The modernist initial response to climate change was predictable.
They had great plans. They would own and control life.
Make life simple enough to keep in a bubble.
Mining, military, money, monoculture. Extract value.
Try to shut down anything they didn't own.
Start with a great homogenisation.
Break down their own societies by reducing culture to stories of war and violence.
Repurpose democracies with money and systemic corruption for a claustrophobic feudalism where only the species, people, ideas they owned would be safe.
Limit education to basic unquestioning competition for narrower and narrower definitions of participation.
They would make war on other communities with different perspectives, from indigenous communities to world faiths.
Anything they could use to muster conflict.
They could field armies against themselves and feed whole generations into them. Juggle profit.
And so the communities and natural systems were breaking. Are still breaking. But Earth has always been larger than human mayhem.
The bubble cities were dependent on few gmo crops, which were dependent on chemicals, cannibal cage farmed livestock, manufactured meats and processes that were precarious and contended. They were sustained by the destruction of forests. They fought amongst each other. Their crops did not adapt to shifting climate. Genetic splicing caused carcinogenic compounds in foods. The fracked groundwater was no tastier out of plastic bottles. Bees died. People who had been trained not to question found it hard to find the systemic causes for crop failure and tried to answer it with more poisons.
If you can only answer the world's dynamic challenges with answers you own the Earth will answer the anomaly with all of the power of a living system.
Their bubble cities were invaded by consequences like sandcastles on a beach. Something they could not war against.
The bubble city people learned and left. They moved like a river.
From the local city they came to us. We divided the first groups and sent them to different communities to learn. After that we needed another plan. We turned them around with water and short term food. Seeds to plant and people to show them what to do next.
At the edge of the city they were watched by the guards. They dug swales, planted for nitrogen, planted for food and materials, planted for pollinators, and tried a first planting of the local indigenous species. It became a rhythm. People began to focus on specific tasks or species. They worked in teams and tried different combinations. The first crops were peas and buckwheat.
It was cold at night in the tents. But people slept close. They started to talk. To tell stories.
People still in the city were hungry. Looting. The guards and the people recognised the fear in each other's eyes. They allowed the gardeners back in. People moved back and forth. Trying the new polyculture patterns in the city. Looking for ways to make tools.
Our communities were more diffuse. Following landscape needs. Our communities worked to contribute ecological services to the Earth. And to feed and manage ourselves. We shared ideas and seeds, adapted technologies for materials which were not contended. No single points of failure, no need for war. We drafted an economics for stability. One which was designed to fit within the living systems, to be reciprocal, healthy.