You Need a Strategy for the Climate Crisis
My personal ruggedization intensive launches three weeks from today.
SUMMARY:
My intensive Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization begins in three weeks:
Five, two-hour classes held via Zoom on Tuesdays and Thursdays (March 11th, 13th, 18th, 20th and 25th).
A 90 minute wrap-up Q&A discussion on Thursday, March 27th
Class Times: 11:00am Pacific Standard Time (PST)
(Classes will be recorded. Recordings will be sent following each class.)
Ready to sign up? Click the button below to secure your spot:
Participants signing up by this Friday, February 21st at 11:59pm PST can use the early bird code to receive 25% off (a savings of over $600).
Enter code CCPRSPRING25 at checkout.
The climate crisis is no longer a future fear, happening somewhere else, to other people. It is unfolding in our lives, today.
Already, worsening fires, storms, floods and droughts are revealing a society unready for the hotter, more chaotic planet we now call home. This crisis will almost certainly grow more severe, more rapidly. The very context of all the critical life decisions we need to make — where to live, how we raise our families, what work we do, how to plan a retirement — is shifting fast, in unpredictable ways.
Twenty years from now, many will find it mind-boggling that, despite all the evidence in 2025 that global heating had precipitated an unprecedented and worsening crisis, so few of us did anything to prepare ourselves for its dangers.
Today, even most of us who are awake and alert to the crisis don’t have a strategy for how we will manage its consequences ourselves. That’s because good guidance is hard to find.
It no longer makes sense to hope we can all come together to prevent a climate crisis. That crisis is here now, and it is the largest discontinuity with the past any human beings have ever experienced.
We all hope humanity will move more quickly to limit this catastrophe and attempt to adapt to its worst impacts. But the scale of the problem is such that we are no longer capable of avoiding massive losses and upheavals.
Worse: the political and economic turmoil we’re now seeing is fast-eroding the foundations for more rapid action. It’s not clear we can count on even the limited national and international progress of recent years continuing.
Collective climate action is no longer a substitute for individual climate readiness. No matter what we all do together, we’re each personally going to have to prepare ourselves for life in a hotter, more chaotic world. As climate adaptation researcher Jesse Keenan says, “You’re on your own.”
No one is coming to save you and your family from the escalating dangers and disruptions around you. Even in the most-fortunate, best-governed and wealthiest communities on Earth, your family’s security and prosperity still depend on you taking responsibility for your own future.
You need a strategy for ruggedizing your life.
Personal ruggedization is a process of making smart decisions about where we choose to live, the systems we embed ourselves in, and the ways we work with others to improve our odds. It’s intelligent, optimistic, purpose-driven engagement with deep uncertainties, making ourselves at home on a planet none of us have ever seen before.
Ruggedizing your life is not bugging out or bunkering down, or preparing for total collapse. Instead, it’s a focus on serving what matters most to us when we’re under pressure, using reality-based strategies to manage discontinuity. It’s about raising our kids, keeping our families secure, doing work we value and being a useful member of society. It offers a platform for building the kind of lives we want, despite escalating dangers.
This intensive course gives you the tools and information to begin to ruggedize your life from the ground up.
My six-session Crash Course delivers concentrated insights, real-world examples, select readings, and discussions to give participants a strong foundation for making clear-headed choices in discontinuous times. I don’t give simple answers to what are deeply complex problems, but I do equip you to make decisions that can make success more likely.
Together, we’ll cover five main topics:
MAKING SENSE OF A COMPLEX CRISIS
Climate chaos means the world no longer works the way it used to, and things are getting stranger by the day. How do we understand this crisis? How it is discontinuous with the expectations we were raised to have? How bad could it get? What are we preparing for?
SCOUTING FOR RELATIVE SAFETY
Place is the prime pivot point of all climate strategy. How do we judge regions and assess their risks? What are the major risks to look out for, and how do we measure them for any given region? What is relative safety, and where can we find it? Should we move across the world, or across town — or dig in where we are?
FINDING COMMUNITIES THAT WORK IN TURBULENT TIMES
In any given area, some communities will respond in ways that help their citizens thrive, and some will fail. What is climate brittleness and why is it so dangerous to our prospects? How do we evaluate cities and local efforts? What are some of the indicators of places that are being built and governed to be more rugged in the face of climate chaos?
MAKING A HOME THAT CAN WEATHER THE STORM
How do we pick a specific place to build our future? What should we look for in a home, a neighborhood and a community? What are the costs and benefits of urban, suburban and exurban lives? How do we move quickly enough to outpace the coming climate-driven housing bottleneck? What are the opportunities and perils of relocation in politically turbulent times? Why might the best-sited and best-run places see boom times in the coming decades?
CLIMATE-PROOFING OUR LIVES AND FAMILIES
How do we start building a rugged life, in all parts of life? What’s most important to us as people as we build our personal climate strategy? How do we align our family and household, career and investments, citizenship and ethics to new realities? How might we talk with our family, friends, neighbors and colleagues to include them in our planning? How do we make this crisis into an opportunity for deeper connection and purpose?
No course of this caliber exists anywhere else. It can be life-changing.
Scores of participants have told me that the Crash Course has made a powerful difference in their lives. Families have moved away from danger, and started new lives in new communities. Others have ruggedized in place, reducing their risks and connecting with their neighbors. People have come together with family and friends, changed careers, started new businesses, improved their retirement plans, and returned to civic engagement with renewed spirit.
Above all, people tell me they feel more at home in the world as it now is, more centered, more confident in their ability to find answers and implement solutions. Action towards ruggedization, I find, is the most powerful antidote to climate despair (and the science backs this up).
I love teaching this course. I bring more than 30 years of experience in climate and sustainability reporting, consulting and foresight research to help you find real solutions to problems in your life that you didn’t expect to have.
In the last five years, I’ve taught more than a dozen courses, with more than 400 participants, and had scores of other one-on-one conversations with folks about their plans for responding to climate discontinuity in their own lives. I learn so much from these connections, and am constantly working to make this Crash Course better and more useful. (If you want to hear what others say about my courses and content, skip down to read testimonials.)
If you’re interested in taking the class yourself, I’d love to have you. Here’s the rundown.
A Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization
Five, two-hour classes held on Tuesdays and Thursdays (March 11th, 13th, 18th, 20th and 25th).
A 90 minute wrap-up discussion on Thursday, March 27th.
Class Times: 11:00am Pacific Standard Time (PST)
(Classes will be recorded, and recordings will be sent following each class.)
Ready to sign up? Click the button below:
Participants signing up by this Friday, February 21st at 11:59pm PST can use the early bird code to receive 25% off (a savings of over $600).
Enter code CCPRSPRING25 at checkout.
Classes are held on Zoom. They are recorded for those who cannot attend live, and recordings are sent out to participants the day after each class (live attendance is not mandatory, though encouraged). Class size is strictly limited.
Questions? We’re happy to assist. Please email Alison@AlexSteffen.com.
Testimonials:
“For anyone interested in personally preparing yourself and your family for climate change impacts, boy do I have a great recommendation for you… one of the most impactful learning experiences I’ve had on any topic in the last decade.
All you have to believe is that the future is likely to be more risky and uncertain, whether from climate change or just natural disasters, political instability, social unrest, armed conflict, economic or supply chain disruption, etc.
Heck, you could completely disbelieve climate change is happening at all, and this course would still be transformational because its focus is on preparing you and your family and community for a wide range of potential scenarios, whatever those might be. [Alex] completely dismantles typical “prepper” advice, showing how fundamentally misguided it is for almost any future scenario (the actual best way to prepare is completely counter-intuitive).
Most of all, the students and community that are part of Steffen’s courses are simply phenomenal. Thoughtful, wise, accomplished but also empathetic people, many of whom are playing active roles in shaping policy, economics, planning, and business.
Alex addresses a remarkable range of holistic topics, from the all-important choice of where to locate yourself, to the psychological mindset shifts needed, to basic provisioning and preparing for utility interruption, to adapting your career, finances, and business for likely future changes.
I ‘10 out of 10’ recommend it.”
Tiago Forte, Forte Labs, participant
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“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
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“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
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“I've worried for a long time about what I can do about the climate crisis, and how to prepare. Several years ago, I began reading Alex Steffen's work and for the first time felt some understanding about what is going on in the political sphere around climate change and the predatory delay of business people and politicians. I also became inspired by Alex's aspirational imaginings about how we might transform life in our cities to be more beautiful, sustainable, and enjoyable.
I was intrigued when I saw Alex's Crash Course offering for personal ruggedization. At first my partner and I weren't sure if the cost of time and money would be worth it for our family. But then Alex sent an email headlined, “The Crisis Doesn't Care,” and that was it. We had experienced that truth, through the pandemic and our housing situations. We knew keenly how it felt to be left behind. The crises hadn't cared, and neither had elected officials, or the business people profiting from our hardships. We needed to be informed and prepared for navigating this unfolding era of climate change, and Alex's Crash Course was an incredible foundation.
Through Alex's course, my partner and I gained invaluable insight about what's going on and how to evaluate which factors are most important for our family as we navigate these difficult changes. We also felt excited and empowered to take action. Alex shared illustrative examples of places around the world where people are taking the climate crisis as an opportunity to greatly improve quality of life.
Thanks to Alex's course, our family took decisive action and moved to a new city. We love our new home. We've jumped right in to work alongside our neighbors who are already ruggedizing the city. There's much to do. We are so grateful that Alex helped us quickly identify the important factors to consider and set us on a path for being better prepared to care for ourselves, our neighbors and all in our city and wider region. Alex Steffen's Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization was life-changing for us, and absolutely worth our investment of money and time.”
Maia, participant
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“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