Anonymous Submission to North Shore Counter-Info

a podcast episode featuring two of the people who worked on this presentation discussing their findings and opionions was released by From Embers in January of 2025, under the same name as this post. listen wherever you get your podcasts.

whats the workshop about, where did it come from

Casual conversations amongst comrades led to a reading group, then this research was assembled as a offering for one of the later readings. folks then encouraged the presentation be shared at the local social space, and then the hamilton anarchist bookfair.

We wanted to get our friends on the same page about what the next few decades are likely to bring as per the most current scientific consensus as a basis for shared priorities and preparedness in our projects/lives.

We built a profile of what climate change could like in our geographic region (hamilton-gta) by the year 2050; We wanted to flesh out what “we are all screwed” actually looks like, to the best of our ability.

It’s important to keep in mind that this catastrophe doesn’t negate or replace other struggles. Fascism, colonization, war, disease, technological oppression, etc are all still on the horizon, or already here and unfolding. Rather, the specific challenges faced by a changing climate will:

• 1. gradually develop independently of all these other crises
  2. pile onto on our existing struggles and make enduring them harder, potentially much harder, than many folks might be attuned to

how is the workshop structured, what does the audience need to know going in

There were two parts, the first being more concrete predictions based on popular climate modelling data and other mainstream research about the local weather, seasons, precipitation, water table, biodiversity, and natural disasters; the second part is a more speculative collection of possibilities about the changes to various kinds of human activity, namely agriculture, industry, migration, infrastructure, and geopolitical tensions.

We kept each section as relevant the the region as possible, knowing that projections could look quite different depending on where you are, even for areas that are close by; we kept each section as relevant to climate change, and climate-driven changes, as possible, knowing that other “kinds” of crises require their own analysis and research. in practice the lines between different crises and different regions can be blurry, they feed off each other, and by the year 2050, response to one kind of crises in one region will of necessity be integrated, or competing with, responses to other crises in that same region or nearby regions.

Going into the workshop, here are a few things you’ll need to know about the climate crises in general:

• The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is a branch of the UN that produces reports on the climate to inform governments’ policy making, generally releasing reports every 6-7 years and measuring progress against commitments made at the Paris Accords
• the Paris Accords, or the Paris Agreement, is a long-term goal to keep the average increase in global surface temperature above pre-industrial levels to less than 2 °C (3.6 °F). The treaty also states that preferably the limit of the increase should only be 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). It was ratified in 2015.
• the average increase in global surface temperature above pre-industrial levels (another way of saying, “how often it gets warmer than it used to be”) would be measured over many years (20+), so we won’t know if or when we cross into the 1.5°C – 2°C warmer average. However, the last three years (2023, 2024, and 2025) have been the three hottest years recorded since the pre-industrial age, and the average has been more 1.5° warmer.
• the popular “climate models” used by scientist to draw many of these conclusions are built by huge algorithms that analysis planet-sized data-sets on climate, weather, temperature, etc. and spit out predictions. Their predictions are often divided into “low-, medium-, and high- carbon” scenarios. Low-carbon means the nations of the world have gradually reduced the amount carbon released into the atmosphere annually to almost none by the end of the century. High-carbon represents a continued growth in emission rates, so by the end of the century, we have gradually increased the amount of carbon released annually to more than we are releasing now. Medium-carbon falls somewhere in the middle.
• A low-carbon scenario results in a 1 – 1.5°C increase in average global surface temperature by the end of the century; a medium-carbon scenario yields a 2° – 3°C increase; a high-carbon scenario yeilds a 4° – 5°C increase.
• When looking at emission rates, economic commitments and industrial plans, we are globally on track for a high-carbon scenario.
• the severity of these scenarios is a topic for a different discussion, but for the purpose of this project, we kept most predictions in the medium-carbon scenario range, and focused on the year 2050 rather than 2100. As you can see, after the year 2050, the scenarios diverge…

a brief summary of each section

Weather, Seasons, and Precipitation

The most obvious expectation is more heat. This includes a general increase in daily temperatures throughout the year, a roughly even bump of approx. 2 C in the monthly averages, as well as a higher frequency and intensity of extreme heat and other weather events.

Going forward, “record breaking” years will become the norm regarding heat and climate. For example, in the Hamilton-GTA region 25 years ago, the average number of days over 32C was four days per year. That average increased to seven in the last five years. This past summer, we had 14 days over 32 C (double the annual average estimated). Those 14 days were spread over six heat waves (the number of which is also three above the current average). By 2050, models suggest the average of 15 days above 32 C, with some individual years being much, much higher than that.

Variable	Current Avg	2050 Low Carbon Timeline	2050 High Carbon Timeline
No. of Hot Days (+30*C)	15	29	39
No. of Heat Waves	2-3	4	5
Length of Heat Waves (days)	< 5	7-8	9-12
Extreme Minimum Annual Temp	-20	-17	-16
No. of Winter Days (<-5*C)	50-60	40-50	30-40

Different ways we can expect the year to get warmer:

• longer summer seasons
• hotter days, less cooling at night
• heat waves that are hotter, longer lasting and more frequent
• shorter winter seasons, less/no ground freezing
• higher winter minimum temperature

Precipitation is expected to increase by 5-15%, but more of it will fall over shorter durations (a day or less), leading to longer periods of dryness and drought broken by heavy downpours.

The number of days per season with snow cover will decrease by 5% to 10% due to later snow cover onset in the fall and earlier snow melt in the spring. And because the fall frost will be later, and spring thaw earlier, we should see longer growing seasons, as well as an increase in ecological pathogens that are controlled by sub-zero temperatures (lymes diseases, crop diseases, etc).

Generally warmer weather will increase the frequency of storms, as well as their severity. This largely results in more power outages, property and crop damage, and transportation bottlenecks. As the temperature is more often closer to zero throughout the colder seasons, and precipitation occurs in concentrated downpours, there will be a higher frequency of ice storms.

Water Table

Water levels will continue to rise and fall in the Great Lakes in the coming decades; these changes will likely occur more quickly than they have in the past, with a general trend will be towards slightly lower average water levels. Changes in water level will be due to climate-induced alterations in the three primary components of the lakes’ hydrological cycle – over-lake precipitation, lake evaporation, and basin runoff.

Lower water levels, combined with increased runoff of soluble pollutants such as phosphorus, nitrates, and pesticides during heavy precipitation could lead to higher concentrations of contaminants in the Great Lakes. Warmer lake temperatures lead to a greater frequency of E. coli, cyanobacteria and algae blooms, including the toxic kind, which will negatively affect beaches, swimming and boating opportunities. This could also potentially threaten public water supplies for the millions of people who rely on Lake Ontario for drinking water. Higher surface water temperatures could also lead to the migration of fish species north, leading to potential new parasites in fish and the mixing of distinct lake water layers

Sudden and extreme weather events will cause more fluctuating in the water table, and more flooding, which causes more erosion of streams, riverbeds and lakeshores. Stress on humans includes damages to property, pressure on water facilities and infrastructure, disrupted transportation routes, etc.

Increased temperatures across the bio region will cause lower everyday levels in rivers, streams and wetlands. This in turn can lead to issues with fish spawning/travel, the potential drying up and death of wetland areas, or the evaporation of sulphur deposits (causing an increase in acid rain).

Biodiversity

We live in the Mixedwood Plains Ecozone, which is Ontarios’s smallest ecozone, and also the most biodiverse ecozone in Canada. Although it covers only 8 per cent of the province, it is home to about 35 per cent of Canada’s population and 92 per cent of Ontario’s population. Its rich soils, moderate climate and central location attracted early settlers. Over the past few hundred years, this ecozone has been changed from forests, wetlands, prairies and alvars to a landscape dominated by agriculture and settlement. Despite this transformation, the Mixedwood Plains is still Canada’s most biologically diverse area, with many species – especially birds – that are not found in the rest of Canada. In addition to its substantial population density, the Mixedwood Plains has a high concentration of industry and agriculture and generates more than 25 per cent of Canada’s agricultural production, including many fruits, vegetables and products grown nowhere else in Canada.

The Canadian state had access to this beautifully rich plains region, converted it to wildly productive farmland, and is now expanding population and cities/suburbs into the best farmland then converting the limited number of wetlands and forested areas to lower quality farmland.

When considering the previously described changes to the weather and seasons, the bioregion’s plant and animal species will be challenged, but are expected to adapt successfully. Climate change is not the biggest threat to these species. Further habitat loss and human activity, not climate change directly, is still the biggest threat to local biodiversity.This is a very different set of ecological concerns than those that affect glaciers, tundra, rain forests, etc in other regions, a not the kind that make as many headlines.

Agriculture

Fourfold issues related to agriculture:

1. land use shift toward urbanization: The latest Census of Agriculture shows us that we are losing 116,478 acres of farmland annually, which is nearly 320 acres every day. Ontario has lost 18% of it’s farmland in the last 35 years. The Greenbelt Plan was created in 2005 and remains one of the world’s largest Greenbelts, where agriculture is the predominant land use with it being home to approximately 750,000 acres of farmland. Since its creation, only a few hundred acres of prime agricultural land have been converted to other uses. This is now a politically contentious topic, with a real potential of agricultural land protections failing eventually to developer interests and public opinion regarding the need for more housing.
2. poor soil practice: Indicators suggest that soil health and conservation are not improving in Ontario. more agricultural soils are estimated to be losing more CO2 to the atmosphere rather than increasing soil organic carbon; more than half of the farmlands are estimated to be in an unsustainable erosion risk category; about half of the farmlands are estimated to have low or very low soil cover, covered less than 275 days or 75% of the year. This analysis reflects trends in farming practices over recent decades that have had adverse effects on soil health and led to declines in soil organic matter. These changes include: a shift to more annual crops and less diverse rotations, more tillage, fewer fencerows and windbreaks, fewer ruminant livestock farms resulting in a reduction in the total area of hay/pasture and availability of manure, consolidation of smaller fields, and the use of larger, heavier equipment.
3. climate challenges: longer dryer periods are harder for smaller plants to endure (however with sufficient water table management, this should be addressable), and sudden deluges can increase floods and erosion. Shorter, warmer winters and fewer freezing days will mean pests have a higher change of growth. But ultimately, climate change is expected to result in a longer growing season, and offer whatever agricultural lands that are well managed and protect higher crop yields.
4. low labour supply: There is a farm labour shortage in Ontario. 1 in 3 farm workers are temporary foreign workers (the highest rate in all of Canada). By 2029, the dropping Canadian workforce interested in agriculture will mean 42% of farm workers in Ontario will need to be temporary foreign workers. These workers will need more organization and solidarity under capitalist exploitation (many of them exist in conditions comparable work camps for enslaved people). Furthermore, as areas of the global south are more severely affected by climate change and economic turmoil, that could reduce their access to foreign work, which not only strips them of their livelihoods, but pushes this area’s labour shortage even more extreme.

Industry

Ontario, like most of the world, uses the Net Zero Emission Scenario as their goal-setting framework for addressing climate change. Having world-wide net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is widely understood as being necessary if there is any hope of staying below a global 1.5 degree Celsius increase.

The Net Zero scenario is largely achieved by a shift away from using fossil fuels for vehicles and home heating, and their replacement with Electricity, paired with means of reducing emissions from heavy industry through technologies that either do not exist, or which exist in small test pilots, but have not been introduced at scale.

After researching for this presentation, the most reliable takeaway is that the Net Zero Scenario is not going to happen. Not in Canada, and not globally. Even from mainstream academic and political sources, in the absence of ‘strong climate change policies’, the expected drop in emissions by 2050 is just 13%.

Most of the “net-zero” planning is built around offsets and carbon capture, rather than actual reductions in emissions. Offsets if this case mean still producing emissions, then just doing something else that prevents/captures emissions. The classic example of this is planting a tree, which natural absorbs carbon dioxide through its leaves and deposits in its cells, or it the soil. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough land mass available on the planet for forest growth to plant enough trees to “offset” the emissions we do currently plan on producing by the year 2050. Another humorous example of this “offsetting” is using BECCS (Bio Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage) as a net carbon negative source of electricity and fuel; wood is burned, moslty source through mono-rop tree farms, and the resulting emissions are pushed through a carbon capture technology. This is considered net negative because it “removes a source of carbon released by plants as they decompose.” In the IPCC’s scenarios, a large fraction – up to half – of global cropland would have to be turned over to bioenergy crop production.’

“Carbon Capture” technologies largely include a series of industrial filters, effectively small factories themselves, that would need to built and installed next to every existing factory that continued to rely on fossil fuels as its energy source. There are other proposals for technologies, such as leveraging natural geo-chemical processes in the ocean (ocean alkalinity enhancement), large industrial atmospheric vacuums that simply suck CO2 out of the air (direct air capture), or augmented tailings ponds at industrial sites that can draw in CO2 (carbon mineralization), but to date every serious proposal features technology that hasn’t been invented yet, and therefore may not be possible to even use, or is too expensive and resources intensive on it’s own to be deployed at scale.

Any real reductions that are planned only come into play after an energy source has been installed that can replace the outputs of oil, natural gas or coal. There are no renewable energy sources that can do that (again, at least none that have been invented) and under the current economic model, there will be no “de-growth” as part of any top-down plan. This paints a clear picture: at least for the present and near future, industry continues on a path towards 2+ degree warming, and is set to massively fail at reaching the goals set at the Paris Accords.

Meanwhile, the state’s future green energy plans hinges on a massive increase in renewable energy infrastructure (solar/wind), EV, battery production; this is being used as an opportunity to scale up mining for critical minerals, particularly in the Ring of Fire, igniting a renewed political will to push those stalled Northern-Ontario projects through.

read about 2025 provincial legislation, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act, here: https://news.ontario.ca/assets/files/20250417/0b027c75b5d4a4560c8fd80e094428cf.pdf

read about a federal equivalent, Bill C-5 or the One Canadian Economy Act, here: https://www.canada.ca/en/intergovernmental-affairs/news/2025/06/implementation-of-bill-c-5-one-canadian-economy.html

Population and Migration

Ontario is staged to grow from current 15.6 million people, to 22.1 million by 2050, based on current growth trends. Around 45% of those people living in the gta (growing approx. 100k per year, up from the current 7.5 million). Central area grows at a similar rate, growing from 3.4 to 5.1 million (this includes hamilton, niagara, guelph and barrie). Approx 75% of growth between now and 2050 is expected to be from “voluntary, economically” motivated immigration (7 million in the high-growth scenario).

What is not yet factored into these models are possible changes in those trends. There are no concrete numbers to look at yet, but we found two strong factors that could push the regions population growth rate up significantly.

Natural Disasters: this is both within Canada and the US, as well as globally. Individual instances of a natural disaster lead to temporary displacement, for the most part. But sustained exposure to a climate event (ex. drought), or “disasters” becoming regular seasonal events (ex. forest fires; wet-bulb heat waves), or permanent changes (ex. sea level rise), will all lead to permanent relocation of families and communities.

Here in the northern areas of Turtle Island, forest fires are going to continue to become more frequent, longer, cover larger areas and burn hotter, due to the continuous shift towards long, dry periods without rain. Areas particularly vulnerable include the west coast of Canada and the US, as well Northern Ontario and into Quebec. These areas may see large changes in population, settlement and relocation as Forest Fires become the norm.

Globally, huge swaths of the equatorial south are potentially facing yearly high-humidity heat waves over 35C (an adult human in good health can survive perhaps 6 hours at such temperatures, without the ability to presperiate in high-humidity), and annual average temperatures over 29C. Such average temperatures are currently restricted to only 0.8% of Earth’s land surface area, but by 2070 around 2 billion people are expected to live in these extremely hot areas. It is plausible, should warming exceed 2C, that huge areas of densely populated lands will be rendered unsuitable for habitation, entire cities will be slowly abandoned, and the number of yearly climate migrants fleeing heat alone could be in the hundreds of millions. Sea-level rise could push humans out of coastal regions in equally huge numbers.

Climate Havens: there is a short list of geographic areas, plus many unpredictable small pockets, that are expected to undergo minimal, or even positive, changes in their climate and “habitation suitability.” Of course no where on the planet will remain unchanged, but these areas will retain moderate temperatures, access to fresh water and agricultural land, and shelter from major storms and disasters. The list includes parts of Russia and Siberia; parts of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru; areas interior to China and Tibet; parts of New Zealand, Japan and Korea; areas of the Pacific North West/Temperate British Columbia; stretches of the prairies along the Canadian-American border; the Canadian East Coast; and a huge area around the Great Lakes Basin. There are some regions that are contentious, like the Mediterranean or Western Europe, or parts of South Africa, that could experience either very mild changes, or very dramatic changes, depending on how other earth systems respond to climate change, such as ocean currents. Whether or not the portrayal of these areas as potential “havens” from climate change is accurate or fair, it is true that all of these areas are looking at far more manageable sets of changes to their climates than many other regions. And the perception of safety is enough to draw attention on its own. In a century of unprecedented human migration, these areas will likely receive unprecedented attention. Furthermore, when we look over this list of areas in search of already existing infrastructure, physical room for urban growth, and stable government, it shortens considerably more.

For practical reasons, with huge numbers combined with sparse economic resources being the main limiting factors, most migration happens internally to states, with a majority of climate migrants of the future expected to be relocating withing their own or neighboring countries.

For Canada, and the USA, this could look like a number of different kinds of climate-related movement over the next 25 years: individuals relocating out of the path or wildfires from the west, or moving away from rising temperatures, water shortages and droughts in the southern states towards the great lakes; people crossing the southern American border out of Mexico and Latin America, settling on the way or trying to make it further north; international migrants from much farther, either pursuing immigration through economic means or as refugees, choosing Canada/the northern USA and the Great Lakes as a safe place to endure what is to come (this could easily apply to the upper class citizens of any wealthy country as well); people fleeing political and social persecution factoring climate havens into their choices for new places to live (trans folks, queers and people of colour fleeing american fascism, for example).

leading us to…

Geopolitical Tensions

We see climate change adding these layers to existing political conflicts and ruptures:

• competition for water and agricultural land
• the perception of threat and being capable of taking huge risks in an attempt to mitigate (ex. releasing aerosolized coolants into the atmosphere) could motivate preemptive action
• retribution regarding climate responsibility. If one country can blame another for some such disaster or huge death toll, they will
• many, many people being crowded in contested areas
• the knock-on effects of disasters and resource shortages (food, water and fuel) on supply chains, economic turmoil, social discord and the typical precursors to revolution and war

All of these layers can be applied globally, but also to the direct relationship between Canada and the USA. Current political trends in both states lean towards nationalism and fascism, and increasing rhetoric around self-defense and securing a future. Should the bioregion around the great lakes become more heavily populated, Canada would find itself in competition with a much larger, more powerful empire. Not to mention that individual citizens, notably some of the most heavily armed and entitled ones in all of history, are unlikely to be deterred by a fake, invisible border. And while open war may seem unlikely (mostly because of how short lived it would be), we can’t help but think of steps towards annexation or border disputes.

As a final thought on these tensions, we want to remind ourselves and our comrades of our anarchist values that force us to see other humans as just that – unreliable primates like us, searching for a better path for themselves, their families and their communities. It can be all too easy in the face of new challenges and resource competition to turn to defensiveness and fall in line with state mythology around the threat of the other. Consider the potential for conflict between Canada and America, or the influx of migrants the state will undoubtedly use to further their colonial agenda – we want to remember that all of those people are as alienated from this land by society as we are, and many desire to approach these problems with a compatible set of values. Our enemies, allies, and potential comrades remain mixed together on either side of any imaginary line that could stand between us.

how do you ethically approach the topic and resign to accept mass death

The window of time available to intervene on climate change on a global scale, or even to mitigate its affects, is very rapidly closing (perhaps a decade or two). To imagine all the nations of the world acting in unison to reflect the needs of the human species in that small window of time is a truly fantastical notion. even more delusional is hoping that the ruling class will voluntarily make sacrifices to their own political and economic power before these crises manifest on a massive scale, before entire cities are emptied from heat waves or sea level rise, farmlands start to blow away on the wind, entire forests are lost, or we see climate-driven mortality rates climb to the hundreds of thousands from singular events.

We need to accept that any of the globally coordinated efforts required to actually reduce fossil fuel emissions will be reactive, rather than proactive, as has been the default way civilization relates to its natural environment. And there is good reason to believe that those reactions will arrive too late to be restorative, that many of the changes the climate will undergo will be irreversible by the time our overlords get around to addressing them. The concept of a ‘tipping point’ is, in short, that when you cross it you are no longer fighting to regain your balance, you are fighting to stand back up. This hole may be dug deeper than even the entire self-protective powers of capitalism can climb itself out of.

It is worth remembering that global climate change cannot be addressed at a local level, or even a nation-state level. It is a byproduct of international, hyper-industrial civilization, thus we are very much relying on this Leviathan to “solve” the problem it has created. And even if you were to make your main project a ferocious declaration of war against mega-civ until death (which you still totally should), even if we were to overthrow this Leviathan, it wouldn’t directly result in the stabilization or restoration of the climate to what is was in the pre-industrial age. Yes, nature would take the long route to recovering and even evolving, but in terms of a human lifespan, there simply isn’t enough time.

In many ways, all the dominoes have already been set up, and as they fall, our agency lies in enduring what comes next as best we can.

This isn’t to say we embrace climate nihilism and “accept” mass death and struggle as unnegotiable outcomes. we are saying that climate change itself is not really available to be mitigated, but the tolls it takes on us are (to a limited degree). yes, in the next fifty years we will likely see unprecedented ecological devastation, political conflict, social oppression, and human death. no, not everyone who starts a project will succeed and make it through. but the need for mutual aid, for access to land and the redistribution of power, for skills used towards human survival and thriving, remain important. Anarchism continues to be an essential political lense to frame our initiatives.

In practice, we simply need to consider that on top of everything else, our projects need to be functional during heat waves, or power outages or food shortages; during periods of epidemic, mass migration or between the thundering blows of nation-states competing for resources. particularly in the west, we need to steel ourselves for the pressure, ecologically and politically, to be turned up way, way higher than we have been accustomed to.

Final thought: a mad-max vision of the future is frankly a political luxury, offering us clarity of choice at the cost of apocalypse. We can imagine if there were so few people left on the planet such that large-scale institutions cease to exist, or if the industrial supply chain broke down and governments dissolved overnight, all of a sudden anarchists find themselves well equipped to decide what to do next. this vision is not so different than the misplaced hope that those same institutions we hope won’t exists will actually “solve” the climate crisis in one way or another. Its natural that we would want our central goals to stay the same at the end of the day, to stay singularly focused on opposition to those institutions. Maddeningly, we must accept that our problems have multiplied, that industrial extractivism has been around long enough to create its own fully autonomous baby-leviathan, and that we cannot deal with just one, hoping that in turn deals with the other. we can no longer afford a one-dimensional political orientation. we cannot just resist, and we cannot merely survive, we must prepare to do both.

what are your conclusions/recommendations

As anarchists, as radicals more broadly, as organizers, and as active members of various communities, we need to incorporate the material consequences of climate change into our projects and plans for the future. We need to acknowledge the complexity these challenges bring to present and future struggles, and prioritize our adaptability now so that we have it when we need it.

Understanding that for most of us living in settler society here in canada, the future will certainly face us with more adversity than the present currently does.

we don’t want to push a romantic version of escapism – fleeing with your best buds to live in the woods sounds great, but without practical skills the project won’t survive, and without social connections to other people outside of the project, you’ve lost connection to any kind of struggle or solidarity that matters. instead, we want to emphasize what we feel are all good goals to pursue:

• access to land, however you get it
• the ability to actually sustain life through skill or relationship
• the abundance to welcome others into the fold
• the capacity to defend what you’ve built

even if you don’t achieve these goals in a literal sense, by pursuing them you and your comrades will have built up resilience (ie being able to recover from setbacks, to get up after being knocked down) and adaptability (ie to change as the situation changes, to learn new things if you don’t know them, to pivot strategies even though you just got the hang of things). These are the two traits people actually need, two traits this hierarchical society has groomed out of us since we were infants.

We know that many anarchists and organizers will stay in the cities, keeping the struggle alive until the bitter end, and so long as there are cities to do so in, it can still be done in a way that pursues adaptability and resilience. this includes better channels for communications, people and resources to move between folks living in urban and rural areas.

In general, we liked the recent submedia docu-series ‘It’s Revolution or Death’, and want to repeat/adapt the three urgent suggestions made in the film here:

• A Complete and Total Rejection of All the Institutions Responsible for this Disaster. this includes hoping that climate change is addressed at the level of industry or the UN or global leadership or whatever. Quite simply, they are far to busy perpetuating the problem to have any availability to solve it. Sure, you can use a shovel to fill in the hole you just dug, but that’s pretty hard to do when you’re at the bottom of the hole. Relying on nonprofits, elections, international governance, or authoritarian left movements has failed time and time again. As humans, we cannot afford to continue to misplace our trust in institutions that will not save us.
• Pick a Project of Transformative Survival. The sooner we get involved in organizing for survival, the better. If people in the territories you reside in are already working towards similar goals, it may be better to join them than to try and build a movement from the ground up. But sometimes we need to create new projects where there is a need for them and people willing to get them going. So long as our projects include the reclaiming and building of power outside of the state and capital, we are pursuing the means to endure this crisis, and sowing the seeds of something more lasting and more good.
• Connect Your Project to a Web of Solidarity. The climate crisis is a worldwide issue; its affects are felt, or will soon be felt, by every working class person across lines of race, gender, ability, etc, even if those effects manifest differently. We need to have global and regional responses. Finding other anarchists, other organizers or other movements that share your concerns and goals, learning from them, and showing up for them in their struggles is how we fight isolation, repression, stagnation and recuperation.

how might someone go about researching this topic on their own, and building a profile for their own geographic region

to get started, we broke our region into smaller, more approachable topics we were confident we could find answers for. this was our list:

part 1 – geographical/ecological profile:

1. annual/seasonal temperature and rainfall
2. water (amount, quality, geography)
3. biodiversity

for part 1, we are looking mainly to government sources and research done at local universities, but we avoided journalism at this stage. almost everything we pulled from was “mainstream.” a good practice is to start reading journalism on the topics, then go and read for yourself the “reports” and “studies” that they are citing.

part 2 – socioeconomic profile:

1. industry, energy, extraction
2. agriculture
3. population growth, migration
4. infrastructure, supply chain
5. political climate, locally and internationally
6. technology, AI

for each topic in part 2, we are asking a few questions:

• what are the existing predictions/trends on this topic more generally, not necessarily changes linked to climate change?
• then we try to make the leap ourselves – will any of these trends exacerbate climate change on their own? do they emit fossil fuels, deforest, require large amounts of energy, etc?
• is this aspect of local society going to be affect by changes in any of the three topics in part 1? (ex is agriculture affected by different weather patterns?)
• are any of these going to be affected by changes in each other (ex is agriculture affected by population growth?)

The topics we found didn’t all directly, or proportionally, make it into the various presentations, so much as they gave us good questions to ask, then we shared what we felt was most relevant.

The most intimidating part of this project was the shear volume of information to process. You likely don’t want to do it alone. The finding of good information was much easier; a search engine and decent judgement was more than enough to compile all the needed research.

A note on journalism: its not all created equal, and there are few large scale journalism projects that we are politically aligned with; however, we found that most of the large centrist, or center-left, media outlets (the guardian, the new york times, the globe and mail, etc) were about as reliable as their academic/scientific sources were when it came to reporting on the climate crisis. We find them useful, and worth paying attention to.

some sources and further reading:

Canada-specific Government Websites:

https://climateatlas.ca/map/canada/plus30_2030_85#

https://climateatlas.ca/find-local-data

https://climate-change.canada.ca/climate-library

https://climatewest.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/A-guide-to-finding-Climate-Information-Data_2022.pdf

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/climate-plan/net-zero-emissions-2050.html

Scary Reads:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119

https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0360

Other Interesting Sources:

https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/environmental-migration

https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en