Launching the New, New Snap Forward
I'm here to chew bubble gum and ready us for planetary discontinuity — and I'm all out of bubble gum.
There are some exciting changes coming, and I thought I might bring you in on them.
How We Got Here
I spent a lot of the summer taking stock of the planetary crisis. There’s no sense in sugar-coating it: The last few years were brutal ones for anyone who cares about the planetary future.
The Trump gang’s chainsawing through science, environmental laws, and international agreements is outrageous, but that was at least predictable. We knew what we’d get.
What’s harder for me is the evidence that the movement to create sustainable prosperity and protect the living fabric of the Earth has itself failed, in broader and more fundamental ways, especially over the last five years. Worse, many assumptions about the nature of the crisis and its remedies that have become deeply embedded in that movement are now actually getting in the way of understanding the work in front of us.
I’m not alone in feeling this, of course. Many of the thinkers I most respect see us entering a new phase of the planetary crisis. We’re not talking about a simple, easily-described change: what-was-this-now-is-that progression. Rather, there’s a conviction that a number of different (and different kinds of) thresholds (some barely understood or noticed) are being passed in a short time. The result? Rising nonlinearity of change — not only do impacts worsen, but they unfold in unprecedented ways, and at unseen speeds. We knew decades of delay would cost us, and now the brittleness bill is due.
Discontinuity squared. Shit’s about to get very real, and very weird.
What’s My Mission?
So, here’s me, this summer, wondering what the heck a working planetary futurist like myself is supposed to make of this situation, and how I might do my job better1.
So, through a California summer that felt like one from my childhood — not a single day of dark ochre skies, not one flood in my garage — I asked questions and listened and read and thought and wrote, then walked around and thought some more. I gave myself permission to reimagine my career. I flirted with various big ideas — like launching a new magazine or developing ruggedized housing — but ultimately I came back to two truths:
I have a craft, and I want to hone it. I’m pretty good at what I do: I can become better at it. The shift we’re witnessing makes futures and systems insight absolutely vital. Understanding what could happen, what no longer works, and what new possibilities are emerging and what’s worth fighting for: could anything be more vital now?
After my over thirty years in the field, I know something about what to do now, and I can teach more people. The breakdown of continuity in systems and coherence in response means many millions of people are being forced to meet discontinuity in their own lives, often with almost no idea of what’s happening to them or how they might best ruggedize for better outcomes. Folks who are planning their families’ futures in the face of planetary chaos have found my courses transformative: I will teach more2.
I know my writing and classes have helped people in their lives and work. But this kind of work also matters in a broader sense. As I’ve said before, denial is by far the greatest barrier to action. Telling it like it is, and taking personal actions that show the seriousness of the crisis may well be the most effective form of advocacy these days.
So, that’s what I’m doing for the next year: honing and helping.
What does this mean, in real terms — and what does it mean to you? Three big things.
Exploring the Front-Edge of Foresight
I’ve reworked my plans for The Snap Forward and When We Are. I’ll still write the long-form pieces that brought many of you here, but I want to make both the letters and the podcasts more like conversation. Expect to hear more interviews with remarkable people working on the front edge of the planetary crisis. Expect to get more short thought pieces, more recommendations, bits and pieces of news and insight. A river of ideas passes over my desk, but you’d never know it from the infrequent long think-pieces I do.
Learning How to Live in the Future We Have
I’ve redesigned and upgraded the classes I teach. They’ll now work together as a sturdy ladder for climbing up to more powerful and practical strategic perspectives on the challenges we all face.
The Basics
Personal Climate Strategy: The Basics is my quick overview of the choices discontinuity is forcing us all to make. It focuses on risk, relocation and ruggedization, for two reasons. The first reason is that for many of us, where we’ll live as the crisis worsens is the key decision we must make. The second reason is that the kind of upheaval places are experiencing is the best lens for seeing and understanding the deep systems shifts around us. The places are where the future is happening in visible ways.
I anticipate offering one more Basics class before the end of the year.
The Workshop
After six months of preparation, I am premiering a new workshop next month. The Personal Climate Strategy Workshop is a 30-day intensive I’ve designed from the ground up to be a powerful learning experience that’ll move you from feeling overwhelmed to being ready. To that end, the Workshop offers a course of focused talks, discussions, readings and critical questions to work through as we go.
The Workshop is for smart, engaged and intentional individuals who know when we are, and want to build a solid foundation for succeeding in a time of crisis. It helps you create your own climate strategy — grounded in science, foresight and experience, but also reinforced with your values, your personal strengths and your care for those you love.
This workshop is simply the best launch point available if you want to make tangible progress in preparing for what’s next. If you put in a bit of work, it will change how you see the future.
Heads up: the flash sale for the October workshop will begin this Thursday!
Advancing the Practice of Climate Foresight
Later this year, I’ll be launching my Roundtable on Advanced Climate Foresight. I have never been more excited to reveal a project.
If you work with questions of climate foresight and strategy, you know that there is a staggering gap between what we know, and what we need to know; and almost as large a gap between what we know and what entrenched interests in our institutions, societies and governments are willing to admit is happening. These are the gaps this convening project aims to fill.
What’s actually happening? What do we know, now, what can we extrapolate from what we know, and how might speculation help us understand the unpredictable realities around us? How do we as thought leaders update our worldviews — and keep them fresh? How can we best discuss the hard truths, difficult conflicts and deep uncertainties we face? What might be astonishingly possible? How might we design and implement organization strategies and societal responses to accommodate this new knowledge? And given that we will spend the rest of our lives in this crisis, how do we stay healthy, succeed at our work and support one another?
This Roundtable is designed for people who (to paraphrase Annie Dillard) are intent on knowing, not just faking knowledge in an accomplished way. Twenty-four intrepid practitioners and I will share a six-month set of bi-weekly discussions where we get down to the bedrock of the systems changes around us. This is a chance to rebuild our foresight worldviews fresh from the component parts, step by step, over half a year, in conversation with other brilliant, intellectually committed seekers. This is a course in growing superpowers.
If that sounds like something you want, stay tuned. I’m gonna be announcing the Roundtable pretty soon here.
There are, after all, only so many ways I can reiterate the critical insight that we’re not yet ready for what’s already happened, and totally unprepared for what’s now coming.
I am especially concerned that regular people — not just billionaire bunker builders, private equity investors, or nepo-baby off-gridders — have a fair chance of finding relative safety, building rugged and inclusive communities, and thriving through the coming relocation bottleneck. So while focusing my offerings on high-net-worth individuals would almost certainly be the smartest business move, I will keep offering courses that are at least accessible to the middle class.