I have been researching and living this way of life for 15 years now. It started out a bit extreme but in the last several years my green prepping has matured into a way of life that is beyond the need to prep for just such an event as our current pandemic. It is about attempting to reduce globalism impact on my life and take steps to localize into a lower carbon life at the same time I maintain my status quo life of family and money making. Bills don’t go away and family is only so understanding of localism.
Now that we are in an accelerated decline process I have come to some conclusions. One is the real danger of this pandemic is an economic reset. We will not be able to return to the world we knew a few months ago. The connections, wealth, and sentiment will have been altered by this. Whole industries will have been decimated. The economic system was set to reset by something. It was a bubble with little sense of reality with debt and asset values. There is a silver lining to all this if we make it though without too much damage and that is a reset that can force a degrowth on a population that otherwise would have been unwilling to contemplate. Now the leadership across the spectrum can have an excuse and people the understanding of the need.
We are all going to suffer together. There is no hiding and few will get out of this without a haircut. The very rich will get the biggest hair cut because most of their wealth was digital and unsustainable anyway. This means that our society is now prepped for something different. Attitudes will now be altered by force of nature. This coming period of degrowth will likely mean an economic depression. This also means we will have the common crisis to reset to a new level of living and by default this will be on smaller scales. Gone will be globalism vast and dominating value chains that no government could resist or fight. A wounded globalism will result. Now the people will blame globalism for their pain as they forget the riches it has brought in the form of products. Many do not realize how powerful an economic engine globalism is but at an expense to resilience and sustainability.
This will be a double edge sword for the green movement because the renewable revolution of solar, wind, and EV’s will be greatly damaged but so will fossil fuels. Big corporations will be held more accountable. Gone will be the top activity of enriching themselves with stock buy backs and huge pay packages. Normal people who experience food and shortages of things will reevaluate growing their own food but also investment in things that offer common sense resilience and sustainability. We will see the vast unfunded liability of safety nets and pensions evaporate into this depression. This means gone will be the sunbelt retirements. People will work the rest of their lives. Home economics will return in importance. A lot less leisure and travel are in our future and this is a good thing.
In other words, the discretionary binge of the last 20 years will be gone. Consumerism, Travel, and energy intensive fun stuff will be gone as we know it. This is good stuff if we can find the strength to make it through what is ahead. If we are not careful and cooperative, what is ahead is very dangerous. It means food and things in shortage. It also means globalism will not give us the SafetyNet for localized famine or disaster response. There is also the ever-present danger of WWIII. As you spend your time self-isolated reflect on these conditions. If you can react positively to what was inevitable anyway. Do it in anticipation of a different world that will be more realistic. We can get through this and be a better people with less planetary damage.
REAL Green Adaptation 