Google Koyaanisqatsi, and the 1st thing it shows you is the critically acclaimed 1982 American non-narrative documentary film directed and produced by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke.

The Hopi word koyaanisqatsi breaks down into koyaanis (meaning chaotic, corrupted, or depraved) and qatsi (meaning life or existence), translating literally to “chaotic life” or a state of “life out of balance. Most people who talk about Koyaanisqatsi know little of its origins and even less about the Hopi: their life before colonisation, how they have been brutalised by colonisation, dispossessed, and imprisoned repeatedly. Like most indigenous people, they have endured forced integration as 2nd class citizens, racism, forced re-education and misidentification as a different cultural group entirely. From the 1940s through the 1980s, extensive uranium mining took place on Indigenous lands in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico to fuel the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Nearly 30 million tons of uranium were mined on the reservation from 1944 to 1986 (EPA).

“More than 1,000 open-pit and underground uranium mines on the reservation are abandoned, unreclaimed, and highly radioactive. Some 600 dwellings on Navajo tribal lands are contaminated with radiation. Former uranium mining and milling districts of the Navajo Reservation suffer from cancer and leukaemia clusters and birth defects.” https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/nuclear-war-uranium-mining-and-nuclear-tests-indigenous

The Gourd of Ashes

Traditional Hopi teachings reference a prophetic vision of a “gourd of ashes” falling from the skies, which elders like Thomas Banyacya interpreted as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as subsequent nuclear testing. The world’s great democracies have a legacy of exposing indigenous people to radiation and contaminating the water. The Hopi are a culture that farms black corn in the desert, deeply connected to the land through living close to it, their ceremonies, and prophecies.

Prophecy for the Hopi is not the same as it is for Europeans. There are no Prophets. Prophecy is a story that can only be told within a community and only told by those authorised to speak it.

There is not one Hopi; these are a people divided by colonialism and industrialism. Some embrace modernity while others continue to reject it, refusing to send their children to school, and it has caused tension between the communities and, in many cases, increased isolation. Archaeological evidence indicates the Hopi ritual spaces are the Kivas, subterranean communal prayer chambers; they have seen some rather disturbing scenarios. Many times they simply do not wish to share these visions with the outside world. Considering the history of exploitation and genocide of Native Americans in general, this is understandable.

The Gourd of Ashes could as easily be nuclear armageddon as it could be climate change, but more to the point, it could also represent their own genocide.

New Age Fraud Prophecies

The Blue Star Kachina prophecy is largely a modern fabrication and New Age distortion rather than an authentic Hopi tradition. The distortion starts with exploitation and fabrication. Frank Waters: The white author who published The Book of the Hopi in 1963. Critics and historians argue he heavily reinterpreted, romanticised, or outright invented portions of the mythology to fit Western apocalyptic frameworks. Waters used postdiction or vaticinium ex eventu, using historical fact to create a flowery narrative based on known history.

The New Age has a habit of pilferage, exploitation, postdiction and flowery narratives. The 1987 Harmonic Convergence. The world’s first synchronised global peace meditation, which took place on August 16–17, 1987, and coincided with a rare planetary alignment. Conceived by artist and author José Argüelles, the event aimed to shift human consciousness from conflict to cooperation and usher in a new age of universal peace. Many people converged on sites sacred to the Hopi, without their permission. Argüelles interpreted Mesoamerican (Mayan and Aztec) calendars to mean the date marked the end of 22 specific cycles and the start of a 25-year countdown toward the end of the Mayan calendar cycle in 2012. I vaguely remember this as an insignificant moment. Spiritual seekers converged on Hopi lands and grafted modern UFO, starseed, and end-times beliefs onto indigenous folklore.

During the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, 1000s of people descended on the Sacred Mesas of the Hopi and left their own offerings of crystals, Buddhas, and other trinkets; this again was regarded as an affront by the Hopi. Of course, the internet has played its essential role in perpetuating this nonsense and continues to do so. Robert Morning Sky, in his Terra Papers, added pseudo-historical alien narratives, which tribal researchers and watchdogs like New Age Fraud have debunked as complete fabrications.

Indigenous Perspectives on the New Age

Hopi elders have repeatedly stated that outsider doomsday predictions misrepresent their teachings, which focus on living in balance (qatsi) rather than predicting exact cosmic calendar dates or destructive finales. What is clear from the Hopi who have been loyal to their original covenant (traditional teachings, but also like a contract with the land). The Red and Blue Kachinas are white fabrications, exploitative and not rooted in any Hopi Traditions and teachings.  “Robert Morning Sky, along with David Icke, Zecharia Sitchin, and Erich Von Daniken, are the creators of the world’s biggest money-grabbing fraud within ufology. They are all really wealthy men, and they have made millions off lying to people and brainwashing them with lies. This is the sad reality of ufology.” https://ufologyexposed.blogspot.com/2013/03/debunking-terra-papers-by-robert.html

The indigenous experience of white exploitation continues today. The New Age has morphed into a whole new era of exploitation and theft: The Neoshaman, or Urban Shaman, will claim lineage, tradition and permission, irrespective of whether any is given or not. They lay claim to prophecy, while seeing prophecy through a monolithic Judeo-Christian lens. Few realise that the Literary and Academic works by Mircea Eliade and the highly influential (though later controversial) books of Carlos Castaneda popularised the archetype of the shaman as a figure of ultimate wisdom, as did Michael Harner. Castaneda later admitted Don Juan was a fabrication. Harner invited Castaneda to speak at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, starting a tradition which would continue today.

The internet is a central tool of the neoshaman. YouTube is for podcasting neoshamans; here they can tell you We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Hopi Prophecy. “The prophecy resonates with the idea that the time for personal transformation and collective action is now. The Hopi Elders encourage individuals to let go of fear and resistance, embrace change, and be active participants in shaping a more positive and harmonious future.” https://www.mairahorta.com/blog/we-are-the-ones-we-have-been-waiting-for-the-hopi-prophecy

“We are the ones we have been waiting for” has nothing to do with the Hopi; instead, it was the words of poet June Jordan in 1978, popularised by author Alice Walker, and was famously used by Barack Obama to mean people must create their own change. Treating it as a divine prophecy or selling assets based on it is a common form of spiritual fraud. The line from a black American female poet, shamelessly taken by a white new ager and falsely attributed, when its history is far more interesting.

“The poem was called the “Passion“. The occasion was a commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who presented themselves as a wall of protest against apartheid. That quote is often taken out of context but has become a clarion call for a generation of Millennials. Quoted by President Barack Obama: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

There’s something very distasteful about white New Agers and Neoshamans’ exploitation of the Black civil rights movement, but it’s also unsurprising; after all, they seem happy to exploit everyone else whose voices are suppressed. Colonialism and the colonial mentality are the brainworm of industrial predatory capitalism; the personal work which none of these neoshamans does: breaking their addiction to wealth, money and selling spiritual teachings, while telling us they despise capitalism.

They learn this from their teachers who have charged them handsomely. To follow a formulaic process:

• Go on a weekend or a couple of weeks course, after which you are a shamanic healer (empathy not required)
• Buy or Make (birth) a drum (the hoop will be made from machined wood), the hide industrially processed (tanned)
• Go on courses to make other paraphernalia
• Start teaching

Koyaanisqatsi

The word Koyaanisqatsi comes from the Hopi language. It is a compound noun that literally translates to “chaotic life” or “life out of balance”

• Koyaanis–: A bound prefix meaning “corrupted” or “chaotic”.
• Qatsi: A root word meaning “life” or “existence”

A life out of balance is a life disconnected from nature: Anthropologist Michael Harner did nothing to help restore that balance. He was probably unaware of its existence. Harner claimed connecting humans to nature was through the extraction of what he described as universal, cross-cultural shamanic techniques, which he labelled Core Shamanism: the use of simple repetitive sound, like a drum, to enter non-ordinary reality. He claimed that this practice re-established an experiential, direct bond with the living earth and its spiritual ecology without requiring a dogmatic religion. Harner observed the Amazonian indians and only saw their rituals and their narcotic concoctions. After a year in the Amazon, his only takeaway was that their ceremonies put food on the table.

Harner’s work has spawned several generations of ego-maniacs who think their drums connect them to nature, who refuse to spend more than a few hours outside and who think that the skills which put food on the table are dystopian. Harner is not solely to blame, though I am sure his influence is evident in Embercombe where bushcraft is ritualised in the service of ceremony.

Koyaanis: The chaos or corruption stems from Industrial capitalism. The predatory nature of capitalism is expressed by those within it who don’t know any better and those who do know better, but choose to use it because it serves them well. The Neoshaman who professes that they don’t know anyone whom the current system serves from their privately owned smallholding. It serves them well. They speak with a forked tongue. They follow the Hopi neologism of Powaqqatsi (coined by filmmaker Godfrey Reggio for his 1988 film); it translates to “parasitic way of life,” or “a life that feeds off others”.

A life or existence out of balance is surely humans disconnected from nature and some humans’ refusal to learn the skills that indigenous people most want to teach us.

A life or existence out of balance is surely humans disconnected from nature and some humans’ refusal to learn the skills that indigenous people most want to teach us. The Hopi grew Black corn in the desert where there was next to no rain. They didn’t use a stick to plant a few inches down; they dug down until they found the moist soil 12-18inches down and buried a handful of corn in the moist sand. The corn, beans and squash would grow in a tight group with beans and squash, sheltering each other from the wind. This process of planting became a metaphor for the simple subsistence life. The Hopi rejected modern technology: they reject war. They went to prison for refusing to fight in America’s wars.

The Neoshaman with Nature blindness and who refuses to do more to connect with nature than sit under a tree and ask it what it wants is lazy, especially when they are taking your money and gaslighting you about capitalism and their claim to be an environmentalist while telling you it’s ok to fly and live a high-carbon life. It’s called running a scam.

The UK Climate has changed abruptly and irreversibly. The heatwave of 1976 is repeatedly cited as a benchmark for UK heatwaves; it’s not. Last year, 2025, is the new benchmark for severe heatwaves, and in April 2027, 2026 will be the benchmark against which we compare future heatwaves. The trend becomes more and more obvious when we observe 38 years of abrupt climate change and acceleration:

• 1988 Summer in the UK was cool, wet, and dull, featuring an exceptionally grim and cold July alongside an unsettled August
• 1989 Summer in the UK was exceptionally warm, remarkably sunny, and largely dry.
• 1990 Summer in the UK is famous for an extreme heatwave that broke an 80-year national temperature record, alongside a very warm May start and a sunny, dry July
• 1991 Summer in the UK was a two-part season, featuring a very cold, wet June followed by a warm, sunny, and dry late summer
• 1992 Summer started very warm and dry, particularly with a hot June, but turned wet, unsettled, and closer to average temperatures as July and August progressed
• 1993 Summer in the UK was cool, unsettled, and mostly dry in August, marked by a peak temperature of only 25.5°C and a notable mid-summer cold spell starting around July 9
• 1994 Summer in the UK was warm, dry, and unusually thundery, featuring a fine June, a very hot and dry July with temperatures reaching 34°C, and a more unsettled August.
• 1995 Summer in the UK was exceptionally hot, dry, and sunny, ranking as one of the warmest and driest summers in British observational history
• 1996 Summer in the UK was generally dry, sunny, and warm, featuring an early June heatwave, below-average rainfall through July, and above-average daytime temperatures in August
• 1997 Summer in the UK was an extreme and mixed season featuring an exceptionally wet June and a record-warm, humid August
• 1998 summer in the UK was a classic westerly, unsettled season featuring dull and wet conditions in June and July, followed by a sunnier and drier August
• 1999 Summer in the UK was a mixed season featuring a poor June, a superb and very warm July, and a wet, thundery August
• 2000 Summer in the UK was mostly unsettled, cool, and mixed, featuring a brief June heatwave, a cool and cloudy July, and a near-average August
• 2001 Summer in the UK was generally warm, average, and thundery, featuring warm spells in the south, a cool middle of July, and active storms later in August
• 2002 Summer in the UK was mixed, featuring a wet and dull start, warm mid-summer temperatures, and late-season heatwaves. Overall temperatures and rainfall were close to average, though sunshine levels were lower than normal in many areas.
• 2003 in the UK was exceptionally hot, dry, and record-breaking, highlighted by a historic August heatwave that set a new all-time national temperature record
• 2004 Summer in the UK was exceptionally wet, cool, and unsettled, going down in meteorological history as the wettest summer in England and Wales for nearly 50 years since 1956
• 2005 Summer in the UK was generally warm and mixed, featuring a notable mid-summer hot spell, brief June heat, and unsettled.
• 2006 Summer: July was the warmest calendar month on record over much of the UK, though not in south-west England, the south Midlands, south and west Wales, western and northern Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Some places in eastern England exceeded the previous record by more than 1degC
• 2007 Summer: The UK was the wettest on record, marked by severe floods, a displaced jet stream, and heavy downpours. A total of 362.1 mm of rain fell across the UK during the three summer months, breaking long-standing records
• 2008 Summer in the UK was widely remembered as a cold, wet, and miserable washout, characterised by continuous heavy rainfall, below-average sunshine, and disruptive flooding
• 2009 Summer in the UK was a warmer-than-average yet notoriously wet and unsettled season, famously failing its early prediction for a “barbecue summer“
• 2010 Summer in the UK was a season of contrasting extremes, featuring a warm start in June and early July, followed by a wet and cool August. Overall mean temperatures were slightly above average.
• 2011 Summer in the UK was the coolest for nearly two decades (since 1993), featuring an average temperature of 13.6 °C, changeable and wet conditions, and below-average sunshine
• 2012 Summer in the UK was exceptionally wet, cool, and dull, marked by heavy downpours, flash floods, and a dramatic shift from early-year drought concerns
• 2013 Summer in the UK was warm, sunny, and notable for a long mid-July heatwave. The season featured a mean temperature of 15.2°C (0.8°C above average), high pressure systems, and dry conditions
• 2014 Summer in the UK featured a tale of two halves, remembered for a warm, dry start in June and July followed by a remarkably cool, wet August
• 2015 Summer in the UK was generally cool, wet, and unsettled, featuring below-average temperatures, above-average rainfall, and a brief, extreme July heatwave
• 2016 Summer in the UK featured warmer and wetter than average overall, featuring a wet June, a brief mid-summer heatwave, and a hot late-August finish
• 2017 Summer in the UK was warmer and wetter than average, featuring a warm June, a stormy and unsettled July, and a cooler-than-average August. According to the Met Office, the season overall was a damp mix with higher overall average temperatures
• 2018 Summer in the UK featured one of the joint hottest, driest, and sunniest on record
• 2019 Summer in the UK featured unusually warm and wet conditions, featuring record-breaking heat alongside heavy rainfall and severe downpours.
• 2020 Summer in the UK featured warmer, wetter, and duller than average overall, featuring a notable record-breaking heatwave in August and a peak temperature of 37.8°C at Heathrow Airport on July 31
• 2021 Summer in the UK featured a distinct regional divide, with warm, sunny conditions in the northwest and dull, wet weather in the southeast. Key highlights included a notable July heatwave, record-high temperatures in Northern Ireland, and Storm Evert
• 2022 Summer in the UK featured its most extreme heatwave on record. For the first time in UK history, temperatures exceeded 40°C, with a new record of 40.3°C recorded in Coningsby, Lincolnshire. According to the Met Office, over 34 locations across the UK broke the previous national record of 38.7°C, set in 2019.
• 2023 Summer in the UK featured a tale of extreme contrasts, featuring the hottest June on record followed by an unsettled, wet July and August, according to the Met Office. Overall, it ranked as the eighth warmest meteorological summer on record for the UK with a mean temperature of 15.4°C (0.8°C above average), alongside higher-than-average rainfall
• 2024 Summer in the UK featured mean temperatures below average, near-average rainfall with regional variation, and short-lived warm spells
• 2025 Summer in the UK featured the warmest on record for the UK, driven by persistent high-pressure systems, warm surrounding seas, and four distinct heatwaves. According to the Met Office, the mean temperature reached 16.10°C (1.51°C above average), surpassing the previous record set in 2018
• 2026 Summer in the UK featured During summer 2026, England experienced 2 notable heat events, one in May and the other in June, both of which were exceptional for different reasons. The May heat event occurred unusually early in the season, with record-breaking temperatures following a period of unseasonably cool weather. The June event was characterised by its intensity and formed part of a broader period of sustained hot weather across Europe

Sources: MET Office & UK Health Security Agency

The characteristic feature of Global Warming for the UK has been an observable 10-year rise in temperatures from 2016 to 2026.

UK heatwave-related mortality rate 2016- 2026; before this period, there were no statistics for heat mortality. This is not due to a lack of counting; it was due to a lack of heat-related mortality. The reality of climate change is that the UK weather has a novel way of killing the ignorant and the vulnerable.

• During the summer of 2016 saw 3 Level 3 heatwave alerts issued by the Met Office. This resulted in a total estimate of 908 excess deaths over the summer 2016 period.
• During the summer of 2017, England recorded an estimated 778 excess deaths
• During the hot summer of 2018, Public Health England recorded an estimated 863 excess deaths among people aged 65 and over
• The total estimated mortality associated with heatwaves in England in 2020 was 2556; the highest burden in any year since the introduction of the Heatwave Plan for England
• During the summer 2021 heat-health alerting period in England, there were an estimated 1,634 cumulative all-cause excess deaths across two distinct heat episodes
• Although the new figures are not finalised, they are already approaching the annual record of 2985 heat associated deaths reported by the UKHSA in 2022
• UKHSA estimated 2,295 heat-associated deaths during the whole of summer 2023
• There were 1,311 excess heat-related deaths during summer 2024
• UKHSA estimate 1,504 excess deaths observed in summer 2025
• Although final figures are not in 2026 has been the deadliest on record: UKHSA heat mortality monitoring methodology, an estimated 2,877

Most climate deniers will say, “What about winter mortality?

Winter Mortality figures far exceed summer mortality at the moment; nobody is suggesting that they don’t; however, what is clear is that age, poor housing, poverty, fuel poverty and poor insulation contribute to winter mortality. Remember the same people who deny climate change and ask what about winter mortality will also vote for Reform, a party with no policies for the most vulnerable members of our society.

Winter mortality rates are currently falling, as summer rates increase. Poverty, poor housing, substandard insulation, homes built for a cooler climate, and ignorance about heat/humidity risk are now factors that affect who survives heatwaves now and in the future. As long as the media continues to show pictures of beaches and people in the sun with ice-creams, people will fail to understand that excessive heat and humidity are killers.

• During the 2015/16 winter period in England and Wales, there were an estimated 24,300 excess winter deaths
• In England and Wales, the winter of 2016 to 2017 saw an estimated 34,300 winter deaths
• During the severe winter of 2017 to 2018 (featuring the “Beast from the East” cold snap), England and Wales recorded an estimated 50,100 excess winter deaths
• There were 23,200 excess winter deaths in England and Wales during the 2018–2019 winter, with an estimated 5,665 of those deaths linked specifically to cold housing conditions
• An estimated 28,300 excess winter deaths occurred in England and Wales during the 2019–2020 winter period, reflecting cold-weather, seasonal illness, and housing factors
• During the winter of 2020–2021, the Office for National Statistics recorded an estimated 60,760 to 63,000 excess winter deaths in England and Wales. The vast majority of these deaths were driven by the COVID-19 pandemic rather than low temperatures directly, while models attribute around 14,502 of those excess deaths specifically to living in cold, damp housing
• Data for 2021-2022 is not available
• An estimated 3,963 to 5,533 deaths in England were attributed to extreme cold periods during the winter of 2022 to 2023, while direct deaths from hypothermia or excessive natural cold remain in the single digits annually
• An estimated 2,544 cold-associated deaths occurred in England across three cold weather episodes between November 2024 and January 2025, according to data published by the UKHSA
• An estimated 2,544 deaths in England were associated with cold weather across three specific cold episodes between November 2024 and January 2025, according to the inaugural Cold Mortality Monitoring Report published by the UK Health Security Agency. Of these, 1,448 deaths were directly linked to cold temperatures, while 1,095 deaths involved overlapping influenza circulation

What is evident from the winter mortality figures is that poor housing, poverty, substandard insulation and age are major vulnerabilities to cold. The same is true of extreme heat.

New data on heat and humidity vulnerability indicates that 35°C is not a realistic human survival threshold. “Recent projections suggest that large geographical areas will soon experience heat and humidity exceeding limits for human thermoregulation. The survivability limits modelled in that research were based on laboratory studies suggesting that humans cannot effectively thermoregulate in wet bulb temperatures (T_wb) above 26 to 31°C, values considerably lower than the widely publicised theoretical threshold of 35°C.”

“There is mounting concern that climate change may soon render large areas of the planet uninhabitable (1). Recent research suggests that, even at 1.5 °C of global average warming, certain regions (primarily in the Global South) will occasionally see conditions so hot and humid that they breach the limits of human survivability. Growing recognition of the thinning safety margin between experienced heat extremes and the limits of human heat tolerance has motivated the incorporation of data on thermoregulation and other physiological impacts into weather and climate models. The coming years will see such models contributing to the development of health-centric warming projections and adaptation efforts for protecting at-risk populations.”

 “In 2023, Vecellio et al argued that the true limit for thermoregulatory compensability likely occurs at 26 to 31 °C T_wb. In contrast to the theoretical 35 °C T_wb threshold, Vecellio et al. based their assessments on estimated empirical limits derived from laboratory studies. Under current planetary warming, T_wb exceeding empirical limits will be experienced in large areas of the globe by 2100, mostly in the Global South. Incorporating these limits into climate modelling resulted in an ~4,100-fold greater elevation in projected uncompensable heat stress with 2 °C global warming compared to the 35 °C T_wb threshold.” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12002229/

Heat stress will be the most likely driver of human migration in the future

“A phenomenon which kills indiscriminately is a driver of human migration. In a country of 1.4 billion people where at least half of the labour force works outdoors and only 10% come home to air conditioning, heat is more than a discomfort. It’s a threat to the economy, livelihoods, and health.” https://www.dw.com/en/heat-extreme-weather-heath-climate-change-economy/a-73036205

The question is, will the UK’s increasingly deadly heatwaves drive a new human migration from Britain to northern Europe, and will they be as unwelcome as some people want to make immigrants to this country?

Solarpunk is utopian and relies on industrial capitalism

Punk has never been well known for great analysis of Industrial Society. Punk is rebellion repackaged, absorbed into capitalism through music and fashion (how else do you capture youth disaffection?) Punk is a style rather than a social commentary on society. But if it were a commentary on society, it would be one of elitist fashion houses like Lloyd Johnson’s Modern Outfitters on the King’s Road in Chelsea. Chelsea is not somewhere I associate with working-class revolutionaries, or Lloyd Johnson’s couture. Johnson and other King’s Road Designers made retro fashion chic. Johnson’s sale of “vintage” clothes mixed with his own designs, along with the iconic Johnson Boots. ” I was selling mohair jumpers, plastic sandals and peg trousers to the soul boys and Bowie fans such as Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol.” (Guardian)

In the late 70/early 80s, I went to a private school with the children of bankers, diplomats and hedge fund owners. Clothing & especially Lloyd Johnson Boots from Johnson’s Modern Outfitters, was de rigueur among the children of the nouveau riche. Punk may have been adopted as a 2 fingered salute to authority in the mid 80s, but its roots were in the heavily bankrolled rock and roll fashion pushed out of Chelsea. Today, Lloyd Johnson’s badge-covered leather jackets are still sought after by bankers on their mid-life crisis Harley-Davidsons sporting 69 Club patches, looking for that James Dean, rebel look, even though they have spent their entire lives conforming to growth, productivity, profit and voting Tory.

Working-class youth redefined punk to be rebellion without direction, Anarchist symbolism coupled with the idea of smashing the system (Rebels without a clue). Punk was rebellion strictly within the confines and nihilism of capitalism.

Solar Punk is Aesthetic Over Action

Solarpunk assumes that Punk was revolutionary rebellion; it confuses actual Anarchist rebellion with capitalism’s fashionista Anarchism. Anarchist politics challenges every aspect of imposed social stratification and gender stereotyping through negotiated action and participation. Solar Punk is unclear about what Punk means; it assumes a shared definition. Smashing the system is not a solution; it’s not democratic, and it doesn’t solve any social problems in society. The Punk subculture is rightly angry, rebellious and challenges power, but offers no alternative other than nihilistic destruction. The aesthetic of undirected anger and rebellion is attractive because it is exploitable, and this is what worries me when people with a poor understanding of revolutionary rebellion, while pushing their own made-up belief system, say, “I agree with solar punk” at the same time as believing “we can leave our children a world we can be proud of” as bush fires become the new normal for Britain.

Solarpunk often presents an idyllic, harmonious world where social and political problems are hand-waved away, making it feel more like a lifestyle mood board than a counterculture. Solarpunk is portrayed in alternative media like Resilience as a hopeful view of the future: Radical Hope

Radical Hope? I owned a solar energy/ alternative building company in the early 2000s. We did some of the earliest external insulation jobs on 1930s 9-inch-thick brick-walled houses built before cavity walls were a thing. Adding 100mm of insulation to the outside of a building isn’t just a case of glueing it on. On the gable end, the roof needed to be extended to prevent water ingress into the new thicker wall. We used revolutionary recycled-glass insulation materials for subterranean insulation beneath the damp-proof course. We installed photovoltaics and solar thermal systems. None of these technologies or materials could have been manufactured without fossil fuels.

Above: Author’s installations of external wall insulation and renewable energy systems in Oxfordshire

Earth Ship Colonies in New Mexico combine zero-carbon construction with radical reuse of other waste materials like bottles. Many of these constructions combine Gaudi-esque architecture; the inspiration of using bottles and dirt as construction materials takes advantage of the bottle as an insulator. Earth ships’ primary construction material is car tyres, one of industrial capitalism’s most difficult-to-dispose-of waste materials. Earth Ships are self-contained biomes recycling water, growing food and providing living spaces. The Earth Ship is a Passiv-Haus technology; it’s a real, effective solution for a local situation or possibly even for our current predicament, but it still requires land ownership, and land ownership is privileged.

https://www.newmexico.org/blog/post/an-earthship-voyage

The Problem With Solarpunk

“I hate solarpunk because it’s a sickly sweet lie we tell ourselves, wrapped in a cosy aesthetic. It’s the pipe dream of smug pseudointellectual Emilies and Emils: the kind of people who repeat that Ursula K Le Guin quote about capitalism and the divine right of kings before giving all of their attention to massive social media companies, the kind of people who will tell you that “you are not immune to propaganda” but prove incapable of straying from carbon-copied media-approved right-think when you probe them on any given issue. Ultimately, solarpunk has no more substance than the naive aphorism “a better world is possible”. https://medium.com/@riosam6/the-problem-with-solar-punk-4476d1f187f7

We barely grasp the seriousness of our predicament. When someone tries to use the argument “I agree with Solarpunk” and they tick all the boxes in the above paragraph, including quoting Ursula K Le Guin’s quote about capitalism and the divine right of kings without attribution, but worse than that, they fail to grasp the difference between Monarchy and capitalism: Le Guins National Book Awards speech quote—“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings“—is a mismatch in historical mechanics. A monarchy is an enforced political hierarchy that can be toppled by a sudden shift in sovereign power, whereas capitalism is a decentralised, adaptive network of voluntary exchange and distributed incentives that is much harder to dislodge or replace by collective decree. The Market system absorbs critique, commodifies resistance (including anti-capitalist art), and evolves new digital or global forms, whereas the divine right of kings was rigid and brittle against the rise of republicanism, industrialisation and Marxism. Paul Kingsnorth’s observation that the Green movement had been absorbed by capitalism: I was taken in by it for a while; I thought renewable energy technologies were the solution; they can be, but not as a replacement for fossil fuels, but as a learning process of degrowth and the construction of passive systems for comfort.

Ultimately, solarpunk has no more substance than the naive aphorism “a better world is possible“

Le Guin argued that resistance begins in art; Kingsnorth’s observations on capitalism play into how capitalism easily packages, streams, and sells counter-cultural writing and revolutionary aesthetics back to consumers as profitable commodities. Parroting Le Guin, even though she is wrong, seems to be a bourgeois pastime. Resistance historically begins with oppression, not art; art is a byproduct, a propaganda tool. Artists and writers benefiting from capitalism and telling us they “don’t know anyone who thinks the current system is useful or working for them“. You are not oppressed if you own a small holding, horses, and run a paying members cult.

Solarpunk is attractive to those who have done well out of capitalism and fancy themselves as radicals.

Solarpunk is prepackaged utopia; without class struggle, it lacks the messiness of revolution. Those of us who remember Pure Genius, the Wandsworth Eco Village remember a negotiated society, working together and eating communally. We also remember the fights, first aid, and the drug addicts who descended on the site and were kicked out a week later. Revolution is messy, and we are forced to make uncomfortable decisions to protect the integrity of the whole. We kicked some of the Druids out of the Gotan Diggers Community on the Newbury Bypass protest because their behaviour became increasingly unacceptable (You’d be amazed at how wearing an old sheet robe massages some people’s egos). The fact is that Solarpunk lacks the messy aspect of revolution. Gial Bradbrook, talking about collapse and the looming food crisis, says, “we won’t turn anyone away”. I have worked in the homeless community and on acute mental health wards: Revolutionaries don’t have the resources to solve society’s problems. I blame ideas like Solarpunk for making revolutionary change look easy. Extinction Rebellions’ few weeks of community and rebellion in central London are not the same as living long-term on protest camps in the 1990s. I am not by any stretch of the imagination suggesting that what we did in the 1990s changed much, apart from those who took part. It did force the Tories to secretly shelve the road-building program. But more importantly, it forced people who might never have chosen to live together or cooperate to negotiate a cooperative society to meet a common enemy.

What I dislike about solarpunk is that we can use art to lie about the present and the future. The plants in Solarpunk aren’t wilting in the heat of another heatwave. Solarpunk isn’t feeding 8 billion people; it isn’t stopping the death of 3000 people in the UK or 20,000 people across Europe dying from that same heat. There’s no drought in Solarpunk. As quickly as it becomes popular, the facts of physics put it out of date as the ecological crisis deepens.

Solarpunk is the world we could have been proud to leave to the next generation if we had stopped using fossil fuels in the 1970s.

The Fast-moving wildfire on RSPB Site Dunwich Heath has forced holidaymakers and locals to evacuate. Some were given less than a minute to grab what they could and leave. Many locals have stepped in to help. People are naturally prone to show solidarity, mutual aid, and natural generosity to strangers in need. This breaks the stereotype of the bunker prepper. A local chef cooked breakfast for everyone!

3000 heat-related deaths in May and June, over 20,000 across Europe

Preppers who are not addressing climate change and deny that the extreme heat is driven by climate change are now more irrelevant in any discussions about preparedness than they have ever been.

“Interim heat mortality monitoring report, England: May and June 2026

During the May and June 2026 heat events:

• There were an estimated total of 2,877 heat-associated deaths
• An estimated 753 heat-associated deaths occurred during the May heat episode
• An estimated 2,124 heat-associated deaths occurred during the June heat episode
• The mortality burden is already close to the highest annual totals previously recorded by UKHSA”

The mortality burden is already close to the highest annual totals previously recorded by UKHSA

During summer 2026, England experienced 2 notable heat events, one in May and the other in June, both of which were exceptional for different reasons. The May heat event occurred unusually early in the season, with record-breaking temperatures following a period of unseasonably cool weather. The June event was characterised by its intensity and formed part of a broader period of sustained hot weather across Europe. Given the public health significance of these events and the considerable interest from policymakers, partners, and the public, UKHSA has produced this interim report to provide an early assessment of heat-associated mortality. Such early assessments will only be undertaken following extraordinary periods of heat and would not normally be produced for routine heat events.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/interim-heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-may-and-june-2026/interim-heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-may-and-june-2026#what-you-need-to-know-about-this-report

Drought spreads across Wales, South East and South West England, and the Midlands.

Farmers are now predicting a collapse of agriculture

Anthropogenic climate change-driven agricultural collapse is now underway in the UK.

This is a family evacuation bag. Every member of the family should have one. This is NOT a Bug Out Bag (BOB) or a Get Home Bag (GHB). This is an emergency evacuation bag. If you are told to leave home immediately, or if you decide to leave home, this is what your family takes.

XReadiness is nonsense. I have wasted enough time reviewing it. Ignore it; it will get you killed.

Your ready-to-go (RTG) bag can be made now and kept close to the door of the home. It should contain:

Personal clothes for 3 days. No Cammo, just normal clothes, including a woolen jumper. Adult and Child

1-litre empty metal single-wall water bottle. (Adult and Child Bag)

Pack containing passport and other important ID documents, paper prescriptions, birth certificates, and other essential documents. (Adult bags)

Spare phone charger & cables (Adults)

USB rechargeable torch

Microfibre Towel

Several small hand fans or rechargeable fans (Adult bags)

New sponge bag with new toiletries (Adult & Child)

Prescription Medication, with the paper prescription (Adults only)

£1-200 in cash in small denominations (1s,5s & 10s) in a body belt (Adults only)

Snacks – High protein, low sugar, sweet and savoury (All bags)

Metal bowl, cup, knife, spoon, and fork (All Bags) Having your own cutlery and utensils reduces the chances of picking up stomach upsets from communal utensils (experience from years of living in protest camps)

First aid kit in 1 bag to the competence of the 1st aider (See below) (Adult)

Spare toothbrushes – to give to people who don’t have them (generosity goes a long way in a crisis)

Cuddly toy and blanket (Adult and child)

Books, cards, small carryable board games: Start using these as entertainment now instead of devices. (Adult and child)

Sharpie Permanent markers: During a disaster, when there may be a risk of family separation, write people’s names on their bodies and limbs.

Basic Family First Aid Kit. Do a recognised 1st aid course and MH first aid course.

Sterile Gloves x 5 pairs

10x Face Masks, If you are trained & fit-tested for respirator masks, include the version appropriate to you (10x).

Resus face shield /pocket mask

Assorted Waterproof plasters

Cotton Triangular Sling

Finger bandage and applicator

Sterile Dressing: Mepore dressings, Small, & Medium

Sterile Guaze, wound low adhesion dressings, Tube bandages

1 x Large wound dressings

scissors, tweezers, nail clippers.

Alcohol gel

Steripen or Puritabs water sterilisation kit.

If you know how to use these dressings, include them: Steri-Strips, Indadine, Manuka Honey & Jellonet.

You only head for the wilderness if you know how to live off the land and have done it before; you won’t need a list from me to tell you what to take.

Remember to fill the water bottles before you leave and grab the medication you are currently using

Originally Published in November 2023

Judging from Recent Outbursts it Would Appear We Can Extend That To Some NeoShamans too. A Culture of Abuse, Bullying and Ridicule is What These People Operate To Maintain Their Status Quo.

At Least the Climate Denying Preppers Dont Feel They Need To Make Stuff Up, Unlike Some Shamanic Practitioners

Imagine Survival & Prepping Forums where survival skills are discussed, but climate change and any type of climate-related existential threat can’t be discussed because it’s too triggering for the climate deniers. F Bönhoeffer had a lot to say about stupid people (PDF Download). His theory of stupidity was written while in Prison in Nazi Germany in 1943. He observed & questioned how a nation of poets & thinkers degenerated into a nation of cowards and criminals.  What he observed not only shaped his era but is also alarmingly present today:

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.“

End Times Fascism

Anthropogenic climate change is a disaster of our own making, and the people who might have the skills needed to survive are so stupid that, to maintain their denial status, they need to create a culture of thuggery on forums and discussion groups to maintain their ignorant status. They dominate these forums while also making a living from selling disinformation through their YouTube channel membership programs. They, and in this I include the earth spirituality grifters. They spread false hope and misinformation about our predicament or attack anyone who disagrees with them.

End Times Fascism is the extreme that billionaires like Musk want to maintain their wealth. They will bend their knee to Trump rather than solving world hunger. The YouTube Far Right grifters love Trump and fantasize about being allowed to be ICE agents, the masked thugs of Trump’s Gestapo.

“Far- Right, we’re not Far-Right, we’re Just Right.” But the fact is they are Neo-Nazis, supporting another Billionaire. These prepper grifters have nothing to teach; some of them are pilfering other people’s content.

These Grifters have nothing to teach us. They are no different from scammers phishing.

Welcome to The Wonderful World of Prepping, Bushcraft, Far-Right Politics, & Climate Denial

https://bushcraftuk.com/community/threads/climate-change-survival.160597/

And this isn’t the only one. Climate denial in these forums is managed through a culture of silencing through bullying. 

Not all survivalists are climate deniers, but the sceptics who ignore the science are probably going to struggle more when things get bad.

They’d rather shoot the messenger..

What people think & science, as we all know, are 2 different things. Here we are at 1.7C, the world is on fire nd the UKs new climate is drought from April to October.

You can show a person a Bear, but if they think it’s cuddly, there’s nothing you can do.

September 2023, Its 2026 and in excess of 22,000 people have died in Europe frome Heat exposure.

Yes, yes, scepticism is fine if you have all the data. 30/07/2026 British Government Declares a drought across Southern England

And Now We Are Living in a Disaster!

1.5°C was predicted to happen in 2025 in one of these conversations, again, crossed sooner than expected.

Climate change: Banned subject in most survival forums because as admins have said its too triggering, it causes too many arguments and animosity. We need to just accept some people will die from intransigence and stupidity and they dont need to be climate deniers.

Self-Styled Survivalists who refuse to address existential risks are hobby campers.

Preparedness isnt about post collapse hunting and gathering its about community resilience for people who dont have the luxury of owning land and a small holding on a Welsh Hillsides.

Link to all my content: https://linktr.ee/SolidarityPrepper

The Post-AMOC Collapse Toilet: It will be deep into the unsurvivable collapse of this civilisation when the national wastewater and sewage infrastructure collapses. But localised flooding/ power outages could cause system failures too. Pre-built composting Toilets offer a solution.

This is much safer than pooping in a bag and keeping it for later disposal.

This dry sanitation solution works if you are off-grid. But most importantly, it can only be implemented if your home is well above any flood risk zone. Don’t build a compost toilet where it can get flooded. You may become liable for contaminating the floodwater. 

Composting toilets are the safest solution for disposing of your faeces and your pets’ faeces.

The above compost toilets are a rotating 4-cubicle set on a 2.5 x 3.5 m footprint. The composting box includes rat-proofing. 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen to make compost: Human faeces, straw, sawdust, and a small amount of urine are about right to manufacture a soil conditioner from your waste and kitchen Scraps

I haven’t seen a single UK prepper video about compost toilets. I’m guessing when SHTF, pun intended, they will be shitting in plastic bags and storing it for later. This will be a major attraction for rats and potentially spread disease. A properly made compost toilet box is rat-proofed with chicken wire.

In June 2026

“Across Europe, he estimated there were 20,390 deaths in total. France was the worst (5,210 deaths), followed by Germany (4,543), Spain (3,163), and Italy (2,709).

“It emphasises the degree to which Europe and many other places are still very vulnerable to heat. We knew it was coming and yet it is still quite dangerous,” Callahan said.

More than 850 people in Britain died because of last week’s heatwave, researchers have estimated, as the Met Office confirmed England had its hottest June on record.” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/more-than-20000-deaths-europe-linked-record-breaking-june-vaughan-7ieze

“Climate change added between 3-4°C to maximum temperatures and is estimated to be responsible for about 42% of the deaths across both heatwaves

More than 2,700 people are thought to have died from heat-related causes during the May and June heatwaves in England and Wales. Of those, it’s estimated that 42% died as a result of the extra heat caused by human-induced warming.” Author: Met Office08:44 (UTC+1) on Mon 13 Jul 2026,

Climate Change Is Getting Deadlier, and the Deadliest Aspect Is That It Is Being Ignored By People Who Think They Are Prepared.

Most Preppers will proudly show you their Israeli Army field dressing kits, but not the advanced Israeli Army Wet Bulb Tables.

Heat and humidity are a deadly combination and major contributors to why people die from heat in what seem to be relatively cool conditions. 26C could seem harmless enough until the atmospheric moisture saturation reaches a point where the atmosphere can no longer absorb moisture. At this point, human sweat stops evaporating, and the body’s core temperature starts to rise. Not a single prepping channel carries vital life-saving information on surviving climate-driven heatwaves.

If there are any human stories in the future, they will be about what we did today to improve our chances of survival—not what we said.

I first saw soil fires during a heatwave in 1996 it an area of cleared woodland on the route of the Newbury bypass after the trees had been cleared. The last of the trees had been cut and were being burned in great mounds. The dry pine needle litter on the forest floor, exposed to the sun and wind, rapidly lost moisture, and then the massive fires in which the trees were burned spread underground and continued to burn long after the trees had burned.

Many Fires in British Columbia have burned through the winter underground, moving from burned areas to unburned areas. These “Zombie Fires” are insulated by surrounding soil and smoulder in the low-oxygen environment.

In the future, we need to be closely monitoring the landscape, reintroducing management to clear overgrowth, coppicing at scale to capture carbon, and improving flood defenses. Landowners need to be responsible as well as the government. Stewardship of the land needs to be more than words and exclusion. Nature connection needs to run deeper than sitting under a tree and asking what it wants. We already know what nature needs from us. We need to do it.

Across France and Spain, there are nearly 500,000 internal climate refugees from wildfires. These unprecedented human migrations are inherently destabilising and require fast-acting localised management and the encouragement of state-supported mutual aid.

Can we learn about collapse preparedness by looking at the collapse of previous civilisations? In spite of what Rupert Read, inventor of Thrutopia, and Jem Bendell, Author of Deep Adaptation, think, I am inclined to suggest that neither takes into consideration that from 1.5-2C the climate and planet go through phase change, which will drive the collapse of agriculture and, in turn, famines. This is an internationally interdependent global civilisation. The populations of this global civilisation have never been more disconnected from nature and, therefore, each other.

There is little comparison between the Global Boiling-driven collapse of this global civilisation and that of historical civilisation collapses. Read seems very keen to talk about the collapse of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. The collapse of the Roman Empire was not driven by climate change or catastrophic loss of agriculture. People continued to eat, farm, and the climate was stable. The Goldilocks climate niche for human flourishing was going to remain intact for at least the next 1500 years.

We Are Not Learning Anything While We Think We Can Continue Agriculture As Usual

At no point does anyone suggest that agriculture will collapse. They raise the subject of Göbekli Tepe, suggesting that Agriculture went back further, or that it was older, or that it was taken up and then abandoned. At this point, I should draw your attention to the pinned post on this blog about what solidarity prepping is, its not the Solidarity Prepping I want you to look at but the section on polychronic time. To understand our ancestral Neolithic farmers we need to understand that they like the North American Indigenous people hunted and gathered and farmed. While we continue to think Monochronically we cannot grasp that places like Gobekli Tepe, show us the megalithic cultures did not need to be sedantry. The Gobekli Tepe discovery overturns the assumption that megalithic peoples had to be sedantry to build megalithic structures.

Will Self completely grasps that AI is evil, While Helena Norberg -Hodge is taken in by AI and here is another pundit happy to use planet boiling tech.

Jem Bendel addressess that environmentalists dont really talk about collapse. Rupert Read has found a variety of ways of not talking collapse by talking about thisngs like “human flourishing”, “Flourishing Future” and “Thrutopia” and skirting around the issue by saying things like “this civilisation is finished” and going on to sugest that perhaps we can “avoid collapse”.

Climate Activists Don’t #TalkCollapse Enough, Damn Right!

They talk briefly about mass casualties and somehow manage to avoid the subject of loss of the Goldilocks climate niche for agriculture and Wet Bulb Temperatures, soon to be the biggest climate related killer. Our Agriculture is already in decline due climate and fertiliser shortages.

“The June 2026 heat wave was the most extreme heat event ever experienced in Europe. Using previously developed heat-mortality response functions, I calculate that June 22-28 saw 20,390 heat-related deaths across Europe. This result highlights the accelerating threat of mass heat mortality events in Europe despite previous adaptations to heat.” Leon Simons, Linked In, https://zenodo.org/records/21083733

Transformative and Strategic Adaptation are for business as usual, there is nothing there for ordinary people. Rupert Read has been careful not to talk about preparedness, and his side-kick Amanda Scott, Thrutopian novelist has had her beating stick out, making up nonsense tropes about preparedness. For some reason these people need to dominiate the conversation, in spite of having nothing constructive to say.

The one thing which is clear is that not only do these “climate thought-leaders” refuse to #talkcollapse they will also find ways of excluding and ridiculing those who do and who have more idea about individual and community adaptation than they do. We are going to go extinct from heat, water scarcity and starvation, but preparedness can make the slide down easier and more equitable.

The title of this Post is a direct qoute from here: https://bsky.app/profile/endoftheworldparty.bsky.social/post/3mrpqi3lkns2f