Instead of being forced to retreat from the impacts of climate change, humanity could undergo a managed retreat to Planet City, a single, purpose-built metropolis, while carbon removal takes place on a planetary scale, suggests Holly Jean Buck.

We have not evolved a vocabulary for the crisis at hand. Climate change is one feature of it, but only one.
The ecological and social crisis is much deeper. This sounds weak and vague. That is the point. In the centre of this crisis, it is hard to see its contours.
We stab at it with words: structural racism, biodiversity, inequality, habitat loss, settler-colonialism, water insecurity, capitalism, environmental injustice, patriarchy, the housing crisis, nutrient pollution, ocean acidification, primitive accumulation, and so on. Indeed, it may seem that the way to understand these things is to separate them analytically and understand the relationships between them. Engaging in this breaking-apart, diagramming and modelling of the systems is how we have learned to think. Sciences, both social and biophysical, are doing just this ? but it is not working. Another line of approach is needed.
Planet City is an endeavour for such a miasmatic crisis. One single city on earth: the boldness of the idea breaks us out of the halfway language used to sense and diagnose the crisis, and offers a new way to see the work ahead.
1. Managed retreat
During this century, millions will retreat from the places they call home.
We know what will push the...