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I’ve noted a time or two how some sites and personalities I follow, online, prove themselves consistently, while others are much more like Terry Crowley. That is, I may read regularly but find most of the material silly, disastrously wrongheaded or just plain dull, or I may only look occasionally when I happen to remember that the site exists, and yet… eventually something always comes along that’s not only good, but so good that I never manage to completely drift away from the source.

So it is with NPR.org’s cosmology blog, 13.7.

A lot of what ends up on 13.7 is just bafflingly abstract. The same could very possibly be said of a lot of what I write, but I can understand my own digressions into angels-on-pins ephemera, at least, even if no one else can.

Every now and then, though, 13.7 and particularly Astrophysics professor Adam Frank comes up with something which manages to speak to me while still being so high-flown and unusual as to be memorably thought-provoking. Frank’s post of yesterday, “How to Save the World by Saving Yourself,” falls into this category.

As with an earlier post that I also found especially poignant, part of what makes an impression with this latest item are Frank’s reflections about what to tell students, regarding some of the “inconvenient truths” with which science confronts young people who will need to make Earth their home for another 50, 60 years or more.

A lot of what I had to teach them was not good news. As we walk through topics like population growth and its impact on planetary systems I can see them slumping in their chairs. … It’s a harsh message to hear if you are 22 and I would like to leave them with something more than a “march off the cliff.”

I think anyone, assuming he or she does not dismiss natural science in general as conspiratorial liberal propaganda, has to feel a measure of empathy toward at least some part of what Frank’s describing, here.

For my own part, I’m a little unsure where exactly I fit in, as often seems to be the case. Frank refers to this and that as “likely to become problematic in the next 50 years,” and later observes that “it may be hard to think of picking up and moving at 45, [but] at 25 you are just starting out and you have choices.”

But what if you fall right in between that, then, is left an unanswered question; I’m a few months shy of 33. As with the popular boundaries of Generations X and Y, neither proposition really fits me. I could plausibly ignore, in theory, something that’s likely to be a problem 50 years out, but then maybe it will be an issue sooner or maybe I’ll live a long time. I’m not exactly locked into a given life, but I’m not really “just starting out” any longer, either. As per usual, “I’m not old or new but middle school.” Oh well.

I think Frank leaves a rather more significant issue unaddressed, meanwhile, with his central advice about how “if you want to save the world, save yourself, first.”

This advice, of course, only adds to the heartbreaking sadness of the scenario; here’s a guy charged with educating and informing young people, and confronted with the fact that a lot of what he has to tell them is discouraging, and who yearns all the same to “leave them with something more than a ‘march off the cliff.’” To offer something encouraging.

And yet things appear to be at the point where it seems like the soundest and most important advice he can offer is: focus on preserving yourself, first, if you want to be around to help preserve the future. Man…

I can’t really argue about this, of course. As Frank points out, no one can predict the future, but no one can ever predict the future with certainty. We nonetheless, and indeed for that reason, have to make some assumptions about what is a likely possibility. And if a certain possibility is serious enough in its consequences, then reason suggests we factor the risk into our decision-making, even if there are a lot of variables involved.

So I find Frank’s suggestions reasonable enough, as far as they go.

If water resources are likely to become an issue then living in a region where water supply is already an issue may be a bad choice (sorry Las Vegas). If the loss of cheap energy is likely to become an issue then living in a region that can not support itself by growing the bulk of its own food within a few hundred mile radius may not be a good idea. If the loss of cheap energy is an issue then living in a place where personal automobiles are the only means of transport may not be a good idea either.

I think Frank leaves out one concept from all of this, however, along with its implications about “saving yourself” and the full extent to which such an attitude may be “self-centered and dangerous.”

The common thread of all Frank’s warnings about the future, after all, is basically that civilization looks likely to overshoot the capacity of those resources it can marshall to meet its demands. Fixed-supply natural resources are being mined out, natural systems are being stressed to exhaustion, and adequate substitutes won’t necessarilly be available immediately when we want them. Therefore, many things we need and want will be scarcer, and more expensive.

Frank suggests positioning oneself where important resources are likely to remain relatively plentiful and/or to be less necessary, which again is reasonable as far as it goes. But there’s another solution to coping with a future in which stuff is more expensive.

Money.

I can see why Frank leaves this out if he is, understandably, sensitive about offering even relatively “soft” suggestions that his students give thought to self-preservation. But “have lots of money” is clearly among the possible directions in which his suggestions point. After all, if you want tea or coffee or chocolate, you can move to an equatorial region… or like most of us you can pay to have tea or coffee or chocolate shipped to you. If these things become scarce, this option remains valid; you just have to be able to pay more.

The only way in which “have more money” would be an invalid solution to the problems Frank warns about, after all, would be a Mad Max style breakdown of infrastructures, in which disruption of trade networks severely restricts importation of many goods. I don’t get the impression that Frank is really suggesting this as a realistic threat, and for what it’s worth, even if it were, that still wouldn’t completely remove “get lots of money” from the table.

Acquiring lots of money before such a collapse could allow more advantageous positioning when the collapse came. Even if one is an outright survivalist, after all, there remains a trade-off between the risks of being away from one’s remote cabin and arsenal when collapse occurs, vs the potential to buy a nicer cabin and larger arsenal by remaining amidst urban civilization just a bit longer and earning money from opportunities that probably aren’t available in the wilds of Montana.

And the same trade-offs are implied by, though not acknowledged in, Frank’s suggestions. For example, per his various specific pieces of advice, northern Ohio would be a good choice of where to live. Lots of fresh water above and below. Relatively-low population density thanks to decades of out-migration, so food probably need not be shipped in over vast distances simply to meet basic caloric requirements. And yet a number of communities, like Lakewood, are old enough that they are relatively “walkable” and one can accomplish a lot without a drop of petroleum.

And yet… at the same time, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, et al. are still aging, shrinking rust-belt cities some ways from where the big economic growth is, or is likely to be found for some time to come. Might not one conceivably better prepare for tomorrow by pursuing greater economic opportunities now, even if that means moving to a much-larger city with a “foodshed” of considerably beyond a few hundred miles, or a fast-growing city in the southwest where water is scarce?

If nothing else it’s a possibility which, I think, can’t be denied.

Mind you, I get that Frank isn’t just speaking to self-interest and ignoring money because it seems too blatant. He could probably make the point a bit more effectively, but he’s really speaking to a kind of “enlightened self-interest” in order to answer young people’s questions about “how can they save the world.” His suggestions offer self-preservation solutions from an individual perspective, but they also at least point toward world-preservation solutions if lots of people adopt that particular path to self-preservation, at least if one retains some measure of hope and optimism. As Frank suggests toward the end of his post, “There may very well be a new form of culture that needs to be built and [by making choices like these] they will be the ones building it.”

Though of course, building a new world might be furthered by some extra money, too, in case it doesn’t simply emerge naturally from people arranging themselves in the more-sustainable settings of the old world…

Ultimately, I just don’t think there’s any way of completely avoiding the corrupting presence of filthy lucre, at least as a possibility for consideration, no matter how high-minded one may be.

…but then, for what it’s worth, these sorts of consideration are never that far from my mind anyway. As a university professor, Adam Frank may, at any rate, be settled into a sort of comfortable sufficiency when it comes to money, as I was in my salaried days. Even on $26,000/year I was able to live comfortably-enough within my means, and still save some, that I didn’t even bother budgeting; on a regular basis at least I didn’t really concern myself with the value of marginal increases in income. They weren’t necessary and weren’t really on the table, short of changing jobs, which was a large issue involving all sorts of other considerations.

Nowadays that’s different. I have choices, which is nice, but of course they all come with tradeoffs. I have opportunities to earn more money but, for the time being, they mostly involve giving up varying degrees of freedom, above and beyond simply the time involved in doing additional work. And I prefer to prioritize freedom above material prosperity, once I have enough; the problem of course is establishing “enough.”

And really I’m not sure that anyone can establish what “enough” means, with so much upheaval and uncertainty likely to remain our lot for very possibly the remainder of my life. I think I would stop worrying about having enough if I had two or three million, let alone 30 or 40, but nothing like any of this is a realistic prospect. And I don’t want to just accept every opportunity to maximize my income because, even assuming that I wouldn’t revolt, hey: the future might be okay. Or I might die early. Either way, what a waste of some or all of my limited years.

From this perspective, I suppose, the self-preservation measures which Frank chose to suggest could well be considered practical as well as altruistic. When you’re “just starting out” after all, unless for some reason you really have your heart set on Phoenix or L.A. or New York, e.g., thinking about sustainability in choosing a place to live is arguably a pretty simple, one-time choice which leaves intact a good portion of one’s near-infinite choices afterward, while still amounting to at least some degree of “insurance” toward the future. Whereas choosing to maximize one’s income tends to close off a lot of possibilities on an ongoing basis.

Of course, the thing about leaving lots of choices open, about holding on to a lot of freedom, is that the options and the questions therefore never really go away.