasing ways to draw down carbon through natural processes and technological fixes. However, over the years the realization that we also need to adapt to irretrievable changes already baked into our atmosphere and oceans are driving public conversation about changing where to locate human communities (and where not to), and how to prepare communities for more extreme weather. As a result, scientists and activists began to speak about helping communities to develop greater resilience as an attribute of adaptation. Now we have a term that describes the kind of adaptation we will need if climate chaos causes civilizations to collapse. Deep adaptation can be thought of as a re-adaptation of the structures of societies to create new ways for humans to survive and prosper.
There’s a related scientific field called collapsology that studies how civilizations have collapsed in the past, and how environmental overshoot might cause them to collapse in the future. Collapse in this context doesn’t necessarily mean that societal disruption will be sudden and complete, but does imply a form of breakdown in systems that is comprehensive and cannot be reversed. Deep Adaptation describes personal and collective responses to the anticipation or experience of societal collapse. And, as already stated, it suggests that by getting out in front of the possibility, we may have time to create new structures and/or institutions that will allow human life to flourish.
Seen on Texas State Highway 20, east of El Paso. Photo by Michael Chase. Following him on Instagram @mjohnsonchase.
Thus far, deep adaptation has been met with a great deal of resistance, and with only a few exceptions, it hasn’t caught the attention of media. After all, it is unthinkable. Anticipating societal collapse - whether from a range of environmental, economic, political or technological factors - has been attacked as pessimism, alarmism, doomism, fatalism or defeatism. Yet, proponents consider it would be defeatist to not even begin exploring what we can do to help in the face of massive societal disruption, and that any call for public engagement with the unthinkable is especially germane in this moment of a global pandemic. Not very long ago, it was unthinkable that a virus would shut down nations. It may have been this obvious global lack of preparation and resilience in the face of the COVID pandemic that inspired more than five hundred international scholars to sign and publicize a Scholar’s Warning Letter in March of 2021. The letter publicly addresses the equally unthinkable topics of societal disruption and potential collapse.
We met Raul east of El Paso as we were heading home. He was tending the field in front of his ranch, preparing to turn the hay under as green manure. He joked he was doing it for the exercise, since he had no access to water for planting anyway. Turns out much of the Rio Grande valley is in the 7th year of a drought; this one being the most serious one Raul has seen in the 50 years he’s lived in this valley. If farmers don’t have wells (the use of which, ironically lowers the water table), they have to rely on a water allotment from the local canal system. The canals are fed by Rio Grande river water, whose headwaters are the Weminuche Wilderness in southwestern Colorado, some 575 miles away. The wilderness is three quarters the size of Rhode Island, and has fed the Rio Grande for centuries. Now, between the competing problems of a reduced snowpack in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and increased use of water upstream as New Mexico also grapples with drought, Raul’s usual allotment of 3 acre feet has been reduced to a few inches. Since Raul doesn’t have a well, he basically can’t grow anything now. He even said it would be risky to grow a vegetable garden because, “you never know if you’ll have the water”. Raul also told us that it used to be a lot colder, with some snow on the ground and more wind than now. We were enjoying the weather, but it was a placid day with full sunshine and about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. I asked Raul if he thought rain would come. He replied, “I hope so”. And I replied, “ I read a lot of climate science, and I think that although you might get occasional relief, what you’re going through now is likely to be the trend for a long time”. And I added, “I hope I’m wrong”. Raul gestured with open palms as if to say, what will come, will come. The Rio Grande is about a mile behind Raul’s ranch and the mountains in the distance are the Chihuahua Mountains of Mexico. Raul used to visit Mexico a lot but now the area behind his ranch is controlled by the cartel, so it’s no longer fun to go there. Photo by Michael Chase. Follow his work on Instagram @mjohnsonchase.
It can take a while for new perspectives to establish themselves in academic communities, much less among citizens and policymakers. Think about how long it has taken to get consensus on even the most conservative scientific warnings about climate change. It was well over 30 years ago that Congress held its first hearing on the subject of a warming climate, long before we had a vocabulary for what is now everyday news: extreme weather, droughts, floods, sea level rise, ocean acidification, rapid biodiversity loss, crop loss and famine, human migration and resource wars over water and arable land.
Similar to many of the citizens, politicians, and media outlets represented in the movie Don’t Look Up, some of of us don’t want to face information that challenges our closely held assumptions of security. However, some people will find dignity no matter what is coming. The final scene in the movie is a window into that possibility. A small group of people (who fought hard to avoid what they are about to experience) share a simple and final meal accepting their fate and fortifying themselves through prayer and conversation over their good fortune to know and love one another. In that moment, as in all moments: acceptance and love, recognition and kindness, staring into the abyss and knowing humanity means something, even though like all things, it was just another blink of life in the everlasting expansion and contraction of universal consciousness.
We met Erik at Catalina State Park just outside of Tucson. A park ranger, he is also a licensed falconer, and was leading a seminar with Virgil, a Harris Hawk. Erik became falconer to Virgil a couple of years ago and is devoted to him. Yet, Erik seemed quite realistic about the limitations of the relationship. When Jenny asked him if he loved the bird, he blushed and said, “Well, it’s not reciprocal because Virgil has no emotion”. Jenny's (sotto voce) response to me was, “Call me crazy, but that bird is attached to Erik. You can see it in his eyes”. In any case, we were enchanted by the extraordinary relationship between this man and a hawk, and found it a great inspiration for how different species can harmonize in such a profound way. Perhaps on the other side of “Deep Adaptation,” we can cultivate more sacred and symbiotic relationships with other species on this fragile world. Drawing by Jenny Hershey. Follow her on Instagram @deeofo.
Jenny’s sister, Terry Hershey, sent the following poem to start the new year in 2022. We both believe it says much about what the world needs right now.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
Stay vigilant! Thanks for reading. More to come. If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to this blog, so you can follow our next biking trip later in the spring of 2022.
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