Maybe it's a bad idea to be currently thinking about buying a house in southern California.
It's just so depressing. No one cares, no one is willing to do anything about it. All the politicians say that it'll get fixed at some point in the future (i.e. after their careers) so that their current donors don't get mad.
You also have the people who see the evidence for a warming climate, and just say "well that still doesn't mean we humans have anything to do with it". Even if it was a completely natural process, the result is going to be bad for us. We should do something.
Oh, we (the global "we") will, eventually. It's just that the incentives for politicians are to let crises get bad before acting, so that people notice them and remember them.
No-one (well hardly anyone) remembers people who stopped a catastrophe from happening in the first place. For example, Stanislav Petrov ought to have a statue in every town in the world.[1] But "who's he?" is what you get when you mention him.
In the case of climate change, when the effects are bad enough for politicians to act, their actions will be draconian but ineffective. I can't offer any Disney ending to the story, but we must carry on anyway. It won't be the end of the world, just a much worse future than we might have had.
I moved off grid two years ago, bought 5ha of abandoned farmland, now more like 30ha, and am rewilding it - transplanted lots of saplings, encouraged wildlife, and within two years we’ve gone from fire-risk scrub to a young ash and oak forest, which is already providing cover for third succession species. We had a fire from a cigarette by a road last week, and it just stopped at the edge of the forest. Green undergrowth doesn’t burn very well.
Long dry springs have started running. Local farmers are taking notice - we’ve had people coming by and turning green with envy at our running water, in August. There was nothing on this land - just a few hopeful looking dips that looked like old water courses. Other people are now planting up around their old springs, which they all bulldozed bare decades ago when they got pumped irrigation from the river - which now runs dry from June - Sept every year, as all the water is pumped out to evaporate on the bare earth of the highlands.
Hunting is a huge part of the lifestyle here, and it’s done pretty sustainably - I’ve been really enheartened talking to people here about the importance of large wildlife to the ecosystem. Local hunt have agreed to have a two year moratorium on boar hunting near us, so we can collect data on population and the impact of their activities - our hope is that by providing habitat for them they stop being an agricultural pest, and their numbers can rebound to the point where their population is stable, and able to support apex predators - wolves. Normal, rural folk are seeing the devastation the changing climate is bringing (fires, floods, fires, floods), and there’s a genuine desire to do something.
Our energy is all renewable, apart from a few weeks in the winter when we run the generator (although that goes next year - new hydro turbine on order).
We don’t fly any more - covid made that decision really easy - all travel is overland. Sure, takes longer - and gives you so much more to see.
I can’t stop global climate change, but I can at least stop being part of the problem - and if enough people take that step, then maybe there’s hope for “we”.
With work from home this kind of setup can become a viable option for many.
Living in the city feels really more and more repulsive to me, so hearing about people who have moved off-grid or to a rural location sounds super interesting. I have so many questions now, sorry.
Where are you located roughly geographically? (Trying to map your story into places close to me. I'm in Sweden and trying to form a picture of everything you described, and judging from the biome with ash and oak you're likely to the south of my location, latitude-wise.)
Was the farmland a big investment? Do you have prior professional experience with what you do there -- I mean, what you've done sounds successful, how did you know what has to be done? Do you work from your farm? Do you have a blog or something?
I’m in the mountains of the north of portugal - cold winters, warm summers, and massive rural depopulation - a lot of places here are abandoned or on their way. There’s good LTE infrastructure nearby, which is how we connect - with a home-made relay mast.
No, the land was dirt cheap (less than €0.10 per m2), and we’re only working a small orchard garden - we’ll likely expand that a little in time, and add some glasshouses for winter produce. Relying heavily on automation, as farming is a faff. It’s all a learning experience - both the forestry and rewilding processes, as well as the small agricultural experiments we’re doing.
> All the politicians say that it'll get fixed at some point in the future
To be perfectly clear, there is exactly one political party in the United States who still doesn't even acknowledge anthropogenic climate change, never mind taking any steps to change things. It's incredibly frustrating that this too gets framed as a "both sides" issue despite all evidence indicating it's a one sided issue.
This is short sighted since political parties are both playing for the same team: they are owned by finance and corporations. These are entities that are absolutely not going to allow the radical changes needed to stay within 2c temperature gain (which is still bad, millions will die, but maybe not catastrophic for the species as a whole). Alas, 2c is already priced in given current policies, we will be lucky to stay below 3c. The societal changes from that alone will be devastating.
It's just so depressing. No one cares, no one is willing to do anything about it. All the politicians say that it'll get fixed at some point in the future (i.e. after their careers) so that their current donors don't get mad.
You also have the people who see the evidence for a warming climate, and just say "well that still doesn't mean we humans have anything to do with it". Even if it was a completely natural process, the result is going to be bad for us. We should do something.