Right sizing my preparation for climate crises

This is not doomist posturing.

I vote for strong climate action.

I protest for strong climate action.

I am decarbonising my life – change in diet, change in travel, electrified my house (and, in the future, my car), active and public transport use, pushing back on the embodied carbon in my life.

But there is a climate crisis or, more accurately, a set of climate crises.

Small climate-aggravated events – wild fires burns hotter and longer than they ever have, summer time temperatures rise and stay high for longer, rain falls harder than it has fallen before.

Each a mini ‘record breaker’.

How do I prepare? How do I protect family, friends, community, pets, wildlife?

I thought ‘maybe it is like living in a warzone?’ Each climate crisis is a like the bombing of a town or a rolling of war front through the countryside.

I researched what it is like to live in a warzone – read the harrowing stories on Reddit.

It is not like living in a warzone.

Humanity’s capacity of cruelty far outweighs the climate’s capacity for cruelty.

No hurricane ever hunted down people.

But it is also not a natural disaster . The uplift in atmospheric energy from human geoengineering (i.e. the release of GHG into the atmosphere far greater than previously released) means that the ‘arbitrary’ and ‘fickle’ nature of natural disasters do not apply.

It is not ‘Force Majeure‘ if we set the wheel in motion.

Climate crises are relatively forecastable.

We know where things will get bad and, to a great degree, how bad they are likely to get.

We are probably underestimating the speed of change because we are under-counting global emissions.

So, if the likelihood of a climate crisis where I am situated is higher than I currently understand, what would I do?

This is what the government says are the ‘potential responses’.

If I was to pick three mini climate crises to focus on, it would be:

• Heatwave
• Flooding
• Tropical cyclone (high wind)

First, I should organise to have my house properly tied down in case of a high wind tropical cyclone.

For flooding, our house is outside the flood zone and I have had the gutters repaired as well as left permeable surfaces in place to allow permeation of the soil.

So the last climate crisis is a heatwave.

Forecast is that we will experience between 3 and 6 more heatwave days per year over the next 25+ years. Beyond 2050, it all pivots on what level of global emissions we stop at.

So we are preparing for week or more of additional heatwave.

What should we have in place for week of more of 40 degree C weather with night temperatures above 25 degree C?

Things that I have in place

• Awnings and blinds to reduce direct sun and heat exchange between outside and inside
• Maintain tree cover over house to use tree cooling and vines as deck shading
• Fans and air-conditioning for internal temperature and humidity management along with solar panels for day time renewable energy powered cooling
• High rated insulation in the roof and under the floor

Things that I could add:

• Battery for maintaining cooling if grid is impacted although we are seeing greater grid resilience in US heatwaves as a result of renewable energy.
• Building a set of rooms that are ‘dug in’ under the house to take advantage of the lower temperatures 1-2 metres under the ground
• Underground cooling system to pull cooler air 24 hours a day into the house

I could build that and then push 23 degree C air from under the ground (particularly with my clay soil) into key parts of the house (bathrooms or bedrooms).

That would help keep the house cool if there was a blackout at no operating cost.

A desert cooling solution.