Never waste a crisis

Like a lot of people, I’m struggling to process the tragedy of Hurricane Helene. I grew up in Florida and my mom’s side of the family is concentrated in the mountains of North Carolina. I have a lot of friends and family who were, and continue to be, impacted by this storm.

Thankfully, everyone I know in the region is accounted for and appears to be okay. That’s a relief. But even for those who managed to survive, the toll of this storm is almost incomprehensible. And there’s certainly more to come. You don’t wipe out entire towns and the critical infrastructure of multiple states without some long-term consequences.

The scale of destruction has surprised many climate scientists and meteorologists I follow. Over the course of a few days, it’s estimated Helene dropped 40 trillion gallons of water, enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times. Ed Clark, head of that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said, "I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky."

Nor was the U.S. the only place experiencing such outcomes. A storm named Boris “dumped five times September’s average rainfall across Europe,” leaving a trail of destruction across six countries. Typhoon Yagi, one of Asia’s most powerful storms, caused landslides in Vietnam and marooned thousands in Thailand. Forty-four of Nepal’s seventy-seven districts have suffered flash floods and landslides from the country’s worst rains in fifty years. Both Nigeria and Chad are seeing their worst flooding in decades after nonstop rain.

And that was just during the month of September.

I’ve heard a lot of people wondering, “Will this be enough to wake people up to climate change?” But I’m not convinced the problem is still that people aren’t awake to the danger—seven in ten Americans favor action on climate change.

It’s that they’re grieving.

As the catastrophe of climate change becomes more apparent, the loss of our current way of life also becomes more apparent. While I’m not a huge fan of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, it’s worth noting there is no correct way to grieve such a monumental loss. Denial, anxiety, and pessimism would all be very normal responses.

When people are ready to take action, they often look to the knowledge of “preppers.” There’s certainly much to learn there, and maybe in a future newsletter I’ll talk about where I’m making my investments, both in equipment and education. But the modern society that we’re grieving is built on connectedness and interdependency. It’s not enough to be individually resilient, if that’s even possible. We need to think bigger.

We have to think about the systems change that leads to community resilience.

What’s happening on the ground across the southeastern United States can give us some clues about what that might look like. As I listen to the stories, I’m struck by the amount of agency, resourcefulness, and community care. No one waited to be told what needed to be done. People with chainsaws removed trees blocking roads. People with mules and helicopters performed search and rescue missions. A college student gave up his sleep (and probably some of his grades) in order to consolidate real-time information on recovery efforts. When faced with unbelievable obstacles, people are finding a way around or through.

People also leaned into generosity. They opened up their homes, their cupboards, and wallets for those in need. Farmers fed their communities with everything they had, then used their connections to get necessities like diapers and hygiene items. Doctors lived at the hospital when it was clear there was no one to relieve them. Businesses offered up their conference rooms for people who needed a place to work. One friend drove across state lines and purchased Starlink satellite systems, generators, and fuel to distribute to anyone who needed it.

Here’s the thing: those qualities—agency, resourcefulness, community care, and generosity—are always available to us.

I’m convinced the way we get out of the climate crisis is by reimagining how to serve and care for one another, not just in the aftermath of a disaster, but all the time.

What if we valued service over status? What if we looked at every problem with the lens of how it impacted the collective rather than just ourselves? What if we put the needs of the natural world above our convenience?

Those are the questions I’m sitting with. Maybe that looks like implementing a universal basic income or free childcare. Maybe it means our celebrities start to come from our own communities rather than sports and film stars or the ultra wealthy. Maybe food, water, and shelter become a human right rather than something you have to earn through your labor.

In the before times, we would have said those are radical ideas. In the face of climate change, I’d argue they aren’t nearly radical enough.

Whenever the anxiety of this moment threatens to overwhelm me, I remind myself that climate change is an opportunity as much as it is a crisis. If you’re searching for the meaning of life or a purpose, I can’t think of a better time to be alive.