I've been asking 2 questions of people I know who have lived through climate disasters lately. What were you glad was in place? What do you wish had been different? There is so much to absorb from the answers. Each one makes me think about my household, my town. About being helpful, being ready. and about what really matters.

I don't think enough people understand that it's not just roads, bridges, housing, and water systems that aren't designed to current climate conditions - it's mental health systems, insurance systems, emergency response systems, agricultural systems, medical education systems, supply chains, conflict resolution systems, collective governance systems, and more. Culture too - films, books, and movies aren't yet speaking fully to what people are experiencing.

When I launched Multisolving Institute I always made a point to tell funders that we were deliberately choosing timelines for our goals that would require less than a constant full on sprint to accomplish. I anticipated our team (all teams) would be increasingly impacted by climate destabilization and we (everyone) would need to build in more slack to be able to cope.

If you are moved watching the disaster in western North Carolina and yet you are outside of it all, somewhere (for now) that is safe, what can you do? I think about it (not surprisingly if you know me) as a fractal. How can you embody care & connection at multiple levels at once? (1) Immediate assistance. Donate money to the local organizations caring for people on the ground. (And share info on trusted organizations we can donate to if you know of them.)

Years ago (10 maybe?) I was invited to help with system thinking regarding disaster resilience in a US city. They were sketching out a major multi-day power outage across the whole region. Someone asked how the first responders planned to communicate. With our cellphones of course, they said. How long does the back up power supply on the cell phone towers last someone asked? No one in the room knew.

More than 20 years ago my family was amongst the founders of an eco-village project and we all put some money in the pot to get it started, before there was land, or designs or anything. And at each stage as things got more concrete there were new waves of people who joined. Not everyone could see the vision when there wasn't land or architectural drawings, just words and hopes and mental pictures. Then people could walk the land, and point to where the houses might be. Then there were little clay models on a little cardboard hillside.

When your vision exceeds current reality that creates tension - it hurts to see something that is not (yet) manifest. In that tension there are 3 options:
1. lower your vision to reduce the tension (which is part of how we get the the world we've got.) 2. change the reality to reduce the tension (often not feasible alone and/or not quick)
3. live in the that tension, hold fast to your vision, be public about it even

Dear governments: If you won't think in systems about climate change then please think in systems about war and if you won't think in systems about war then please think in system about microplastics and if you won't think in systems about microplastics then please think in systems about long covid and if you won't think in systems about long covid then please think in systems about avian influenza in mammals in concentrated systems that could involve human exposures and if you won't think in systems about about avian influenza then please think

If this is the summer you've decided "climate change is here and its bad", welcome to the movement(s). We need you. There's so much to do, and much that can be turned. In fact, there's so much to do, that no matter what you are good at, you are really, really needed.

If the whole of Earth's people slowed down for 1 week to process the meaning of the IPCC report (stayed home, closed down shop sat at their dinner tables and their town squares together) at least we'd have cut a week's worth of CO2 emissions and we might emerge more able to act and since much of who and what we are acting for would be at those dinner tables and town squares, who knows where it could lead?

Though I've used it often myself, I don't really like the "window of opportunity" metaphor that becomes one of the sound bites with every IPCC report. That sounds like some window gradually, ever so slowly, inching closed until someday it will be shut tight.

You ever just think how odd it is that current systems will only find ways to save the only livable planet we have if it pencils out as profitable according to a highly contrived set of rules about what does or doesn't count as an expense. Fossil fuels are profitable as long as you don't count the costs to people's bodies, homes, rivers, and life support system. Not profitable at all if you count those costs.

Pretty sure we are getting some AI generated responses on the application for our opening at Multisolving Institute. I would say that
(a) they stand out,
(b) they resemble each other, which is obvious to the reader but not the submitter, (c) given our 'rubric' - created before we started to get responses - they don't advance applicants to the next stage of our process

(but if they did: what do the applicants think they will do to follow up on this at the interview?)

Do you ever stop and think that we only the know the 3 year time course of covid-19 infection and that beyond that is unknown territory?

Or that we don't really know how bodies full of microplastics will age? Or wonder about the ripples if the shells of billions of tiny creatures in the ocean dissolve away?

There is a lot to be done, but somehow we need to do it more flexibly and with more grace for each other. At least that's my reflection on 2023 so far, as a project manager. A lot of people are not ok, health-wise, emotionally, relationship-wise. Some are in the thick of atmospheric rivers or digging out of record snow or, or, or.....