When We Are with Alex Steffen

Will my community be able to bounce back?

Climate chaos is here. What’s the plan? Over the next couple weeks, we’re giving a short tour of the key questions in personal climate ruggedization. What are the major

What should I be worried about?

How do we ready ourselves for climate chaos? Over the next couple weeks, we’re giving you a short tour in climate preparation: Climate foresight. Discontinuity. What it

The keys to a personal climate strategy

Hey friends, This is the first episode in a new series we’re doing on the fundamentals of designing a personal climate strategy. Over the next couple weeks, we’ll discu

Do You Know What You've Lost?

Do you know how much climate chaos is costing you, now? This episode of When We Are is a quick exploration of how much loss is both a) already being incurred, and b) lar

The Hidden Climate Advantages of Being Young

Find out more about my Personal Climate Strategy Workshop here. We live in a planetary crisis that is at its very core intergenerationally unjust. The vast majority of t

The Myth of the Starting Gun and the Flat Track Fallacy

Reminder: The early-bird for the next live Personal Climate Strategy: The Basics ends on Tuesday, March 10! Sign up now for $97 (save $100). Class meets Thursday, March 1

Are you feeling disoriented? That's a good sign.

Millions of us are disoriented. In this podcast, I explore what foresight tells us about disorientation. We’ve all been raised, educated and trained to understand the w

Why do some people want you to ignore climate threats?

In this episode of When We Are, I talk about those insisting that you can’t possibly choose a safer place to weather the climate crisis, because every place is endangered

Does Climate Chaos Mean You Should Just Give Up and Wait for Collapse?

You’re probably less doomed than you think. If you spend much time trying to figure out how to ready yourself for this accelerating climate crisis, you will likely encou

The Return of Soft Denialism

Soft denialism is climate denialism that denies not the reality of climate change, but rather its importance. In this podcast, I touch on the TrumpII-era resurgence of s

Crisis Advice for Young People

In my last podcast, I laid out why our horizons of concern are so important. In particular, I talked about how having kids (or grandkids or nieces and nephews, or chosen

The Horizon of Your Concern

In this podcast, I talk about our horizons of concern. I discuss what it means to love kids who will experience the full blast of the climate crisis, decades from now. W

Climate Action is Now Harm Reduction

Hey folks, This is a bit of a longer podcast, where I unpack some of the uncomfortable realities of this present moment in the planetary crisis — and why we need a new a

Flying Blind into Chaos

The Trump gang has continued their chaos attack on America, most recently by gutting the next National Climate Assessment, including dismissing the group of scientists an

Too Far Ahead, Until It's Not.

Notes for this podcast: “Being too far ahead is the same thing as being wrong.” —James Allworth If you talk about the future, you risk having a market that's still unpr

The Hunger for Connection in Context.

Reminder: My intensive Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization begins Tuesday. Registration ends tonight at 11:59 pm Pacific time. Ready to sign up? Click the button belo

Tools for Tempestuous Times

My intensive Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization begins next week. Five, two-hour classes held via Zoom on Tuesdays and Thursdays (March 11th, 13th, 18th, 20th and 25

Hunting for Home in a Climate Crisis

In this podcast, I react to the recent New York Times piece How Can I Lower My Climate Risk When Buying a House? The piece begins by noting the rising concern people hav

The Trillion-Dollar Brittleness Bubble

Hey folks, How much will our refusal to acknowledge the climate crisis cost us? One way to start answering that question is to talk about brittleness. Brittleness is t

Letting Go of Everything We Expected

Hey folks— If you feel, right now, like you are waking up to a magnitude of upheaval you didn’t expect — if you feel really unsure about what it means and what you shoul