Over the past few weeks my colleagues and I have been chatting on and off about our apocalypse plans.  If the end of the world came, would we be ready?  What would happen to the communities we live in and work in?  The apocalypse is an extreme scenario where lots of things would have to go really, really wrong.  But what if gas prices dramatically increased?  Or the power went out?  Or extreme weather hit?  Or tap water was no longer potable?  Could you still do the things that you normally do? Get to where you needed to go?  And if days turned into weeks or months, how would you adapt to the change?

Governments and communities are starting to chart plans to minimize the impact and bounce back as quickly as possible from a failure in our current system (like fuel, water, food) or a traumatic event (like extreme weather, natural disaster, or, like our neighbours to the south are always fear mongering about, a terrorist attack).  This kind of planning is called Resilience Planning.  It’s a hybrid between traditional emergency planning (that lays out the steps to take in an emergency) and sustainability planning (that is visionary long-term planning that aims to improve and balance our social, cultural, environmental and economic priorities).  Resiliency planning is about not only identifying the potential future threats and getting us ready for specific vulnerabilities we may encounter over the long-term, but also about having communities of people that are better able to face any future threat.  It’s about making sure that we’re flexible enough to handle whatever the future might throw at us by having the skills and tools available in our communities.

On the government side, some of the best examples of resilience planning that I’ve seen are coming from Australia.  And it is driven by necessity.  Australians are already facing the impacts of Climate Change in a way that Canadians still aren’t.  In Melbourne in January 2009 (their summer), record high temperatures caused electrical blackouts, rail systems shutdowns, fires that threatened lives and property, water consumption tripling while storage levels dropped to 1/3, and drops in soil moisture that wiped out part of the urban tree canopy.  Since then, a collaborative study by the City of Melbourne and Victorian Department of Transportation (their state government), talks frankly about balancing the “Australian Dream” with realities like climate change in a way that Canadians aren’t.  They recognize that the way communities are built and connected (because in this study the focus is on transportation and urban design) needs to change to prevent repeats of disasters like they faced in January 2009.  However, what they’ve been building for generations isn’t going to change overnight and a great deal of focus is on how to retrofit what they already have by developing urban corridors and productive suburbs.  While in Canada we’re starting to talk about the resilience of our communities, it lacks the same bluntness and urgency as Australia.  But at least the conversation is starting.

On the community side, a grassroots movement called Transition Towns is spreading to North America from the UK.  They are focused on building a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and economic contraction.  At the core of their movement is the belief that “if we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late; if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little; but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.”  In addition to the usual public education campaigns and partnerships with existing groups, Transition Towns form groups to look at all key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc.) and how they can adapt to a future that might be quite different from our current reality.  When it comes to resilience, they are teaching the skills that a generation or two most communities had, like growing and preserving food, making clothes, and building with local materials.  While the realities they acknowledge are more negative than a lot of us are used to hearing about, they maintain that a positive vision of the future is a necessity in the face of change.

So am I ready for the end of the world?  I don’t think so.  While I may hoard tomatoes I don’t have stores of water, firewood, guns, etc. that I’d likely need if the apocalypse ever came.  But I also don’t think the odds of a full apocalypse are likely.  Maybe it is just because I’m a hopeful person but I also think that between the baby steps we’re already taking toward resilience and amazing adaptability of humans, we’ll be mostly OK.  We might not be as comfortable as we are now and our lifestyles will have to change, but it won’t be the end of the world.

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