Alex Steffen

Last day to register!

Cheap danger and expensive safety. Our futures are all tied to markets where risk is changing the calculus of value.

New letter!

A decade ago, I thought an inevitable economic reckoning with rising climate risks was still several decades away.

Now I see more and more evidence that it’s already begun.

Much more is coming.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/cheap-dang...

From what I have seen following Alex for a while now, his work and teaching is likely to be very very useful.

And I’m having very dysphoric moments when I realize this sort of thing is a needed realm of work today and into our future.

Wow, we might have listened 50 years ago, but here we are.

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Registration for this Workshop ends tomorrow at midnight Pacific!

Cheap danger and expensive safety. Our futures are all tied to markets where risk is changing the calculus of value.

New letter!

A decade ago, I thought an inevitable economic reckoning with rising climate risks was still several decades away.

Now I see more and more evidence that it’s already begun.

Much more is coming.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/cheap-dang...

I wrote this a year ago. It stands up pretty well.

In the year since, tho, I think we may have crossed a threshold of inability—as societies and individuals—to fully meet the climate crisis.

Understanding what's changing will help you make better decisions under accelerating climate pressures.

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That's a great—but unfortunately not simple—question.

I have my own map, of course.

But the answer for individuals is necessarily subjective, based on how one weighs evidence-based probabilities and one's own needs and resources.

I teach a workshop in part about wrestling with this challenge...

How long will your window stay open? Acting while we still can.

More thoughts on societal brittleness and personal capacities:

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/how-long-w...

There's a lot of fear out there right now. It's often justified. We've been in denial about how big this crisis has been getting, and now it's here.

A whole lot of us are not ready for what's already happening. Very few are ready for how weird and bad things could get.
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How long will your window stay open? Acting while we still can.

More thoughts on societal brittleness and personal capacities:

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/how-long-w...

Hurricane Helene's message for us about our future. We can't afford not to take responsibility for our lives in a more chaotic world.

Last year, I said the critical take-away was

"We're used to thinking of climate chaos as a problem that's far away, in the future... and probably someone else's responsibility to worry about. None of that's true anymore."

I expand on that point here:

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/hurricane-...

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That's still true.

What's changed?

Our capacity to manage the discontinuities of relatively sudden planet-scale changes looks like it's already collapsing under pressure.

The assumption most people have about the planetary crisis—that someone in authority *can* fix it for us—is unsound.

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To understand why, think brittleness.

Climate brittleness describes systems that are:

1. Increasingly likely to break down as their climate tolerances are exceeded

2. Difficult for the systems' users to repair with their own resources

3. Diminish local capacities when they go unrepaired.

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Take, for example, a bridge.

Every bridge is designed to stand up to a set of forces: temperature ranges, load weights, river heights.

But if the waters rise high enough in a flood, even well-built bridges can be fatally undermined.

We can expect many unprecedented floods in the future.

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Imagine the town that bridge served.

Bridges are expensive. Local budgets are thin. That bridge was probably built with national-level help. Locals expect national help rebuilding it.

That would've been a reasonable expectation in the past.

But now bridges all over the country are going down.

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We’re not yet ready for what’s already happened Welcome to discontinuity, population: everyone

It's not just bridges, of course. Everything's being pushed past its tolerances: transportation, housing, food, water, health care, education.

There's simply no way the US (or most nations) to rebuild as fast as climate discontinuity tears down.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-y...

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Obviously, the longer we deny the crisis exists, the less we'll save.

But even with far greater resources than we're currently committing, grim choices lie ahead as limited funds are doled out according to economic value, ease of defense, and political power.

It won't be pretty.

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Climate chaos is already making us poorer. We're just pretending it's not. Playing make-believe is not a plan. It's time for real-world strategies.

Many communities will experience serious downturns, not just from destructive disasters, but from economic losses stemming from growing local risks.

This "brittleness bubble" is a far greater problem that people think.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/climate-ch...

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The Personal Costs of Climate Chaos The household financial dangers of disasters, disruptions and discontinuities... and how we can start to protect our families.

Guess who this will hit hardest?

If you answered "regular people, especially those with less money" give yourself a gold star!

One way to think about climate brittleness is as a massive and regressive burst of inflation. Suddenly, you have less.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-person...

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The Brittleness Trap Not getting caught in a place where the future is shrinking.

Where heat, floods, storms, brittleness and loss are the thickest, I fear people will get trapped in places with dwindling options, waiting for a revival that'll never come.

The more we let the crisis grow, the less we do to respond, the more people.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-brittl...

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Trump won't confront the climate crisis. He'll feast off it. Floods, fires, financial collapse—the MAGA crowd can't wait.

Sane, well-governed nations would center all policy on limiting the climate crisis, ruggedizing relatively safe communities, and offering supported mass-relocation to the folks living in the places we just can't save.

The Trump gang is doing the exact opposite.
www.motherjones.com/environment/...
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Our slow climate progress and widespread inaction on crisis preparation are about to drop on many exposed communities like a cargo plane full of anvils.

So the rest of us are good, though, right?

Right?

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Relative Safety in the Planetary Crisis That nowhere is safe does not mean every place is equally unsafe. Choose wisely.

It's true that some places are *relatively safe* from climate/ecological danger.

That wealthier, well-governed places can ruggedize key systems to withstand future conditions.

That some proactive regions can (comparatively) prosper despite crisis.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/relative-s...
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The Relocation Bottleneck and You How the "climate squeeze" is making it harder to find a home that's relatively safe, and why the problem will almost certainly get worse.

But how many of us will find a place like that for ourselves?

How many safer, rugged, prosperous places will there even be?

The answer's looking to be "way fewer than we need."

The competition to put down roots in these places may become fierce.
alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-bottle...

No one wants it to be true. The failures of our leaders have left each of us responsible for finding our own way through climate chaos and discontinuity.

This "relocation bottleneck" is starting close, to varying degrees, in every wealthy country.

That's grim, since relocation is one of the most practical steps individuals can take when they find themselves staring down the barrel of climate chaos.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/no-one-wan...

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This bottleneck is an example of a much larger shift we each, and all, face: an erosion of personal capacities as climate/ecological discontinuity bites down.

Many things we're used to being able to do are going to get harder to do, even when they seem unrelated to "environmental issues."

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Lots of good work is focusing on risky places' loss of insurability, credit problems, inability to attract investment.

But EVERY system you touch has some degree of brittleness in it. Supply chains, resource flows, workforce health, market predictability... It's all under pressure. All of it.

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And our capacity to ruggedize and buffer against the unprecedented is limited.

We could grow it but we're mostly doing the opposite. Denying, delaying, cutting corners, cooking the numbers.

And each of these systems is dependent on the others. Interconnected, growing brittleness.

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Now, all of this brittleness could explode in a catastrophic reckoning, triggering the collapse of civilization.

The more likely scenario is the steady wearing down of these systems' capacities to serve us.

Outcomes we now take for granted get more expensive, less reliable, slower to achieve.

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