Jason, I’m in Black Mountain working in the trenches. 80 households stranded on High Rock Acres where I live.. I am in a leadership role during the crisis. I am simply keeping notes to write the story later. I can, however, relay anything to you for your column. Many, many stories.
Capable hikers live here. We have partially rebuilt the road. Everyone is alive. Mental health for most - ok.
I am working the story with a potential NYTimes editor. But the bigger story should live on your Substack:: how do we live forward (at least from my humble perspective.)
I have cell at home on a spotty basis. But can hike to a spot. You can tell the story better. Every time I pick up my pencil in the evening, the tears flow instead of the words.
Holy moley, Katharine. I forgot you lived at ground zero down there. Glad to hear you're holding steady and looking after each other. Please stay safe. I'm honored you'd think of me as a voice for your story. First, I'll say don't let me get in the way of the NYT piece and, in the end, these are your stories to tell. Also, I'm deep into all-day-all-night editing of a 2nd edition of my old Antarctic book, which is why I've been publishing updated older pieces this summer. My time for Field Guide pieces is limited. I only had yesterday evening to do everything for this week's essay. That said, let' s stay in touch. I want to help you in whatever way works best for you.
I’m impressed with the wherewithal of some really good humans. Every house is assigned to a street leader.
FEMA is in town but not in my area of these mountains.
I’ve been at the collapsed portion of the road since 8:00 this morning. Four guys from our neighborhood pulled off a miracle with their equipment. We got 3 loads of gravel in (amazing) and one top coat level grade coming in tomorrow morning. When the power trucks get up to Highway 9 at this elevation, we’ve given them a safe way up.
We are sharing generators. I got a hot shower yesterday —that was heavenly. And tonight neighbors who knew I had been in the trenches all day made me my first real food since the storm hit a week ago. Helicopters have delivered water and Fritos(!)
I feel that enough stories are being released from Asheville. My editor @lauren released 3 good dispatches on her Substack before she evacuated.
I will post to Notes as soon as we’ve cleaned up our infrastructure to the best of our ability without the heavy duty excavators.
You and your community are doing the good, hard work of building (literally) and sustaining community, Katharine. It sounds incredibly impressive. I hope you get your story out in a way that reminds readers not only what's possible in a crisis, but also that they might want to start planning now for when the storm reaches them. Glad you got your shower and Fritos.
Dear Katharine, my heart goes out to you and your community. Neighbors really are the best -- especially in times of unprecedented disaster. Your story puts me in mind of Rebecca Solnit's book, A Paradise Built in Hell. I often wish we could come together in such ways *before* disaster—and change the ways we live for the better. While we have the resources, proactively instead of reactively. But maybe humans are better built for aftermaths, when the reality on the ground is all too visible and palpable. Future scenarios don't seem to have the same vividness. Take care! Enjoy your Fritos.
I am haunted by the images from western NC of whole villages washing away. I was truly stunned by this as I had thought that the mature geomorphology of the Appalachians would make them a stable place and, not knowing much about it, had supposed that the area would be a place to avoid the worst ravages of climate change that are suffered at lower elevations. Now I am thinking they must have removed too many trees(?) rendering the slopes unstable, and/or simply that too many houses were built in the river valleys above some estimate of the worst flood but not really above the worst flood.
Thanks for this educational essay, beautifully written. You let me down carefully on the painful truths that I wish I didn't need to know but I do, cushioned by all the other interesting information around them.
Thank you, Leda. There's so much to be haunted by in this storm and so many other storms, droughts, heat domes, etc. And they're all facets of the same transformation of the atmosphere. I don't know anything about the specifics of land use in that area, but while deforestation and proximity to the river probably played a role, I think there simply was too much rain too quickly for the landscape to handle. I meant to include another factoid I read in David Wallace-Wells' column: 40 trillion gallons of rain fell, enough to cover all of MA in 23 ft of water.
Poisoning, pollution, acidification, depletion, extinction, drought, flooding.... All consequences of what I believe is the sole cause of the crisis the earth is in: overconsumption.
The earth can handle a lot, but billions of people living as if there were 3 or 4 more earths behind it as reserves for the future, that is too much for her.
As long as we continue to overconsume, all actions are futile. You can never take enough CO2 and methane out of the air, build wind turbines, plant trees, etc. etc.... to offset our overconsumption.
Thank you, Jacob. And yes, overconsumption is at the heart of things, though I think woven into population and technology, as the I=PAT formula illustrated long ago. Could the planet handle 8 to 10 billion hunter-gatherers? Probably not. Hypotheticals aside, for now we have to eliminate excess GHGs and transition fully to renewable energy, etc., and restore as much of the living world as we can, as just the start of the path back to a rational existence. It's taken several generations to dig this hole, and will take several (more enlightened and better governed) ones to bring us back to the light.
Yes Jason, I think the earth can handle that number of billions of hunter-gatherer-regenerative farmers. But indeed, that is theoretical drivel and irrelevant. Whining about overpopulation is irrelevant anyway, unless you are willing to shoot half the world's overconsuming population, or not wait for the overconsuming man to be sterilized by his own poison and microplastic.
You endorse the importance of overconsumption, but ignore it in your list of actions. And technology as a solution to problems caused in part by technology? I didn't think so. Moreover, renewable energy from wind and solar should go hand in hand with a decrease in energy consumption. In the short term, it probably can't even cover the increase.
Even if we stop using fossil fuels today, warming will continue for a while. And thus evaporation. Not nice, when you know that water vapor is by far the most important GHG.
Well, the population conversation is really a question of policy, i.e. fully funding voluntary family planning and education for girls/women globally, with the programs designed and run locally. The most important pop decline should come in the highest consuming nations, which is happening. And the decline in overall population is coming too, but not nearly fast enough. Full funding and universal education will accelerate it a bit, and is the right thing to do to help alleviate inequality anyway.
I was referring to technology as the T in I=PAT, the very rough equation developed decades ago: Impact = Population+Affluence+Technology. And yes, applied science is the shovel we've dug our hole with, but realistically (in terms of how much change, esp. shift toward degrowth, societies can handle) we're going to work on smarter shovels rather than setting the shovels aside. Unless (or until) the crises become so bad that people suddenly wonder whether the shovel was a good idea... Forgive the badly extended metaphor, but I'm sure you see where I'm going: we absolutely need a decrease in consumption and new political philosophy that makes that happen, but democratic societies generally shift direction at the speed of their slowest politicians.
You're certainly right about energy consumption still growing at a pace which makes the renewables revolution far less effective than it should be. And much of the growth is for incredibly foolish, unnecessary stuff (AI, cryptocurrency, etc.). Again, though, that brings us back to good governance reining in bad tech.
You mean rich countries trying desperately to turn the decline of their 'own' population into growth, meanwhile funding projects to get developing countries to slow their population growth so that the same rich countries are not flooded with young immigrants trying, also desperately, to escape poverty....
I think humanity puts its future far too much in the hands of politicians and corporations. Society also changes at the speed that pioneers and rebels have, once they reach a number large enough to serve as an example and leverage.
Thank you for this interesting exchange of thoughts Jason.
The population conversation has always been poisoned by racism, absolutely, and today's anti-immigration fanatics are no exception. But there's also the real, on-the-ground, heartfelt work being done by social activists and medical professionals in developing countries who know that voluntary family planning is absolutely beneficial to their communities, particularly women and girls.
And yes, pioneers and rebels are critical to changing policy. I'm not putting policy (much less policy makers) on a pedestal. I'm saying things have to happen at the scale of policy. How we get to better policy is, as you say, largely the result of the activists.
Thank you, Jacob. Really appreciate your level of attention to the writing here and the world more generally.
Brilliant essay Jason! 👏 Makes me think of EB White's essay about how people experienced a hurricane BEFORE there were weather forecasts. We confronted the raw POWER of weather/climate. All our technology is like a barrier against direct confrontation with the natural world and what we humans have wrought. But the coming storm will crash through that thin digital blanket and shake us all up real good. Then we'll discover what we're made of.
Thank you, Baird. Interesting point about pre-forecast disasters. Now there's no shortage of forecasts, short- and long-term, but folks mostly look a few days out or keep an eye on approaching storms. Not enough are listening to the Anthropocene forecasts...
I'm kind of mad at you for writing something so beautiful and yet so sound. Why is this piece so gorgeous? Thank you for writing it. I'll get over myself. :)
Thank you, Mary, for your kind and generous grumpiness... It's high praise. I know the feeling well when I read other writers that seem to have spoken for me in a way I haven't found yet.
I remember last spring and summer with all the rain in Maine . This year has been so dry. I think it freaked a bunch of wildflowers out and they bloomed early.
For the first time this year the deer ate all my hostas and tall phlox. These are usually safe as they are close to the road ( it’s 50 mph in front of my house)
My sister walked down to the creek, I’m not able to anymore, she said it was completely dry. This is why I believe the deer came so close to the road. I filled up some sleds I found in my barn with water and kept them full for weeks. I’m sure the deer were thirsty. ..
No as October comes there’s far more moisture around. I truly hope we have some significant water ( be it snow or rain) over this winter. I worry about my well , things we don’t think about and believe will always be there.
Beautiful writing. I always love to take a break from politics to read your work when it comes to my email.
Last year was so, so rainy, Mary. It was amazing for the wildflowers and forests but soggy in the veggie garden. Yes, the creeks are dry, and now the trees are browning as much as they're turning color for the fall. Like you, we're hoping for a wet enough winter to recharge the wells and keep the spring vegetation from being too much a fire risk. Thank you for your kind comments.
I would just mention overpopulation as the underlying cause of all of this. Too many people, too many different needs and wants, and only enough resources to go around (generously) to far fewer numbers.
This has happened to me twice now, where I've carved out some time to sit and read Jason Anthony, because I know it will be good, and you've kept me rapt for the entire column, I'm reading every single word, and my heart has clenched several times ("if you want to be a rain maker ...") and I get to the end, and there I am! I don't know why I don't get notifications on these mentions, but this is nice. I like it this way. Thanks, Jason.
Loved your inclusion of the fossilized raindrops, and linking to other writers... just brilliant. Can you hear the patter of applause, yet? I think it is building into something more...Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much, Craig. I love everything about fossilized raindrops, the overlap of transience and geological eternity. And thank you for your generous support too. Means a lot to me. Be well.
Book recommendation: There Are Rivers In the Sky by Elif Shafak. The book begins with a single raindrop. Quite the story to be reading now in Western North Carolina. Yet also: What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures by another Maine genius— Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.💧💦🩵
A compliment to you, Jason, for writing so beautifully on a topic still fresh in our minds since Helene. Burning forests creeping desertification, atmospheric rivers of horrendous destructive powers, a melting cryosphere, and rising oceans. All moderated by water, conveyed by changing winds and ocean currents, instigated and altered by rapidly rising heat. When we were all born, we couldn't dream it would be like this, happening all around us.
I'm in Yellowstone right now, the first week in October and there's not a shred of autumn snows on the myriads of high peaks, all are brown and sere. There's not been a drop of rain for weeks and the national weather service issued a high fire risk alert for today and tomorrow as unseasonable high winds are expected. Things are changing fast
Thank you, Michael. "All moderated by water," indeed. And yes, my particular timespan really has been a yardstick for the losses and changes. From the peak of the population growth rate and habitat loss to today's teetering on the brink of falling harder or beginning to heal. Dry here in Maine too, with little rain in a couple months. Leaves are curling and browning as much as turning color. Enjoy Yellowstone. Such lovely country.
Jason, I’m in Black Mountain working in the trenches. 80 households stranded on High Rock Acres where I live.. I am in a leadership role during the crisis. I am simply keeping notes to write the story later. I can, however, relay anything to you for your column. Many, many stories.
Capable hikers live here. We have partially rebuilt the road. Everyone is alive. Mental health for most - ok.
I am working the story with a potential NYTimes editor. But the bigger story should live on your Substack:: how do we live forward (at least from my humble perspective.)
I have cell at home on a spotty basis. But can hike to a spot. You can tell the story better. Every time I pick up my pencil in the evening, the tears flow instead of the words.
Holy moley, Katharine. I forgot you lived at ground zero down there. Glad to hear you're holding steady and looking after each other. Please stay safe. I'm honored you'd think of me as a voice for your story. First, I'll say don't let me get in the way of the NYT piece and, in the end, these are your stories to tell. Also, I'm deep into all-day-all-night editing of a 2nd edition of my old Antarctic book, which is why I've been publishing updated older pieces this summer. My time for Field Guide pieces is limited. I only had yesterday evening to do everything for this week's essay. That said, let' s stay in touch. I want to help you in whatever way works best for you.
Thanks, Jason.
I’m impressed with the wherewithal of some really good humans. Every house is assigned to a street leader.
FEMA is in town but not in my area of these mountains.
I’ve been at the collapsed portion of the road since 8:00 this morning. Four guys from our neighborhood pulled off a miracle with their equipment. We got 3 loads of gravel in (amazing) and one top coat level grade coming in tomorrow morning. When the power trucks get up to Highway 9 at this elevation, we’ve given them a safe way up.
We are sharing generators. I got a hot shower yesterday —that was heavenly. And tonight neighbors who knew I had been in the trenches all day made me my first real food since the storm hit a week ago. Helicopters have delivered water and Fritos(!)
I feel that enough stories are being released from Asheville. My editor @lauren released 3 good dispatches on her Substack before she evacuated.
I will post to Notes as soon as we’ve cleaned up our infrastructure to the best of our ability without the heavy duty excavators.
Thanks for being there.
I’m grateful to know you🌱🌿💚
You and your community are doing the good, hard work of building (literally) and sustaining community, Katharine. It sounds incredibly impressive. I hope you get your story out in a way that reminds readers not only what's possible in a crisis, but also that they might want to start planning now for when the storm reaches them. Glad you got your shower and Fritos.
Dear Katharine, my heart goes out to you and your community. Neighbors really are the best -- especially in times of unprecedented disaster. Your story puts me in mind of Rebecca Solnit's book, A Paradise Built in Hell. I often wish we could come together in such ways *before* disaster—and change the ways we live for the better. While we have the resources, proactively instead of reactively. But maybe humans are better built for aftermaths, when the reality on the ground is all too visible and palpable. Future scenarios don't seem to have the same vividness. Take care! Enjoy your Fritos.
I am haunted by the images from western NC of whole villages washing away. I was truly stunned by this as I had thought that the mature geomorphology of the Appalachians would make them a stable place and, not knowing much about it, had supposed that the area would be a place to avoid the worst ravages of climate change that are suffered at lower elevations. Now I am thinking they must have removed too many trees(?) rendering the slopes unstable, and/or simply that too many houses were built in the river valleys above some estimate of the worst flood but not really above the worst flood.
Thanks for this educational essay, beautifully written. You let me down carefully on the painful truths that I wish I didn't need to know but I do, cushioned by all the other interesting information around them.
Thank you, Leda. There's so much to be haunted by in this storm and so many other storms, droughts, heat domes, etc. And they're all facets of the same transformation of the atmosphere. I don't know anything about the specifics of land use in that area, but while deforestation and proximity to the river probably played a role, I think there simply was too much rain too quickly for the landscape to handle. I meant to include another factoid I read in David Wallace-Wells' column: 40 trillion gallons of rain fell, enough to cover all of MA in 23 ft of water.
Well and beautifully written, thank you Jason.
Poisoning, pollution, acidification, depletion, extinction, drought, flooding.... All consequences of what I believe is the sole cause of the crisis the earth is in: overconsumption.
The earth can handle a lot, but billions of people living as if there were 3 or 4 more earths behind it as reserves for the future, that is too much for her.
As long as we continue to overconsume, all actions are futile. You can never take enough CO2 and methane out of the air, build wind turbines, plant trees, etc. etc.... to offset our overconsumption.
Thank you, Jacob. And yes, overconsumption is at the heart of things, though I think woven into population and technology, as the I=PAT formula illustrated long ago. Could the planet handle 8 to 10 billion hunter-gatherers? Probably not. Hypotheticals aside, for now we have to eliminate excess GHGs and transition fully to renewable energy, etc., and restore as much of the living world as we can, as just the start of the path back to a rational existence. It's taken several generations to dig this hole, and will take several (more enlightened and better governed) ones to bring us back to the light.
Yes Jason, I think the earth can handle that number of billions of hunter-gatherer-regenerative farmers. But indeed, that is theoretical drivel and irrelevant. Whining about overpopulation is irrelevant anyway, unless you are willing to shoot half the world's overconsuming population, or not wait for the overconsuming man to be sterilized by his own poison and microplastic.
You endorse the importance of overconsumption, but ignore it in your list of actions. And technology as a solution to problems caused in part by technology? I didn't think so. Moreover, renewable energy from wind and solar should go hand in hand with a decrease in energy consumption. In the short term, it probably can't even cover the increase.
Even if we stop using fossil fuels today, warming will continue for a while. And thus evaporation. Not nice, when you know that water vapor is by far the most important GHG.
Well, the population conversation is really a question of policy, i.e. fully funding voluntary family planning and education for girls/women globally, with the programs designed and run locally. The most important pop decline should come in the highest consuming nations, which is happening. And the decline in overall population is coming too, but not nearly fast enough. Full funding and universal education will accelerate it a bit, and is the right thing to do to help alleviate inequality anyway.
I was referring to technology as the T in I=PAT, the very rough equation developed decades ago: Impact = Population+Affluence+Technology. And yes, applied science is the shovel we've dug our hole with, but realistically (in terms of how much change, esp. shift toward degrowth, societies can handle) we're going to work on smarter shovels rather than setting the shovels aside. Unless (or until) the crises become so bad that people suddenly wonder whether the shovel was a good idea... Forgive the badly extended metaphor, but I'm sure you see where I'm going: we absolutely need a decrease in consumption and new political philosophy that makes that happen, but democratic societies generally shift direction at the speed of their slowest politicians.
You're certainly right about energy consumption still growing at a pace which makes the renewables revolution far less effective than it should be. And much of the growth is for incredibly foolish, unnecessary stuff (AI, cryptocurrency, etc.). Again, though, that brings us back to good governance reining in bad tech.
Policy…
You mean rich countries trying desperately to turn the decline of their 'own' population into growth, meanwhile funding projects to get developing countries to slow their population growth so that the same rich countries are not flooded with young immigrants trying, also desperately, to escape poverty....
I think humanity puts its future far too much in the hands of politicians and corporations. Society also changes at the speed that pioneers and rebels have, once they reach a number large enough to serve as an example and leverage.
Thank you for this interesting exchange of thoughts Jason.
The population conversation has always been poisoned by racism, absolutely, and today's anti-immigration fanatics are no exception. But there's also the real, on-the-ground, heartfelt work being done by social activists and medical professionals in developing countries who know that voluntary family planning is absolutely beneficial to their communities, particularly women and girls.
And yes, pioneers and rebels are critical to changing policy. I'm not putting policy (much less policy makers) on a pedestal. I'm saying things have to happen at the scale of policy. How we get to better policy is, as you say, largely the result of the activists.
Thank you, Jacob. Really appreciate your level of attention to the writing here and the world more generally.
Brilliant essay Jason! 👏 Makes me think of EB White's essay about how people experienced a hurricane BEFORE there were weather forecasts. We confronted the raw POWER of weather/climate. All our technology is like a barrier against direct confrontation with the natural world and what we humans have wrought. But the coming storm will crash through that thin digital blanket and shake us all up real good. Then we'll discover what we're made of.
Thank you, Baird. Interesting point about pre-forecast disasters. Now there's no shortage of forecasts, short- and long-term, but folks mostly look a few days out or keep an eye on approaching storms. Not enough are listening to the Anthropocene forecasts...
I'm kind of mad at you for writing something so beautiful and yet so sound. Why is this piece so gorgeous? Thank you for writing it. I'll get over myself. :)
Thank you, Mary, for your kind and generous grumpiness... It's high praise. I know the feeling well when I read other writers that seem to have spoken for me in a way I haven't found yet.
I remember last spring and summer with all the rain in Maine . This year has been so dry. I think it freaked a bunch of wildflowers out and they bloomed early.
For the first time this year the deer ate all my hostas and tall phlox. These are usually safe as they are close to the road ( it’s 50 mph in front of my house)
My sister walked down to the creek, I’m not able to anymore, she said it was completely dry. This is why I believe the deer came so close to the road. I filled up some sleds I found in my barn with water and kept them full for weeks. I’m sure the deer were thirsty. ..
No as October comes there’s far more moisture around. I truly hope we have some significant water ( be it snow or rain) over this winter. I worry about my well , things we don’t think about and believe will always be there.
Beautiful writing. I always love to take a break from politics to read your work when it comes to my email.
Last year was so, so rainy, Mary. It was amazing for the wildflowers and forests but soggy in the veggie garden. Yes, the creeks are dry, and now the trees are browning as much as they're turning color for the fall. Like you, we're hoping for a wet enough winter to recharge the wells and keep the spring vegetation from being too much a fire risk. Thank you for your kind comments.
Beautiful, just beautiful.
Thank you, Stef.
I would just mention overpopulation as the underlying cause of all of this. Too many people, too many different needs and wants, and only enough resources to go around (generously) to far fewer numbers.
Agreed, Lynn. Thank you for the reminder. I've written at length about population, but it's been a while. Here's the most recent, though actually it was an updated older piece. I'm due for a new essay on the topic. https://jasonanthony.substack.com/p/24-per-second-a-million-every-five-404
This has happened to me twice now, where I've carved out some time to sit and read Jason Anthony, because I know it will be good, and you've kept me rapt for the entire column, I'm reading every single word, and my heart has clenched several times ("if you want to be a rain maker ...") and I get to the end, and there I am! I don't know why I don't get notifications on these mentions, but this is nice. I like it this way. Thanks, Jason.
Thank you, Amanda. That's high praise. I really like the work you're doing too, and am happy to highlight it when I can.
Loved your inclusion of the fossilized raindrops, and linking to other writers... just brilliant. Can you hear the patter of applause, yet? I think it is building into something more...Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much, Craig. I love everything about fossilized raindrops, the overlap of transience and geological eternity. And thank you for your generous support too. Means a lot to me. Be well.
Book recommendation: There Are Rivers In the Sky by Elif Shafak. The book begins with a single raindrop. Quite the story to be reading now in Western North Carolina. Yet also: What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures by another Maine genius— Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.💧💦🩵
A compliment to you, Jason, for writing so beautifully on a topic still fresh in our minds since Helene. Burning forests creeping desertification, atmospheric rivers of horrendous destructive powers, a melting cryosphere, and rising oceans. All moderated by water, conveyed by changing winds and ocean currents, instigated and altered by rapidly rising heat. When we were all born, we couldn't dream it would be like this, happening all around us.
I'm in Yellowstone right now, the first week in October and there's not a shred of autumn snows on the myriads of high peaks, all are brown and sere. There's not been a drop of rain for weeks and the national weather service issued a high fire risk alert for today and tomorrow as unseasonable high winds are expected. Things are changing fast
Thank you, Michael. "All moderated by water," indeed. And yes, my particular timespan really has been a yardstick for the losses and changes. From the peak of the population growth rate and habitat loss to today's teetering on the brink of falling harder or beginning to heal. Dry here in Maine too, with little rain in a couple months. Leaves are curling and browning as much as turning color. Enjoy Yellowstone. Such lovely country.