Dear Reader
I hate reading the news anymore. On the subcontinent, a heatwave in India and Pakistan is ‘testing the limits of human survivability’. New Delhi saw seven consecutive days over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), three degrees above the average temperature for the month of April.
In the Western US, where I am originally from, severe drought and high winds caused an outbreak of wildfires throughout the state of New Mexico, resulting in widespread evacuations and an emergency declaration.
Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the US, is drying up. If water levels, at the lake, drop another 32 feet, all hydroelectricity production would be halted at the reservoir’s Glen Canyon Dam.
That would mean lights out for millions of people who rely on the dam as a power source.
With all the bad news, it appears that climate anxiety and pre-traumatic stress disorder are starting to become a real thing. In a guest essay in the NYT, Margaret Klein Salamon[1] encouraged people to channel their angst into disruptive protest and nonviolent direct action.
However, Buckminster Fuller, one of my all-time favourite systems thinkers, is famously quoted as saying “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” (Bucky is the person who invented the geodesic dome.)
The Climate Change Permaculture Project can, perhaps, be seen as a demonstration project for a new model of agriculture. By changing the model of agriculture, a sub-system, perhaps we can leverage change whole system.
[1] Klein Salamon, M. (2022) If You’re Anxious About the Climate, Try This. May 1. New York Times. New York.