<
https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/ep-22-building-resilience-for-the>
"I created
Bright Green Futures to lift up stories about a more sustainable
and just world and talk about the struggle to get there.
I’m writing this podcast in the wake of America voting Trump back into office,
which is objectively terrible for the country and the world.
No one won. All of us lost—the country, the world, the climate—it’s just that
some of us haven’t realized it yet, may never understand it, and wouldn’t admit
it, if they did. The suffering will be horribly unequal with the least
responsible suffering the most, which is, of course, how it always goes with
colonialist and capitalist economies and power structures and how climate
impacts are felt as well. Inequality is the explicit stated purpose of fascism,
and we just voted a fascist regime into power in America. Again.
Like everyone else, I’m grappling with what to do now.
I’m not going to cover all the terrible things Trump has promised to do. I
shouldn’t have to tell you Trump will roll back any climate progress he
possibly can. A Trump administration will burn through an ungodly amount of
carbon, immediately and in the years ahead, and we were already out of time. We
desperately need to reduce emissions, but Trump will accelerate them. He will
give a free hand to all industries, not just the fossil fuel adjacent ones,
especially with his new billionaire buddies in Silicon Valley and their plans
for exponentially more energy-burning AI.
All of this will have horrible consequences for the climate.
This is a given.
America is facing some dark days, with horrific implications for the rest of
the world, in both geopolitics and the climate fight.
So the question becomes: how do you survive in that world? A world where the
most powerful nation on earth had a choice and it chose the bad path. A world
where everything that’s broken will be further smashed, intentionally, by the
rich and the privileged and the bigots, who are already reveling in the terror
they can invoke in others.
Some of us won’t make it. There will be a lot of suffering.
This entire podcast is about creating and lifting up hopeful near-future
climate stories.
How can we possibly do that in the face of this dark time?
Well, during the 4 years between authoritarian regimes in America, I devoted my
time to telling these kinds of stories, and that process of imagineering, as
well as living solarpunk values as much as practical in my non-fictional life,
in which I still exist inside the cage of capitalism, led to me learn lots of
practical things about living sustainably and building a better world—for
myself, for my community, for the biosphere. It turns out that was exactly the
right way to prepare for this moment. I thought I was figuring out how to
survive climate change, but it turns out I was learning how to build resiliency
against all kinds of bad things, including the fascist takeover of America.
The tools for fighting the climate crisis are also tools for fighting fascism.
Ultimately, they have the same source and present the same risks."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
