Guardian on Liberal Preppers

[Jon Freise]

An interesting article from the Guardian on managing the coming challenges:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/17/preppers-liberals-climate-collapse

Overall, I thought the article was very good: stressing the need for a collective and cooperative response.  And inner transition.  There are some interesting book references. 

One caveat: It strongly features and Alex Stephen, of whom I am not a fan, who was arguing for a "Bright Green" future for all of humanity where technology would deliver a car and such to the whole world population.  He never seemed to grasp the key point of Limits to Growth that it is the size of the economy that does the damage.  He criticised those who called for degrowth as "Dark Green".

Today's problems were yesterday's solutions.  Coal was the solution to wood being scarce.  Oil and natural gas were supposed to "solve" the coal induced air pollution problem.  Solar panels are the solution to fossil fuels releasing CO2.  When solar panels are produced in the volume needed to replace fossil fuels we will discover they cause all kinds of environmental damage ( the boundary waters copper nickel mine is one example.)  Same problem with nuclear power.  At the scale it could replace fossil fuels it will generate tremendous amounts of long lived waste.

Still, the article is worth reading.

-Jon