More common and extreme climate patterns are redefining our seasons, dictating how and where we are able to live and even challenging an infrastructure originally not designed to cope with such extremities. The notion of a ‘refugee’ is no longer reserved for those crossing national borders to flee politically unstable conditions and oppression, but expands to include local populations fleeing unstable climate conditions as large swaths of land become uninhabitable.

Where once the effects of extreme climate change took generations for its impact to be felt, now those effects are more frequent and more extreme. The way we live, how we build, and where we are able to settle is defined by climate, which redefines the geo-political map.

KEY WORDS:

‘Rising Global Temperatures’ ‘Urban Heat Islands’ ‘Climate-Adaptive Regulations’ ‘The Great Climate Migration’ ‘Climate Disaster Seasons’ ‘Intersectional Data’

The weight that traditional Western medicine used to carry is being challenged by emerging symptoms that see an entanglement of physical and mental health stressors. Whether it is the psychological impact of new digital behaviors that challenge how we connect to other people, or the increasing distance we have put between ourselves and natural systems - our health and wellbeing is made up of a complex set of stimuli that requires a more holistic understanding of what it means to be ‘healthy’.

New health and wellbeing practices are emerging that prescribe more connection to nature, engage in psychedelic and transcendent experiences for coping with heavy loss or life transitions, and even promote an activist ideology for safeguarding our natural systems that sees us become active participants in our own health and wellbeing experience.

KEY WORDS:

‘Eco Resilience’ ‘Climate Anxiety’ ‘Nature Therapy’ ‘Climate Psychology’ ‘Heat Fatigue’ ‘Eco-Centric Behaviors’ ‘Weather Responsive Work’

An ever growing human population living beyond their means has put entire species and ecosystems under duress. A need to rethink our relationship to natural resources and raw material has seen the re-emergence of once marginalized belief systems and ideologies challenge and put into question our neo-liberal and capitalistic ideals. Considering the lifespan of 7 Generations, for instance, is an Indigenous principle that guides present day decision making processes to consider their ramifications 7 generations into the future.

Living within our planetary boundaries means a radical shift in lifestyle and accountability, one that will give way to new food systems and regulate not only ‘how’ and ‘why’, but also ‘if’ we extract raw materials.

KEY WORDS:

‘7 Generations Principles’ ‘Climate Adaptive Food’

As natural disasters become more common and continue to decimate entire areas, leaving many without homes and access to safety, urban centers will have to begin planning and designing infrastructure not with the possibility of disaster but for the high probability of it. Public spaces will be repurposed to become land for crops or temporary shelter. New public services will emerge to help citizens cope with compromised air quality, extreme heat, and lack of clean water. Tourism will take a turn that will see swaths of travelers flock to destinations to experience completely new sights - ones born from destruction.

KEY WORDS:

‘Adaptive Public Infrastructure’ ‘Disaster Infrastructure’ ‘Disaster Tourism’ ‘Healthy Environment as Human Right’ ‘Water Scarcity’

The notion of everything, all the time, and anywhere, is a paradigm that promotes access at any cost, even if that cost is that of violated human rights or decimated natural resources. New value metrics emerge as a means for regulating the ways in which goods are produced making their cost valuation transparent, going beyond mere price tag value to also include the collateral costs such as resources extracted, emissions produced, and lives lost.

The true and total cost of goods becomes an enforced and transparent label that sees many or most present day commodities become unattainable and obsolete.

KEY WORDS:

‘Carbon Emissions Transparency’ ‘Disaster Currency’ ‘Net-Zero Carbon Coalition’

How we perceive our natural environment determines how we value it - a tree can either be an integral part of a more complex and interconnected natural system that has a spirit, or it can be a resource to be extracted, harvested and processed for profit. Safeguarding our natural systems means changing the vernacular used to refer to them and reframing our relationship to them: challenging the paradigm of the human being at the top of the pyramid to consider a ‘Democracy of Species’.

KEY WORDS:

‘An Ecotopian Lexicon’ ‘Slow Tourism’ ‘Beyond Human’ ‘Democracy of Species’