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Comment by gfarah | Hacker News Reader

How can we sensibly prepare ourselves as individuals for the challenges that lie ahead? Anyone got articles on this topic?

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Live in a rich country. Be wealthy. Don’t live too near the equator or too close to the sea. Live in an area with plentiful water and know how to purify it. Diversify your investments. Consider a stockpile of long lasting dry food to get yourself through price shocks. Install air conditioning. Install off grid solar. Buy air purifiers and a supply of filters. Remember to live for today and enjoy the world we have now.

So in other words: You can't.

Most can’t. Some might.

I think "be wealthy" is the key advice.

Whatever happens with the climate, I'm sure Bill Gates will be fine.

Be wealthy doesn't have to mean "be a multi-millionaire". It can mean trying to save enough to be able to take a large blow. Everyone is going to be knocked down a peg by climate change, so try your damndest to make sure you aren't a bottom peg.

I think choosing sensible place to live is best option. Low risk of being affected by storms or wild fire is good. Next to raising sea is bad. Area should have available fresh water either with lakes or plentiful ground water. For habitat itself it should not require AC and have option for biofuel heating, even if that will get banned... Some garden space might also be good idea.

Investments should avoid companies which have risks from climate change.

The book How to Prepare for Climate Change by David Pogue is good, although very US-focused (if anyone knows a similar resource for the UK or Europe I'd love to know about it.)

The podcast Doomer Optimism has some gems too, although the episode quality varies wildly.

Tucker Max (who has been a guest on the DO podcast) wrote an article with his take on "doomer optimism". It doesn't mention climate change; it's more about the general topic of preparing for the comic chaotic times, and he veers a bit too far into COVID conspiracism which I'm sure will put a lot of people off, but much of the specific advice is hard to argue with (eg take 100% responsibility; reorient your life towards the local). https://www.tuckermax.com/doomer-optimism-what-i-see-coming-...

But I'd also love to read/hear more advice in this general topic. And I'd also like to meet people who are as interested in these topics as I am, so if anyone reading this lives in the London/Oxford M40 corridor, get in touch!

Too late to edit: *COMING chaotic, times, not comic - I'm sure they won't be comic.

Vote for politicians who support carbon taxes and investing in climate resilience and infrastructure.

You can’t prepare for this as an individual. This is a global societal problem. The effects of climate change are predictable on a global scale but much less so on a local scale.

> You can’t prepare for this as an individual. This is a global societal problem.

Why not both? "Climate resilience" will in large part be driven by individuals and communities working on a local scale. Support big-scale political initiatives where you can, but that doesn't mean you can't make a difference locally too.

> You can’t prepare for this as an individual.

I think we can in minor ways. Adjusting expectations, becoming more resilient, simplifying one's life, consuming less, learning to make and do things yourself. I think those things will pay off even if they won't change anything substantial.

If voting could change anything it'd be illegal.

In CA we aren't even allowed to vote anymore. Gavin simply appoints senators who look the way he wants and we get stuck with them.

And that's something as simple as senators (who barely have any power in the first place). A change to the world power structure (corporate interests that profit of mass-consumerism) is achievable only through violent revolution.

But nobody cares enough about the climate for that. They just complain online, put soup on things, and pat themselves on the back.

Honestly, you should be preparing, emotionally and logistically, for your death, and the deaths of people, institutions, organizations and nations that you love. Buddhism is a useful tool in this regard. I recommend it.

I agree ultimately of course, but climate change will not be the death of humanity, just the end of our current moment and the beginning of a new one. I don’t think it’s to be feared. There will be suffering, but we already suffer. When the change comes, be the adaptation.

Exactly. HN seems the worst of all wrt the apocalyptic fortune telling. Perhaps a group of well-off people would be expected to fear change the most. But to tell anyone else that in 50 years things will be bad... they'd laugh in your face.

Basically any religion is in large part centered around preparing for death.

Maybe the decline of religion is one reason why we've done such a bad job with climate change. If there's no life after death then you have far less reason to care what the world will look like 100 years from now.

From what I can tell the dominant christian religions in the US have turned into death cults seeking to accelerate suffering and death. I don’t think there is any salvation to be had there.

Yes, it occurred to me after I wrote my comment that religious belief, in the US at least, correlates with the same side of the political spectrum that cares the least about climate change. So something must be off in my analysis.

Well that came out of left field. Care to elaborate?

This is probably accurate. Everything seems about the individual nowadays. Lot's of people aren't even having children anymore, preferring instead "travel" and "fun". Why would they give a shit about what will happen in 100 years?

If there is a life after death, then why would you care about the world? Wouldn't it make more sense to care for the one world that exists?

And on a less hypothetical note, I'll point out that in the US at least, the Republican party is both the party of Christianity and global warming denial, so it seems like those two go together just fine.

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