Alex Steffen

Two wildfires in US west spur ‘fire clouds’ with erratic weather systems Containment slips for megafire in Grand Canyon and large blaze in Utah as hot and dry weather fans flames

Most people don't comprehend how huge some of these megafires are getting...

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Ruggedize Your Life: the Basics Join our course to learn the top-level concerns and strategies for building a resilient future.

Today is the last day to register for tomorrow's basics class on designing a personal climate strategy.

(Also. there are still a few discount seats left for those currently tight on funds.)

alexsteffen.thinkific.com/products/cou...

YouTube video by Hank Green I am Scared for Ireland...

In which @hankgreen.bsky.social does a nice little bit of climate foresight reporting, in this case how absolutely borked Ireland could be if/when the AMOC goes down.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pThc...

Putting the Future Back in the Room

@alexsteffen.bsky.social:
Putting the Future Back in the Room
A 2010 essay now more urgent than ever, since ice caps are melting, deserts spreading, most primeval forests gone, oceans in crisis & pollution, famine & natural disasters killing millions of people a year on our planet full of people.

"There Were No Good Options." What a real estate story in the New York Times tells us about how well we're doing at preparing for unprecedented discontinuities.

“Failure to build extensively in relatively safe places with durable infrastructure is a direct cause of the rising climate exposure we are seeing.”

“There Were No Good Options." - @alexsteffen.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/alexstef...

The New Wave of Climate Imagination The hotter it gets, the harder our imaginations will have to work. Games are powerful tools for climate foresight.

How do we imagine the unprecedented in order to prepare for it? How do we strategize in discontinuity? Could new games be part of the answer?

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-new-wa...

Is the unsustainable too big to fail? Listen now (18 min) | How civic sabotage and continuity propaganda undermine real discussion of the planetary crisis

More on civic sabotage and continuity propaganda here, and how the most horrific planned harms of unsustainable industries are presented as unfortunate side effects of businesses we can't afford to lose.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/is-the-uns...

Remember: those implementing a strategy can know an outcome is likely without being able to predict when it occurs. Creating a system that produces bad outcomes — even if they can't be directed predicted — still leaves the institution responsible.

The Carbon Lobby gave us the climate crisis, etc.

Predatory delay How denialism, downplaying and civic sabotage protect the unsustainable

More on predatory delay here;

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/predatory-...

With attribution science we see the fossil fuel fingerprints on most weather disasters; the core reason we've continued warming the planet has been truly massive campaigns of denialism and predatory delay; we know building those campaigns was a focus of institutional strategies.

It was all planned.

We now live in a world of planned disasters. What kind of future is being planned for the place you call home?

"When these things happen, we still call them 'natural disasters.' But that’s not right. ... in a very real sense all these catastrophes are *planned disasters*."

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/we-now-liv...

It is critical to remember that oil spills, chemical disasters and climate chaos are anticipated parts of the petrochemical industry's normal practices, of "the routine operation of our economy as currently designed."

None of this is "accidental" at a systems level.

medium.com/@AlexSteffen...

This is so tragic and outrageous and completely unnecessary.

Image of Alex Steffen's Course and Class Website, which offers climate futurism and foresight, personalized climate strategies and courses in personal ruggedization.

I'm slowly moving all my classes and personal consultations — including my personal climate strategy basics class, my crash course in personal ruggedization and my new advanced climate foresight course — over to Thinkific.

So far, it's a huge improvement.

alexsteffen.thinkific.com

Great thread on how climate change is intensifying sudden downpours and exacerbating flash flood risks — and why it's important to understand the differences between extremes and means.

For a bunch of friends and colleagues who work in climate/sustainability, this year has been a professionally devastating one: jobs terminated, grants cancelled, labs and NGOs closed, findings… | Alex... For a bunch of friends and colleagues who work in climate/sustainability, this year has been a professionally devastating one: jobs terminated, grants cancelled, labs and NGOs closed, findings binned,...

A few thoughts for all those in climate and sustainability who are experiencing a professionally devastating year.

www.linkedin.com/posts/alexst...

The Biggest Myth About the YIMBY Movement There’s nothing centrist or conservative about the push to lower housing costs.

"NIMBY activists and their allies are engaged in a fundamentally conservative project: helping a landowning elite hoard wealth by preserving an unfair status quo."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Ruggedize Your Life: the Basics Join our course to learn the top-level concerns and strategies for building a resilient future.

Quick reminder that today is the last day of our flash sale (50% off) for my Personal Climate Strategy: The Basics class.

If you’re working on ruggedizing your life against the accelerating climate chaos around us, this is a good place to start.

alexsteffen.thinkific.com/products/cou...

YouTube video by TED Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable — and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth | Al Gore | TED

Al Gore lays it out on predatory delay.

youtu.be/Ztx0Bch3h9s?...

The next president could declare a climate emergency and launch a national climate response. We could invest heavily in climate science, foresight capacities, and worker upskilling. We could forge a national insurability strategy—one that combines tax breaks for household adaptation measures with local disaster readiness and a major investment in stabilizing insurance costs in places that are still insurable. We could undertake wartime-scale efforts to build out clean energy, harden critical infrastructure, and defend relatively safe places from their worst demonstrated threats. We could invest in widespread managed retreat (especially on the coasts) with supported mass relocation for those living in the communities we cannot possibly save. We could lay the groundwork for equitable growth, making sure those moving away from climate chaos find places to live, with functioning roads and water systems and with schools, hospitals, and social services ready to meet a great increase in need. We could go all in, and make this catastrophe the spur for building the stronger bones of a better country. That is not what we’re in for now that Donald Trump has been elected.

4/ It's not *just* that Trump is trying to kill off renewable energy, thus creating far more emissions and handing over the future to China, it's all criminal lack of preparation his administration will do to prepare us for a vicious climate. Texas is only the beginning.

Pulling out of the Paris climate accords, as he did the last time around, will only be the beginning. Every oily-fingered fossil fuel executive, cash-in-a-bag sprawl developer, and corner-­cutting factory owner in America is lining up for a jamboree of lawlessness and impunity. Project 2025 has identified hundreds of regulatory and administrative targets to destroy. A society crashing from one incompetently managed disaster to another offers ample opportunities for corruption, graft, and profiteering. Corrupt incompetence remains the one deliverable Trump has actually reliably produced.

3/ www.motherjones.com/environment/...

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

2/ "The first thing we’ll see—if we can rip our attention away from the promised concentration camps and military tribunals—is our existing climate capabilities spraying out of the back chute of a wood chipper." www.motherjones.com/environment/...

Ruggedize Your Life: the Basics Join our course to learn the top-level concerns and strategies for building a resilient future.

Quick reminder that today is the last day of our flash sale (50% off) for my Personal Climate Strategy: The Basics class.

If you’re working on ruggedizing your life against the accelerating climate chaos around us, this is a good place to start.

alexsteffen.thinkific.com/products/cou...

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

1/ Trump is doing exactly what @alexsteffen.bsky.social predicted back in November: "The Trump crowd has already shown they don’t see acceleration of the climate chaos as a problem—they see it as an opportunity."

www.motherjones.com/environment/...

You're Getting Ready, or You're Not. My intro class guides you through the basics of building a rugged personal climate strategy. Join me on July 29th.

I'm offering an updated version of my climate ruggedization basics class on July 29th.

If you're looking to start making better choices in this planetary crisis, check it out.

(Also, you can get 50% off with the flash sale this weekend...)

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/youre-gett...

“Superman is too woke!”

Literally the first page of the first ever appearance of Superman:

I still have my paper copy! Wonderful book. (Though Slow River will always have a place in my heart, too.)

You're Getting Ready, or You're Not. My intro class guides you through the basics of building a rugged personal climate strategy. Join me on July 29th.

I'm offering an updated version of my climate ruggedization basics class on July 29th.

If you're looking to start making better choices in this planetary crisis, check it out.

(Also, you can get 50% off with the flash sale this weekend...)

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/youre-gett...

Flying Blind into Chaos The gutting of the U.S. National Climate Assessment undermines public climate foresight. That endangers us all.

More on this evisceration of America's critical foresight capacities in this recent podcast.

This is going to make the US poorer, weaker and more inequitable. Every one of us will have to deal with the fallout.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/flying-bli...

As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas

Deaths from loss of predictive ability and communications capacities....

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/u...