How to Succeed on a Planet in Crisis
The next cohort of my Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization launches Feb 29th
Short version: On February 29th, I’m launching the next cohort of my acclaimed Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization. As a subscriber, you’re eligible for a limited-time 10% discount by using the code RUGGEDIZEMYLIFE when you sign up:
I am thrilled to announce that I’ll be teaching another season of my Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization. I love teaching this course, and I hope you’ll join me in exploring how to build the lives we want on a planet in crisis.
We’re still only at the beginning of discontinuity. Over the next decade, we’re going to see disasters worsen, currently prosperous places begin to fall apart, access to finance and insurance shift massively, and tens of millions of people start to move away from danger and towards safety.
If the worsening of the crisis accelerates — and there are signs it will — the resulting chaos will sink deeply into every system upon which our lives depend. It’s not the end of the world. It is the end of an era when we could treat this crisis as a distant problem, happening out there, away from our families’ daily lives and our most important concerns. Instead, the planetary crisis has become the central context of our lives.
I’ve made understanding this crisis my life — working on climate, sustainability and foresight for more than three decades now. I’ve done award-winning, acclaimed work in climate foresight and journalism, and been a successful strategy consultant and public speaker, spreading the word about sustainability and climate solutions. For years, I fought hard to help stave off the crisis we now face. Now, I’ve embraced the necessary adventure of learning to live successfully within its new realities.
That’s an adventure we’re all on, like it or not. No matter what we do — or where we reside — we all now live in a context of planetary discontinuity. We face unprecedented changes, unfolding at disruptive speeds, undermining the usefulness our old assumptions, experience and expertise. We are all being forced to ask ourselves tough questions about our own futures. We’re being forced to ruggedize our lives.
This course is not about giving you the “right” answers to those questions. It’s not about how to check some boxes, pick a “climate haven,” and move on. There is no formula for living through a never-before-experienced climate and biosphere transformation. Anyone who tells you they can give you simple answers doesn’t actually understand the questions.
I can’t tell you exactly what to do. However, I can help you start to build the capacities to thrive in the uncertainty. I can share tools for seeing the patterns underneath the chaos, for distinguishing rapid change from catastrophic doom, for planning intelligently when the world becomes literally unpredictable. I can show you how to make sense of the crisis and the choices it demands of you. I can help you reframe and achieve success.
How do I do that? What does this course cover? What will you learn by taking it? Read on!
This six-week course will empower you to make smart decisions during a rapidly-worsening planetary crisis.
As the quickening drumbeat of heatwaves, megafires, wild storms and massive floods warns us, climate chaos is no longer a future threat, but a present reality. Without question, things will get worse.
We should do all we can to limit the magnitude of destruction we’ve set in motion, but no matter what we do together, we cannot avoid the consequences of decades of inaction. We each face a lifetime of unprecedented, rapid change.
None of us can afford to plan our futures as if all this upheaval wasn’t happening. Inattention is about to become very costly.
Few of us are ready. We can, however, learn how to make ourselves ready. The time to prepare for the accelerating discontinuities of the planetary crisis is now — and the best way individuals and families can gear up for what’s coming is to ruggedize our lives.
Climate ruggedization describes strategies that reduce risks while simultaneously increasing capacities.
Personal ruggedization describes making important decisions with a realistic understanding of planetary risks, to increase one’s chances of success.
Personal ruggedization means thinking realistically about where we choose to live, the systems we embed ourselves in, and the ways we work with others to improve our odds of a good future. It’s intelligent, optimistic, purpose-driven engagement with deep uncertainties, making ourselves at home on a planet none of us have ever seen before.
My Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization shows you where to begin and how to plot your course forward.
“The best way to get smart about how to live through the cascading climate chaos of our time is to always read Alex Steffen.”
Jeff Goodell, Author of, “The Heat Will Kill You First”
Why take this course?
Smarter choices.
The past is no longer a reliable guide to future choices, and old thinking can lead us quickly into error. This course delivers new, clear frameworks for spotting emerging patterns in the chaos and making clear-headed decisions about where (and how) we live, how we pursue our careers, how we raise our kids and plan our retirements and serve our communities.
Greater insights.
Our careers, investments, philanthropic choices and political engagements are increasingly entangled with discontinuous change. This course offers tools to both build a strong personal ruggedization strategy and to forge climate foresight into purpose-driven success in our working lives.
Deeper connections.
Climate isolation is real. One of the things I’ve heard most frequently in this work is how hard it can be to talk with family members, friends and colleagues who are just beginning to grapple with the rough realities ahead of us. This course can help frame genuine, heartfelt conversations that bring us together as we look ahead.
Alex has refreshing perspectives on climate, risk, and reality. The course offers a great opportunity to engage with material that is both grounded and actionable. As someone who is concerned with how climate risks are affecting my family and community, I can easily recommend this course.
Bradley, Participant
Here’s what we’ll cover in our six weeks together:
Week One: How to get ready for what’s coming.
What is the scale of the change unfolding around us? How do we inform ourselves in the face of deep uncertainty and unprecedentedly rapid change?
Why is where we live so important?
What is personal ruggedization?
The mindset for personal ruggedization, the importance of grounded optimism, and the costs of outdated thinking.
Week Two: Brittleness breaks.
The Triangle of Brittleness. Understanding the three pressures that undermine brittle places.
The Brittleness Bubble. How unpriced climate, ecological and economic risks have led to an unstable overvaluation of endangered assets.
The Brittleness Trap: How waiting too long to avoid danger can undermine an individual or community's ability to act.
The Undertow: Spillover effects, climate displacement and social costs of a widespread collision with unreadiness.
When all the others are just talking about what systems-collapse or planetary crisis look like, Alex's work already gives you a framework on how to navigate it with confidence and with the clear possibility of creating a thriving and hardened future for you, your loved ones, and the communities you serve.”
Justin D'Atri, Group Sustainability Transformation Lead, Zurich Insurance Group, Participant
Week Three: Getting safer.
The first rule of emergency response is don’t become a victim yourself. The first step in the climate emergency is placing yourself wisely.
While it's true that nowhere is safe it doesn’t follow that nowhere is safer than anywhere else. Understanding relative safety.
Judging climate and ecological vulnerabilities: What makes one place riskier than another?
How far ahead should we think? Balancing uncertainty and the long view when planning our retirements, out kids’ futures, and our careers.
"Consistently, Alex Steffen is one of the world’s shrewdest thinkers about this fraught moment in human history.”
Bill McKibben
Week Four: Building stronger.
Assessing systems strengths. What makes one place more rugged than another place, when both face similar risks?
How does ruggedization work? How do readiness for discontinuity, risk reduction, the development of new capacities, and the seizing of opportunities all work together?
Assessing the potential for future ruggedization of a given place. Even if a place is not yet rugged, how can we estimate how ruggedizable it may be, with wise plans and policies?
“Alex has been thinking about the impacts of climate change longer than most people. Through the Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization, Alex provides insight to the more likely future scenarios and helps attendees position themselves, physically and mentally, to avoid the worst impacts and take advantage of the opportunities that are created. It is a very thought-provoking course and also provides the opportunity to network with like minded people around the globe. Highly recommended.
Jeff Roulston, participant
Week Five: Moving faster.
Speed is everything: How to evaluate local governments and institutions — and their capacity to ruggedize quickly.
The Climate Squeeze. What happens when a limited supply of rugged places gets hit by a massive demand for those places? How do you make sure you get through the coming bottleneck?
The coming snap forward in public awareness of the depth of the crisis ahead, and the tempo of disruption it’ll bring to our society, politics and economy. When s*** gets real, it won’t be slow or fun.
Bargain-hunting for a rugged home — and avoiding the danger of getting priced out of a viable future.
“When CEOs want to navigate the world's mega-challenges and prepare for a volatile world, they look to business strategists like me. And when business strategists want to challenge and hone our own thinking about the future, we look to Alex Steffen.”
Andrew Winston, author Net Positive and Green to Gold
Week Six: Personal ruggedization as a platform for success.
Making personal ruggedization an ongoing practice, thus turning it into a platform for learning, growth and success.
Becoming native to now. Understanding our own climate isolation and personal discontinuities. Developing a healthy relationship to discontinuity. Moving from climate isolation to community.
Bringing others along. How we engage critically important conversations in a high-tension time, with kindness, clarity and optimism. How we connect with those we love, in order to form a shared vision of how to move forward together as the heat rises.
Building a platform for personal (and shared) success in tough times.
How personal ruggedization can become a powerful form of climate action advocacy.
Course Details and Bonuses:
A Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization begins Thursday, February 29th, 2024, and runs for six weeks.
Classes will be held weekly on Thursdays, from 10am - 12pm PST, on Zoom. Each session will include a deep-dive on that week’s topics, with time at the end for discussion. Classes are recorded for those who cannot attend live.
Also included:
Reading lists following from each session to help you deepen your studies.
$100 off a one-on-one consultation with me to receive personalized guidance and feedback.
An optional 90-minute wrap-up call after the final session during which participants can explore follow-on questions and share ways in which they have integrated course material; a chance to learn to from each other (date/time TBD).
THIS COURSE BEGINS FEBRUARY 29TH.
Sign up now: As a reward for subscribers like you, save 10% off the course by using this special early-bird discount code, good until Friday, February 23rd:
COUPON CODE: RUGGEDIZEMYLIFE
To get your 10% discount, go to this link, enter the above Coupon Code at checkout, and then click “APPLY” to adjust the total.
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=18593954&appointmentType=58913956
(Enrollment closes on the 27th of February. Space is intentionally limited.)
[PS: There will be a make-up day on Friday the 5th of April, should it be needed due to unforeseen circumstances.]
[Questions? Please email alison@alexsteffen.com. We are happy to help.]
“Alex Steffen… lays out the blueprint for a successful century.”
The New York Times