ClimateSafe Villages Model 1: The "Stay-Where-You-Are," Get Prepared and Resilient Urban or Suburban Community

Last Updated 9.29.23 Newest updates in blue.

At least initially, we believe that far more individuals will be setting up stay-where-you-are local urban, suburban, and rural "survive and thrive" preparation and resilience ClimateSafe Villages than migrating to rural climate change safer areas and creating entirely new sustainable communities, as described elsewhere on this page. We expect most rural CSVs (in the following section below) to grow directly out of and from nearby Urban CSVs where urban members want to eventually create an increased level of climate change resilience by creating a rural CSV.

Suppose you do not have the means to migrate to a safer climate change area. In that case, we strongly recommend you get with friends of similar beliefs and values in any urban or suburban area where you currently reside and create a "survive to thrive" preparation and resilience ClimateSafe village.

The stay-where-you-are local urban and suburban model is also a great first stepping stone into the many changes a person or family must make to prepare for and adapt to climate change and the other consequences we will soon face.

The preparation, adaptation, and resilience-building stay-where-you-are local model

These stay-where-you-are urban CSV communities can be located in any urban or suburban area. Its members are close enough to meet physically but usually live in separate housing.

Membership in these stay-where-you-are ClimateSafe Villages gives its members the benefit of unique "survive and thrive" knowledge, companionship, shared emergency preparation, adaptations, and resilience-building support. They also offer significantly more self and collective protection during the worst of an extended crisis. This stay-where-you-are model can also creatively incorporate many ClimateSafe Village essential values, principles, and structures.

Their culture, commercial, and legal structures in these urban, suburban, and rural models can vary widely. In addition, each location will likely have its own local projects and membership requirements.

Here is a summary of the typical steps you would take to begin acting in one of these communities after being accepted for membership.

1. You will receive getting-started informational support material from your local ClimateSafe Village leader.

2. Your new part-time role in this eco-community will depend on many factors, like your type of current housing and its location, what you do for employment, any special skills you have, your skill levels in those areas, any public roles or positions you currently have, your interests and hobbies, etc. In addition, understanding why you chose to join the eco-community and what you want to contribute will also be necessary for your fellow village members.

Based on this information, you will be given contact information for other members in your area to help you connect with them and meet, zoom call, or phone call with others in the community to get you started learning about the other members in your village. In addition, we recommend that local village leaders set up a Zoom-type group video "question and answers" session for those potential new members most interested in getting started in this ClimateSafe Village model in your area.

Regarding your local village membership, the following elements will remain true:

You will continue to live in your current housing situation.

You will continue to work in your current employment.

What happens in this CSV urban model

A major and first part of your CSV member time will be involved with assisting your CSV community's and other member's efforts to prepare for and adapt to climate change and the 11 other worsening global crises. To do that effectively, this CSV community model will find ways to support and motivate each other in executing the many parts Parts (1, 2, 3 and 4) of the Job One for Humanity Climate Emergency and Resilience-Building Plan.

The comprehensive Job One Plan has taken over a decade of research to develop and it covers everything that need to be done. While it is not everything that can be done or should be done in any of our CSV models, it is always the first thing that any CSV model must start and get done as soon as possible to protect its members from what is coming.

Here is a quick overview of the critical parts of the Job One Plan to help you improve the probability that you, your business, and your children will survive and thrive for as long and as comfortably as is possible:

1. Part One covers all of the needed emergency catastrophe and recovery preparations, including how much space or land you will need for your essential food growing needs.

2. Part Two covers the necessary lifestyle and livelihood resilience building adaptions that will be required.

3. Part Three covers all of the crucial climate change remedial actions our governments must execute now and that they should have started 60 years ago.

4. Part Four covers what our politicians must do to force our governments to finally act. And,

5. At some point, the urban/suburban CSV community must reach out and help educate local politicians and government agency officials on the city areas they must address to build full local community climate change resilience. Click here for the list of critical whole local community-level resilience-building issues that must be completed before more major climate change tipping points are crossed.

This means that either mutually as a group or through your local CSV village coordinators, you will collectively and individually decide which actions within Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Job One for Humanity Plan you want to start first, second, third, etc. Each local ClimateSafe Village will have different situations, priorities and resources; therefore, they may work on different Parts (1, 2, and 3 and 4) of the Job One for Humanity Plan in different sequences and ways.

You can also become a coordinator/leader for various village projects and efforts as you "learn your way around the eco-community.

As a community member, you will have access to all the preparedness, sustainability, resilience, and management guidance information developed by any other ClimateSafe Villages model.

There are many wise and practical actions that each local eco-community can plan, sequence in the best priority for their local situation and resources, and then enact.

Here are just a few examples of of the preparation, adaptation, and resilience-building actions that will eventually need to happen in your local stay-where-you-are local urban, suburban, or rural model

a. The local hub communities must encourage their members and local citizens to start growing organic gardens everywhere to ensure an adequate and reliable food supply. Every home or building rooftop in urban areas will need a big garden to survive the worst of what is coming. Hydroponics and aquaponics will also help build food security in urban or limited land areas. You won't be able to produce every food item you want, but if you produce a surplus in your gardens, you can trade with each other or individuals outside the ClimateSafe Village for other things you will need.

b. The local eco-community must enhance and secure its energy system against extreme climate consequences. Encouraging members to get solar and/or wind on their property is a basic step.

c. The local eco-community must begin quickly to protect its drinking water and sewage systems against intensified rain bombs, river and lake flooding, sea level rise, and other extreme climate consequences. Home or business water capture and water filtration systems are a good start.

d. Help your outside local community understand critical medical facilities, critical commodity warehouses, and other critical infrastructure and services that must be supplied and fortified against the escalating climate change and these related consequences. (Here is a new handout flyer to help you get your local politicians and leaders thinking about the rapidly approaching climate disasters that will affect many of these communities far faster than they are prepared for.)

e. There are also many other things your local stay-where-you-are local urban, suburban, or rural model can do to help get your outside the ClimateSafe Village local community prepared to deal with what is coming, including creating a plan and reserving supplies for how to fairly and humanely deal with growing numbers of destitute and desperate climate migrants (climagees) who soon will coming from the climate unsafe areas be seeking refuge in your city, suburb or rural area.

Unfortunately, with this stay-where-you-are local urban, suburban, and rural model, if you are not already in a climate-safer area, there will come a point when it will no longer be safe for your group to remain in some urban, suburban, or rural area. Every stay-where-you-are urban, suburban, and rural satellite model should consider this possibility carefully and plan for it and its timetable long in advance.

Suppose you are currently in a climate change high-risk area. Eventually, you will have to buy some fertile land as a temporary or longer-term eco-community emergency backup and "bug-out" space. In addition, this emergency backup bug-out land would also need to be pre-stocked with everything your eco-community would need to survive for months to as long as years. In addition, you would have to have the means to transport and defend everything you will need at that new eco-community bug-out location. The painful truth is that unless you are already in a climate change-safer location to begin with, at some point, you will probably be forced to move if you want to survive.

Please note that urban and suburban ClimateSafe Villages inherently may not be able to do as much food growing as rural land-based ClimateSafe Villages because the land owned by urban and suburban members is most likely not connected and contagious. But urban and suburban members can get creative and, through networking, sharing, and trading, accomplish much of the necessary climate change preparation and adaptation.

To view a fundamental social contract for this ClimateSafe Villages community model, click here.

How long does becoming climate change resilient in an urban CSV community take?

In general, if you are working part-time on the necessary emergency preparations and adaptations (described on this preparation page and this adaptation page), it will take 2 to 3 years to make your home or business in an urban CSV climate change-resilient. If you are building a rural CSV, you could easily be looking at 3 to 5 years.

If you do it full-time, it will be quicker. Many things, like using permaculture to build high-quality food-growing soil, will still take several years to complete.

Construction companies are extremely busy dealing with the housing shortage and repairing climate change damage. Many of them will put you on a waiting list for up to six months or even a year or longer before they even start your remodeling, upgrading, or construction project.

What these additional long build-out times mean is that there is a real urgency to get started on your emergency preparations and adaptations today because after we cross critical climate change tipping points from 2025-2031, things will get much worse very fast. They also will continue to worsen from 203o to about 2050, which also means emergency and adaptation supplies will steadily be harder to get. And their costs will continually rise far faster than other commodities.

One last qualifying factor, how long you will be able to stay in any CSV model, will always and ultimately be determined by your location, location location. "Location IS destiny," as Napoleon said.

You can temporarily make your home, business, or urban CSV more climate change resilient to survive longer as things get worse, but there will be a point if you are in a very high-risk area, like Phoenix, Arizona; eventually, the primary and secondary climate change consequences will become so dire you will have to migrate to survive. Please do not neglect to consider your current location or whether it is a larger urban area in planning for how much time you have left to become climate change resilient or to move to a new place and become climate change resilient there.

This time-sensitive issue does not mean you should ever panic. You have adequate preparation and adaptation time before the worst consequences occur. This time-sensitive issue only means get busy today while you also "Keep calm and carry on."

Additional land, Home, and Building Flexible Design and Purchase Options for Urban CSVs

Urban CSVs will naturally consist of many properties.

1. An urban CSV could also become a group of properties purchased near each other where one could easily ride a bike from property to property. This makes expanding an urban community much more manageable rather than building it by finding a large single piece of land as is done in the rural options. Also, if you are purchasing a group of properties near each other in an urban CSV, there are ways to pick one or more of those properties and make them more defensible at some point.

2. An urban CSV could also be a near "turn-key" land and pre-existing home and building purchase option. This is another option to carefully consider for quickly setting up urban CSV locations. This new "turn-key" flexibility involves purchasing an existing for sale or distressed old school with convent, old church/school property apartment building, old hotel or motel, mobile home park, etc. These properties can also have significant amounts of land parking etc., included with them or available nearby. They also sometimes have separate housing for staff and guests already existing.

The advantages of these "turn-key" purchases are that a group of CSV members could buy them, move in nearly immediately, start on the necessary remodeling for building the required climate change resilience, and immediately start the essential preparations and adaptations on site. The negatives might be that the remodeling costs could be so high, and the result of the remodeling could still be inadequate for longer-term climate change survival. Wisely buying one of these "turn-key" properties would require extensive pre-purchase investigation and remodeling cost estimating. However, it is still an option well worth exploring for urban CSVs. (It is conceivable that one could find such a property in an urban area that would also offer significant advantages as a possible stepping stone into developing a rural area as well.)

Additionally, If a group of people could swing the down payment on a near turn-key property, the property's value could also help collateralize a loan for the balance needed. With near "turn-key" property options, the purchasing group may find someone wealthy inside or outside the CSV group who could quickly see the possibilities and donate the needed down payment, etc.

A wealthy local individual might also get involved as a personal hedge or security sanctuary, but please note they would still need to agree to all behavioral and other regulations of that CSV. (Wealth does not provide ANY special privileges in the CSV community and vision.)

Here is a workable commercial property search service (https://www.crexi.com) that allows you to specify what kind of commercial property you are looking for and where it should be located. It will list such RV parks, mobile home parks, resorts, motels/hotels, summer camps, old monasteries, old schools with convents, or even old churches/schools.

3. As the urban group grows, and until it can buy its own food production land, it could initially build a relationship with a local organic farmer or some other local farmer for produce and food and/or the rental of some land for the community to grow food organically as well.

Because of the high land costs and strict zoning regulations, it is more likely that as people move to an area to join an urban CSV group, they will either buy homes in the city or homes on small land plots outside the city for their own homes of about 3 to 5 acres. This means that CSV rural communities will most likely grow out of Urban CSVs by evolving eventually into a group of United non-connected, non-contiguous properties as more people buy homes and land in and around an urban area and join the urban group.

4. A Stepping Stone Method of Creating a Rural or Hybrid CSV from an Urban CSV.

Once an urban CSV is running and has enough members, it can also choose to collectively purchase a small farm or suitable plot of agricultural land close enough to the urban area. Here, members can create a vast community garden capable of producing most of their food needs. If you do this, try to get a piece of land where someone can stay in an RV or tiny home and keep the small farm and gardens safe.

If the amount of land is large enough, emergency supplies could be securely stored, and tiny homes could be added. At some point, you could look at adjacent land close to the original land and purchase that land for additional homes and workspaces. You also do not have to have all the land in one contiguous piece to create a CSV rural community. Land plots that are a bike ride away from other land purchases could be purchased.

If you create this urban-rural hybrid at some point, if it was in a climate-safe location, the community could sell off the land and the working farm and purchase a larger tract of land where the whole community could reside. If your site is in a climate-safe area, you could get much more for the land and running farm than you paid. (An individual in our advisory committees provided this stepping stone method suggestion.)

4. The CSV organization is continuously explores multiple home and building design and materials options for affordable and climate change-resilient building design and affordable building or remodeling construction. By discussing and offering multiple affordable home and building design options, materials options, and construction options, including prefabricated homes and buildings (Prefabs,) which could be adapted to various CSV's different resource levels and locations, CSV can serve the rapid creation of more CSVs worldwide. Part of this exploration is to explore not only high-tech solutions for the many challenges CSVs face but also to explore low-tech solutions and what is known as Appropriate Technology solutions to every aspect of CSV design and construction. You must join ClimateSafe Villages as described below to access this information and material.

4. Buy a smaller starter piece of land. You do not have to buy or have a large piece of land to build a rural or urban CSV. All you have to do is find a way to do the next CSV action step, which may be to use any land you already have or buy a small starter lot of land much smaller than you'll eventually need. However, this smaller land option will give you the experience of getting things up and running as a group and will provide enhanced survival potential.

For example, an urban CSV might buy an empty lot in the city and turn it into a community urban garden or buy a small piece of land outside the city and start storing emergency supplies and building a more extensive garden or other needed facilities. These small lots could eventually be sold and help stepping-stone into larger lots when that particular CSV is ready to move to the next step.

**How to join an Urban CSV community model:**

1. If you have not done so already, join this "survive and thrive" ClimateSafe Village by clicking the Join link on this page. This will also start the process for you to gain access to our private CSV discussion forum, help you locate a CSV location and model option right for you, and allow you to join one of our CSV advisory committees to add your knowledge, experience, and perspective.

2. Please fill in the following survey by clicking here.

3. Learn more about us by reviewing our CSV online guide table of contents here. Be sure to read at least our CSV quick overview page here.

4. If you have questions not covered in our CSV online guide, please also check our CSV frequently asked questions FAQ here.

5. And finally, if you did not fill out the above survey, please email [email protected] to let us know:

a. which model of CSV do you want to join: the rural, urban, only virtual community or the Bellingham headquarters CSV,

b. that you want access to the private CSV group discussion forums,

c. let us know about your skills and experience, which would most apply to the CSV model you selected.

d. if you have remaining questions.

6. In your email to us, tell us that you agree to our online communication rules found here, and you agree to the principles found in our social contract found here. After we receive your email, our ClimateSafe Villages support team will get back to you within three business days or less with your next steps and possible other connections. In addition, they may ask for additional information before accepting you as a member, depending on the information you provide in your email.

7. Become a subscriber on the Job One for Humanity website by going to the Sign-in link at the top left of every page and creating a new subscriber account. Then, go to your personal profile area as a new user and fill in as much information as possible. This unique profile information will be kept confidential and will help us connect you with the right support team. The Job One website will provide the latest climate change news and alerts.

Please note: We also have set up a special online team project collaboration tool called BaseCamp for all members and CSVs. It is open to individuals actively helping to create any CSV community model.

How to get an Urban CSV model started in your local area

1. Realize you are the coordinator and leader you have been waiting for. If you do not step forward as your area's initial or temporary local coordinator leader, the local CSV you will eventually need may not happen.

2. Contact your potentially interested friends or promote to other individuals in your area who you think could be interested in the many support, knowledge, and other advantages of co-creating an urban CSV. Do not forget to look over our individual member qualities list on this page to help focus your recruiting on the most ideal initial members to target for your recruiting.

3. Set up a relaxed in-person or Zoom-based "meet and greet" for these individuals to connect and see how they interact. (If you email [email protected] and give us a week's advance notice, we can search our many thousands of Job One for Humanity subscribers for people in your local area and forward your first "meet and greet" event promotion details only to those local individuals from our email lists who also might be interested.

4. Once you have a core group of people interested in working together and supporting each other, at your next meeting, collectively decide on which actions within Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the Job One for Humanity Plan you want to start first, second, third, etc. Each local ClimateSafe Village will have different situations, priorities, and resources; therefore, they may decide to work on different Parts (1, 2, 3, and 4) of the Job One for Humanity Plan in different sequences and ways. (These Job One Plan first actions are strongly recommended for every CSV. )

5. Use what you have learned from our CSV online guide table of contents here and in our CSV frequently asked questions FAQ here to continue to run and manage your local urban CSV. Do not be afraid to be creative and flexible in finding new ways to create and motivate your local CSV to stay on course and still enjoy their lives.

6. Stay connected in the CSV private discussion forum and virtual CSV projects to get support for yourself and to network for new knowledge, tools, etc.

7. At some point, review how the detailed launch steps and other actions and policies found on the Bellingham CSV headquarters page here might help further expand the success of your local CSV.

8. To view a basic social contract for any CSV model, click here.

Please note: We also have set up a special online team project collaboration tool called BaseCamp for all CSVs to use. It is open to individuals actively helping to create any CSV community model.

Every CSV model will require learning, experimentation, tinkering, and adaptability to the local human resource quality and availability, and other local resources and conditions. No two CSVs will ever be exactly alike. Continual mutation in new localized experiments is a good thing in evolutionary terms for long-term survival capable of surviving ever-evolving conditions. Do not be afraid to bring your own ideas and style into your new CSV. Experiment, listen to the feedback, and adapt quickly.

How to finance an urban ClimateSafe Village (CSV) or your own climate change resilience-building home or business upgrades.

There are many ways to finance the often costly emergency preparations and other adaptations you will need to do, even in an urban CSV, to become individually and collectively climate change resilient and well prepared for the many intensifying climate change consequences. (Not all of the items on the list below will apply to individual home or business upgrades.)

Here are a few of them:

Use your savings.
Put a percentage of your income into this action every paycheck.
Find a wealthy individual, relative, etc. (an angel donor/angel funder) who is willing to help you get started with initial needed finances,
Get a bank loan or loans from others,
Crowdfunding,
Get a loan from the slowly growing Slow Money Movement.
Green energy efficient mortgages (There are numerous green energy efficient mortgage types offering different benefits.)
Get a government-backed loan and special tax credits. (There are such things depending on what you are planning to do.)
Form a non-profit and apply for grants,
Get a group of people together and share the costs of buying the land, building the structures, or upgrading and equipping existing structures and locations. To do this step safely and wisely, you must have clear cost and use sharing contracts and member contracts if you are in a rural or urban CSV. And if this is a collective land building purchase, you will need to have some legal/corporate structure that is capable of holding the land or buildings for the common good, like a nonprofit organization or conservation land trust. (We are currently working on creating all of the contracts and forms needed to do option six. At CSV, we believe that option six may be the fastest and most likely way to fund a new rural or urban CSV.
Some combination of one or more of the above funding options layered together as needed.

Please feel free to make additional suggestions for funding. At this time, we do not believe that turning the creation of rural or urban CSVs into any kind of profit-making investment scheme is wise. Humanity is facing the greatest existential threat to its existence and its history, and trying to profit from this with investment schemes that often go wrong or attract shady promoters is not anything that the CSV would want to be associated with.

The Importance of Wise Cooperation with and between Urban, rural, hybrid, and Virtual ClimateSafe Villages

It will be wise for urban, rural, hybrid, and virtual CimateSafe Villages to maintain good communication and intelligent cooperation with the most isolated rural villages. The reason is simple. Urban and virtual village members may eventually become unsafe in many locations worldwide from 2035-2050. This is when climate change and other global crises are predicted near peak levels, and their members may eventually have to migrate to new, safer areas.

If urban and virtual CSV members have maintained good relations with the most isolated CSVs, at the minimum, they could have plenty of duplicate emergency supplies pre-stored there when needed. They may even be able to migrate to the more isolated villages if they had prearranged such agreements and had made all of the appropriate reciprocal exchanges. (For remote villages, these cross-village financial exchanges and services may also allow them to fund themselves better and grow even quicker.)

We are facing severe challenges and hardships that humanity has never encountered before. Maintaining good relations with other ClimateSafe Villages will be essential to "hedging" the longest-term survival for many ClimateSave Villages located in urban areas, close to mass migration routes, in highly populated areas, or for online-only members.

CSV Member Safety Application Tip

The Bellingham, Washington, the new CSV headquarters member application process found here, is particularly applicable to use in reverse to help you determine if you want to join any specific ClimateSafe Village. Before joining any CSV model anywhere in the world, we strongly recommend you use the applicable member application questions found here to interview the coordinator/leaders of that particular village to find out how well and how much they have screened their current members for potential problems or issues. The quality of individuals living cooperatively in any CSV will be a major factor in that CSV's long-term survival.

You could also use the CSV frequently asked questions list or the critical topics in our online guide table of contents to ask how that village will or is handling the issues you are most concerned about because every village is slightly different and runs itself. It may or may not follow some of the values, principles, and actions of the Bellingham headquarters CSV.

It is entirely in your hands to do your proper due diligence when investigating any legally independent CSV model or location as a possible place to join or relocate. Treat this evaluation process as one of the most important decisions you will ever make because it may well be as climate change and other factors worsen.

More Potential Income/Funding Sources for the ClimateSafe Villages and Their Members

Communities that have failed most often because they did not have reliable and steady income sources. While these communities need to generate sustainable and fair exchange-based income for themselves and their members, this does not mean that the building of these new communities themselves should ever be treated as or become an investment opportunity or a property development scheme for the profit of a few early-entry individuals.

Here are just a few of the ways ClimateSafe Villages can fund or support themselves either before or once established and operational in fair exchange and community-value congruent ways:

1. Selling online educational courses on many community-related subjects and skills.

2. Selling online climate adaptation and resilience courses.

3. Selling at the eco-community on-site courses and day-long, weekend, or longer sustainability and organic gardening retreats.

4. Selling surplus organic food to the surrounding community.

5. Selling community and sustainably made crafts, art, and other products to the surrounding community.

6. Individual members running their on-site businesses, which are value-compatible with eco-community values.

7. Allowing retirees who want to live in net-zero homes within the community to contribute more significant amounts to help build or maintain the community because they may be unable to provide as much labor to help run the community.

8. Rural CSVs allow visitors to stay in their RVs for several weeks to experience CSV living. (They would have to build approved RV spaces, which could be a substantial income source. These rural CSVs could also offer organic meals to short- and longer-term community kitchen visitors.)

9. Housing leasing payments for homes, apartments, and dorm rooms constructed in rural CSVs on community-owned land.

10. Rural CSVs can lease agreed upon storage space or even vacant living spaces to urban or virtual CSV members for storage of emergency backup supplies and temporary or permanent occupancy during an emergency.

11. Community members might also develop climate change resilience-building consulting services or resilience remodeling services for the communities surrounding that CSV model.

12. Some CSV members might create small businesses to help other CSVs with their initial construction, remodeling, or food-growing operations. They would temporarily move to a new CSV location and live there while helping that CSV get started.

13. Some CSVs might create a community-owned business that could provide other products like unique greenhouses, prefab homes, vertical hydroponics kits, EMP shielding kits, dried food products capable of surviving years on a shelf, etc. These businesses would directly come from the advanced CSV Climate change and food growing knowledge base and could employ numerous community members.

14. Receiving donations from individuals who want to see our eco-community goals succeed. We are still working out our policies and possible exchanges to wisely accommodate the contributions of individuals who make considerably larger donations to get our eco-communities going, being maintained, or expanding.

We understand and value that some wealthy individuals are ethical and honorable and see their wealth as a generational responsibility to use wisely to improve and protect humanity's well-being and future.

Things currently being considered for the larger donor start-up eco-community funding and contributions are as follows:

a. If the individual eco-community is a registered non-profit educational organization, large donors can be offered the standard donation tax deduction for that country. (We anticipate these eco-communities will be registered non-profit educational organizations. Each eco-community will determine its best legal structures as appropriate.

b. Awarding large donors a week or longer for several years to live at the eco-community as a guest.

c. Allowing large donors to put their name on an eco-community structure or piece of equipment they fund.

d. Allowing large donors to join the eco-community and build a net-zero home for them and their children, but on the same terms applied to every new member.

e. We are also currently working on ways to be in fair exchange with any individuals or members who connect us to large donors and funding sources that help provide the seed finances to expedite the creation of any of the four models of eco-communities.

We can offer wealthy ethical individuals the safest place to have a home or apartment for themselves and their families as the anticipated large-scale extinction and collapse occurs. This is because they would be a part of a well-prepared eco-community with deep shared values, a commitment to mutual support and quality of life, and protection that could be relied upon, is something that money alone can never buy. These rural and hybrid eco-communities would also be located in the areas with the best survival probabilities for our current worsening global crises.

Helping to create these new eco-communities and having a home there is the ultimate insurance policy. So please click here to read about why many emergency survival plans used by the ultra-wealthy are not realistic and will likely fail.

When taking any large donations from the ultra-rich, we will carefully review their business history and past charity actions to see if they were, in general, ethical and reasonably compatible with our eco-community values and worldview. If you are fundraising for your eco-community, the wives, x-wives, children, and other relatives of an ultra-rich individual, who are also ultra-rich through divorce or inheritance, are usually better aligned with our values, worldview and can more easily pass our ethical donation review.

And finally, individuals who make large donations will be treated as any other eco-community member and be expected to participate in everyday shared community actions when they are residents in the eco-community. Great wealth or celebrity earns you no special treatment. We are evolving new social and economic systems that value merit but do not continue the economic distortions or imbalances of the past that have also contributed to our current 12 crises.

"Only the wisest, most cooperative, and best-prepared individuals, families, and businesses living and working in highly value-aligned eco-communities with a deep and common worldview, which will give them the additional needed emotional and psychological resilience (in addition to the eco-community's physical resilience) will have the best possibility of surviving the worsening 12 global crises we all now face." Lawrence Wollersheim

15. We are also exploring and open to other eco-community value-compatible income sources for members and the eco-community. One such way is for younger adults to have their parents sponsor them and their initial expenses for building their net-zero homes in these new eco-communities. This is a common practice because parents often help their children enter their first homes. It is even more critical in this case as parents typically want to see their children survive and live longer lives. Another area we are exploring is crowdfunding apps like Kick Starter.

16. If we raise enough funding, as a community, we may pre-build all net-zero homes or apartments and long-term lease them to members or exchange their leasing fees for ongoing services rendered to the eco-community. Our ideal funding situation is to buy the land, build all of the necessary eco-community infrastructure, and simultaneously build all of the net-zero homes from the initial funding.

17. All members will be obligated to regularly contribute (most likely monthly) to fair, adequate, or, where appropriate, means-based financial support for the community. These membership payments will have clear guidelines for covering the costs of community administrators and for all reasonable administrative and related community costs required to maintain their CSV community model so that it can securely and continually forward and sustain the community's well-being.

Please also note that retired individuals or other individuals who cannot continue to work productively within these eco-communities will be allowed membership on a case-by-case basis. However, their initial and monthly financial contributions to the eco-community will be substantially larger than individuals who can provide the ongoing needed services to the eco-community.

Because this section is about income sources, there is one more area to review.

Why is everything free and open on our website except the member's section?

Our organization has to pay rent for our offices, Internet charges, phone, and everyday business expenses that any business would incur. Sometimes we have to hire specialty consultants with the knowledge that no volunteer in our team has. For example, when we have to fend off hacking attempts for certain upgrades on our website, we have to hire a server security specialist.

Additionally, the information in the members-only section is information we had to spend a lot of money to obtain. It is extremely valuable migration and financial information that a standard risk assessment firm would charge businesses thousands of dollars a year to access.

We do not do that. We have a reasonable tax-deductible donation level to become a member. We even have a scholarship program for those individuals worldwide who live at the poverty level and cannot donate.

And finally, we want to serve and collaborate with reciprocal and mature individuals who know they need to support the community helping them and others. When you donate to our nonprofit organization, you tell us that you appreciate and value what we're doing and want to help us get our uncensored, valuable climate change-related information to as many people as possible.

More Potential Income and Ongoing Funding Sources for the ClimateSafe Villages and Their Members

Failed intentional communities and eco-villages did so most often because those communities did not have reliable and steady income sources for themselves or their members. Therefore, all CSVs must generate sustainable, fair exchange-based income for themselves and their members. This does not mean that building or running CSVs should ever be treated as an investment opportunity or a property development scheme for the profit of a few early-entry individuals.

Most income sources within CSVs should be co-ops or community-owned and managed except for those individually owned businesses brought to or created within the community that are sustainable, eco-friendly, and meet that community member's approval and community standards. All co-ops or community-owned businesses within the community should also experiment with the new economic models of fair exchange and merit and responsibility-based incomes.

Here are just a few of the ways ClimateSafe Villages can fund or support themselves either before or once established and operational, but always in fair exchange and community-value congruent ways.

Income for CSVs:

1. Selling online educational courses on many community-related subjects and skills.

2. Selling online climate adaptation and resilience courses.

3. Selling at the eco-community on-site courses and day-long, weekend, or longer sustainability and organic gardening retreats.

4. Selling surplus organic food to the surrounding community.

5. Selling community and sustainably made crafts, art, and other products to the surrounding community.

6. Individual members running their on-site businesses, which are value-compatible with eco-community values.

9. Housing leasing payments for homes, apartments, and dorm rooms constructed in rural CSVs on community-owned land.

10. Rural CSVs can lease agreed upon secure storage space or even vacant living spaces to urban or virtual CSV members for storage of emergency backup supplies and temporary or permanent occupancy during an emergency.

11. Community members might also develop climate change resilience-building consulting services or resilience remodeling services for the communities surrounding that CSV model.

12. Some CSV members might create small businesses to help other CSVs with their initial construction, remodeling, speciality survival equipment (solar, water capture, etc) or food-growing operations. They would temporarily move to a new CSV location and live there while helping that CSV get started.

13. Some CSVs might create a community-owned business that could provide other products like speciality survival equipment (like EMP shielding kits,) unique greenhouses, prefab homes, vertical hydroponics kits, dried food products capable of surviving years on a shelf, etc. These businesses could be driven from the advanced and always evolving CSV climate change, climate change resilience building, and food growing knowledge base, and could employ numerous community members.

14. Create a service that reviews and rates only the products that will be used in worldwide CSVs. This service could become highly-trusted because it would be executed with the integrity and thoroughness of a Consumer Reports type company.

15. Receiving donations from individuals who want to see our eco-community goals succeed. We are still working out our policies and possible exchanges to wisely accommodate the contributions of individuals who make considerably larger donations to get our eco-communities going, being maintained, or expanding.

Things currently being considered for the larger donor start-up eco-community funding and contributions are as follows:

b. Awarding large donors a week or longer for several years to live at the eco-community as a guest.

c. Allowing large donors to put their name on an eco-community structure or piece of equipment they fund.

d. Allowing large donors to join the eco-community and build a net-zero home for them and their children, but on the same terms applied to every new member.

16. We are also exploring and open to other eco-community value-compatible income sources for members and the eco-community. One such way is for younger adults to have their parents sponsor them and their initial expenses for building their net-zero homes in these new eco-communities. This is a common practice because parents often help their children enter their first homes. It is even more critical in this case as parents typically want to see their children survive and live longer lives. Another area we are exploring is crowdfunding apps like Kick Starter.

17. If we raise enough funding, as a community, we may pre-build all net-zero homes or apartments and long-term lease them to members or exchange their leasing fees for ongoing services rendered to the eco-community. Our ideal funding situation is to buy the land, build all of the necessary eco-community infrastructure, and simultaneously build all of the net-zero homes from the initial funding.

18. All members will be obligated to regularly contribute (most likely monthly) to fair, adequate, or, where appropriate, means-based financial support for the community. These membership payments will have clear guidelines for covering the costs of community administrators and for all reasonable administrative and related community costs required to maintain their CSV community model so that it can securely and continually forward and sustain the community's well-being.

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Lawrence Wollersheim published this page in Four ClimateSafe Village Models P3 2023-09-17 16:26:22 -0700