The word deep is chosen to contrast with mainstream adaptation to climate impacts and calls to examine the fundamental reasons why we landed in this mess. Unlike the growing prepper movement that prioritizes personal survival at all costs, Deep Adaptation calls for adaptive responses that spring from solidarity with all life, which requires an expanded sense of self and kinship. The various authors take different stances on the likelihood of societal collapse, but their differences do not preclude them from discussing the implications and challenging readers to rethink what is most important to them, and what can be done to protect what they most value. The premise of the book is that the impending breakdown of industrial consumer societies is now “potential, probable or inevitable” and should not be ignored out of fear. The paper went viral, downloaded more than a million times since its publication, and is now the basis of a multi-authored book edited by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read titled Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos (Polity Press, 2021). The paper suggested that humanity needs to prepare for near-term societal collapse, by which Bendell means “an uneven ending of industrial consumer modes of sustenance, shelter, health, security, pleasure, identity and meaning” due to climate change. In 2018 an academic paper titled “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy,” by sustainability professor Jem Bendell, considered this scenario. We look away, but it may not be long before many more of us are trapped in similar circumstances. Meanwhile, in parts of the world often overlooked by the Western media, people are struggling to survive famine, war, and other calamities linked to the drastically changing climate.

This is the disheartening, passive hope we are meant to hold onto, requiring nothing more from us than to be good consumers and cast the right vote. Others assure us that we can adapt to rising sea levels, drought, crop failures, disease, wildfires, and increasingly powerful storms by building higher seawalls, cloud seeding, and other experimental technological fixes, all while maintaining the lifestyles to which we are accustomed, under the paradigm of continual economic growth. Friedman, writing for the New York Times in November 2021, still claims that we have tools “that are as big and powerful as Mother Nature-Father Profit and New Tech” to set us back on the right track. In the aftermath of COP26, it is easy to see we will most likely fail to limit global warming to 1.5℃, or even a catastrophic 2℃, yet we continue to live as though we will somehow avert the consequences. Gokyo Lakes, Khumjung, Nepal / Photo by Kalle Kortelainen / Unsplash

Deep Adaptation by Jem Bendell