NOW! <em>IT'S TIME</em>

February.

Mud.

Cold mud. 

Mud everywhere. 

In central Italy we are getting the leftovers of England's floods, a little later and a little less. But we are still underwater. The ducks are ecstatic slopping about in their ever widening mud pond. But the cats have all moved inside and the chickens, dogs and donkeys won't go out. I don't remember such rain and mud in past winters. Where there are no trees, the soil is eroding on hillsides. And even where there are trees, the roots are exposed more every day. Mud and rocks are slipping onto our country roads making driving a slalom course. In the past month we have had two days with partial sun... for a few hours. The rain began in November... unseasonable rain. The kind farmers talk about (and nothing else) when we meet up. The rain jumped the banks of our streams and the river which bisects our valley. Rain overflows the drainage ditches and pours over the road, cutting deep trenches. Rain sits on the newly planted fields of grain in the plains. It is only because we are in the mountains that we are not flooded. This is climate change... happening now.

It was in graduate school where I first encountered the theories of climate change—the effects of an increase in the heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere and thus, more energy in the climate system. I was confused. The different departments saw different outcomes. The biologists were concerned that the trapped heat would cause the demise of the rainforests, resulting in the loss of major carbon sinks and spiralling global heating. The chemists worried about the release of methane in the tundra if the ground began to thaw. The botanists hoped that more CO2 in the atmosphere might mean more robust plant life. And the physicists imagined a possible new ice age if the AMOC shut down. The AMOC—the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. What? I couldn't even pronounce it much less remember what it did. 

It was all overwhelming. 

Now when I see the amazing amount of mud in the duck yard, I know that it is raining polar icecaps, that we are radically changing the weather. More fresh water (a lot more) is weakening the AMOC. It is likely the beginning of its partial collapse, predicted in many science journals for some time.

The AMOC is part of the global thermohaline (thermo: temperature, haline: salinity/salt) circulation of the ocean currents. Surface currents are influenced by the winds, their direction determined by the rotation of the earth. The tides are driven by the gravitational forces of the moon and sun. But the deeper, slower currents are the result of the amount of salt and the temperature of the water. Water that is less salty is also less dense and floats above saltier water. In the normal cycling of our ocean currents, warm, less dense surface water moves northward, warming parts of the northern hemisphere which would otherwise be colder. At the same time returning cold water moves southward, cooling as it moves. And the cycle continues. 

Along with the moisture coming off the ocean onto the continents, this continuous water exchange is essential to regulating our climate and regulating temperatures worldwide. The water in the oceans can retain a great deal of heat, which gets distributed over over the earth's surface. 

Illustration by Natalie Renier, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

But if the movement of the currents should slow down or stop, there would be radical changes in the climate. For years now the IPCC reports have been minimizing the full extent of the real threat. The rapidly melting polar icecaps are already contributing more fresh water into the Atlantic system, significantly decreasing the ocean salinity. The result being that there is less cold water sinking going on and thus less movement of the current. And the icecaps are melting more rapidly than predicited. And again, because ocean currents' circulation is based primarily on the both temperature and salinity of the water, any change is important. And the salinity is changing. As the AMOC continues to slow down there will be increasingly severe effects around the globe. We are already seeing the beginnings: the flooding, the droughts, the intense rainfall... 

A fairly consistent picture of the AMOC emerges: after a long and relatively stable period, there was an initial weakening starting in the nineteenth century, followed by a second, more rapid, decline in the mid-twentieth century, leading to the weakest state of the AMOC occurring in recent decades.

A weakened AMOC could reshape European winters, intensify Atlantic hurricanes, and accelerate sea-level rise along North America's eastern coast. Understanding how this ocean conveyor works—and what happens if it falters—offers insight into future climate risks.

Under a scenario where Earth warms 2°C over preindustrial levels, the researchers found the AMOC coming to a near standstill, along with dramatically dropping temperatures in Europe during the winter months. 

https://www.geographyrealm.com/collapse-atlantic-meridional-overturning-circulation/

But I don't need to read about the weather and hypotheses about climate change. I spent all of February and really much of November and January slopping through the mud on the farm. I think the physicists were right. I also believe that the weakening of the AMOC is speeding up... based on the colder wetter winter we are seeing in western Europe. In the valley where our winter wheat and summer tomatoes are grown, the fields have been underwater this winter. While England, France, Spain, Portugal and Northern Italy have been inundated with flooding this past year, south of us there was acute drought last summer; in Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia as well as Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Panama, and Southeast Asia. In July 2025 the United Nations reported that 90 million people face acute hunger across Eastern and Southern Africa, some areas in the region have been experiencing the worst drought ever recorded.

My neighbors, those who have lived on this land for generations, know what is happening. They don't read about it on the Internet. They read the sky, the land, they know the plants. I have a greenhouse full of early spring seedlings, alive but not growing. Even if I chose to hook up lights to run off a solar-powered battery, even if the solar batteries weren't full of slavery and environment-destroying, toxic elements, there was no sun until this week. There is nothing for the solar panels to accumulate. The answer to our ever increasing emissions warming the planet and melting the ice caps is not more of the same.

There is a simple answer. We must say enough already. The answer is to stop supporting the polluters, to stop giving our money to the tech bros so they can build themselves bunkers or space ships to escape the carnage they created. The answer is to stop supporting shipping—especially international but even from out-of-state, out of the district. Much of our food, our clothing, our machines are chock full of enslavement, destruction, and pollution. 

The simple answer is to stop growing the economy. This will not be without sacrifice and pain. But growing the economy will only guarantee that the richest 1% will have their air conditioners blasting away on their feast while the rest of us starve in the heat. 

The richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity.

The harder one, the underlying problem, is to stop growing the population. Finite resources—limited space, food, shelter, clean air and water—coupled to a growing population and a growing economy? This is insanity. In 2024, we exceeded the 1.5 C climate threshold magic number for global temperature increase above pre-industrial levels. And in 2025, seven of the nine critical earth system boundaries—the tipping points—were exceeded; Climate Change, Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Use, Biogeochemical Flows, Novel Entities, and Ocean Acidification. Our support systems are no longer in a “safe” zone. 

I know I am preaching to the choir. Life is getting challenging and is about to get more so. Clean air and clean water, enough food will be a luxury. One week ago, in the largest discharge of its kind in the nation’s history, untreated sewage began gushing into the Potomac Riverjust outside Washington D.C. What could be more symbolic? We are poisoning ourselves with our own waste. The steps we must go through to ensure our safety and health are increasingly expensive not just financially but in energy and time and anxiety. There are simpler, healthier paths we can take. 

Now.

Today.

© www.thesubversivefarmer.net March 1, 2026

Postscript...

A personal note...

I think that I wrote this, in part, to know what I really believe, what is happening now, to know what I must do. I also wrote this as a letter to my friends and family; to consider that now is time to leave their apartment buildings and homes in the city; to consider alternative ways of living, simpler, more connected to the land and the immediate community. Now, while there is still time to start over, make a significant change and, with it, a significant contribution. For me, to stay in the city and fight while trying to live off-the-grid required more stamina and faith than I had. I left and that is what I know... how to leave, to depend more on myself while I live closer to the earth... far outside of a city. I learned how to do it from my community... how to support myself and help my neighbors while protecting the land which supports me and my family. 

That is for the next time... FINDING HOME (revisited)