Dean’s Substack

I Caused the Climate Crisis

Dean — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:18:03 GMT

I watched An Inconvenient Truth in school. I read The World Without Us. I went on class field trips to recycling centers. No one can blame my upbringing. I knew, all along, the right thing to do. It was not some form of temporary insanity. I am in complete control of my greater faculties and executive function. I am, by all outward appearances, a normal upstanding citizen with a nice family and many quality friendships.

Perhaps you could say that I am the last person you would suspect of such a crime. But the hard truth, the irrefutable truth, is that I did it.

I caused the climate crisis.

I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry doesn’t quite cover it. It seems pedantic at this point to hand wring over intent. There’s a part of me that still desperately wants you to think I’m good, like a good person underneath it all.

I guess that’s my human instinct. To stand in the rubble of my own wreckage with a sense of innocence.

A childhood room torn to pieces over a game. Ants spilling out of the footsized hole in their roof as an eight year old version of me tilts his head to the side in curiosity. A pile of broken bottles in the garage. Maybe I just wanted to see what would happen. I never meant for it to end this way.

In August of 2016 I was the head chef of a small Italian restaurant. This is the sort of uninspiring position that dangerously combines a little bit of authority and perceived power with a lack of real creative fulfillment that allows mini demagogues to form, petit bourgeoisie megalomaniac control freaks who lash out against others in order to feel some sort of agency over their uninspiring lives. Ant hill kickers.

I was an ant hill kicker.

It was a hot summer, particularly hot, but it seems like that had been happening more and more lately. A disturbing trend, but of course, there was still time. I came in to work to find a giant stack of cardboard and #10 cans stacked at the back door, the flies already beginning to surround them. I swung open the door and demanded to know the meaning of this.

My prep cooks, terrified by my domineering presence and incredible arm strength for a guy of my size and stature, cowered at the question.

“Why are all the boxes stacked up here?” I demanded once again.

The lead prep cook, Carl, struggled to choke out a response. “The recycling bin is full. Chef.” His eyes fell after he uttered the word Chef.

“Throw them in the trash dumpster…” I said. Ominously.

My prep cooks. Shocked. Confused. Sad? Scared. Their eyes darted back and forth. They looked at each other. Struggling to comprehend.

“But Chef…” Carl said, “they’re. They’re recyclable.”

My eyes narrowed. My brow furrowed. My voice cracked. “Throw them. In. The. Trash dumpster.”

I knew. Even back then, I knew the repercussions of my actions. I decided in that moment that the slow and painful destruction of modern civilization was a fair trade to make sure we didn’t get a bunch of flies coming in through the back door. Plus, I mean, frankly it’s just so bad for my mental health to see a big pile of trash every time I walk through the door.

That is how I destroyed the world at the age of 21. I’ve done a lot of growing up since then. It’s actually so crazy that a 21 year old had that kind of responsibility on his shoulders in the first place. But I’m not here to hand wring over intent. I’m here to accept personal responsibility and change myself for the better.

Driven by rapid economic expansion, hyperdependency on fossil fuels, and unchecked corporatism (20 companies make up over 30% of global carbon emissions), the global carbon emission has quadrupled from 10 billion tons to 40 billion tons annually in the past 60 years. And people like me had a responsibility to do our part in reducing those emissions. And I failed.

Now we face a new challenge. Local ecological destruction caused by extreme resource drain and resource contamination by massive AI data centers.

This threat intensified by unpredictable weather patterns caused by climate change (again, huge my bad).

The Colorado River is drying up. Puerto Rico is locked in an extreme water shortage. Communities across the United States are fighting to keep data centers away from their local water sources. Experts warn that the rapid expansion of data centers will put an insurmountable strain on available energy resources, leading to wide spread energy shortages in the not-so-distant future.

Every website is AI now. Google is AI. Social media is AI.

All Trails the app that I use to keep myself from getting lost while I wander through the wilderness and behold, misty eyed and full of wonder, the majestic beauty of the natural world, has integrated an automatic AI summary of every hike.

This is just what we see. We don’t see the AI agents running algorithmic corporate work flows (a pastiche of words that has no meaning). We don’t see the sprawling personal data profiles that companies compile on all their customers or the AI agents that sort those profiles into usable information, like desperation scores.

And I’m scared. Because I know that we have a personal responsibility to resist using AI. I know, from first hand experience, what will happen if any of us choose to shirk that personal responsibility. But it seems like no one else understands the seriousness of the situation.

I ask my mom a question about mortgages and she reports back an answer from Claude. A friend sends me her itinerary and preps me beforehand by saying, “I used chatGPT to make it; I was just really pressed on time and I don’t know anyone in the area.” A local comedian puts up a flyer for a free show with all the tell tale signs of an AI generated image (completely devoid of artistic merit, flooded with unnecessary information arranged like a medical infographic brochure, causes the eyes to roll unwillingly backwards and go temporarily blind) and the good people of our community boycott the free show. These people have never heard of personal responsibility.

A coworker records a meeting and sends a generated summary of the discussion. Ant hill kickers, I think. You’re fucking killing us.

gas costs $5/gallon now.

Dean — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 18:41:13 GMT

Don’t you remember the smell of smoke? Last month, the entire city stayed home, as the air filled with wispy grey haze, proof of some nearby wild fire, the smell of burnt pine clinging to our clothes and our hair. I drove to work with the windows down, squinting my eyes and breathing in the taste of charcoal. I’ve always loved the smell of fire, the way it stays with you, long after it’s extinguished. Don’t you remember the smell of smoke? It was burnt plastic. Burnt plastic and broken glass, boarded up windows. For one summer, just one single summer, the fear bubbled into anger. Of course things haven’t gotten better since then. For one summer, we weren’t afraid of losing our jobs– they were already gone. And the city went ablaze. The streets were lined with tall green aliens trucks filled with masked men. I drove home at night, carrying a piece of paper, which validated my right to exist– I had a job. I was returning home from work. The only thing that could grant me the permission to be out past curfew. I drove past the trucks and they didn’t stop me and I didn’t wave and neither did they and I sat on my porch at night and wondered if I would get fired if I showed up to work with pepper sprayed eyes. I sat on the porch all night and listened – trying to decipher the sounds through the fireworks. Why were there always fireworks? I was waiting for an explosion, I was waiting for a bomb to go off, I was waiting to hear the screams. I scrolled through the mugshots– looking for friends. Don’t you remember the true smell of smoke? It clings to more than your clothes. You wear the weight of it throughout the day. I sweat into a cloth mask and watched flames shoot up out of a metal pan and wondered where my friends were. That unemployment check never came for me. I kept punching in. I kept punching in. I kept punching in. Of course things have only gotten worse. We know now what happens if we stop punching in. In Spring of 2020, a gallon of unleaded cost one dollar fifty three cents and men with cameras, with pressed slacks and pale skin, stopped people in the street to ask them– why would you burn your own neighborhood? Can’t you smell it? The smoke, the flood, the rising tide. They traded our world for gasoline and ask why we burn it.

I don’t know how to name this feeling.

Dean — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:20:42 GMT

Charlotte

In 2010 in Charlotte they made it illegal to be a teenager anymore. Anyways, that’s what we told each other as we found delight in going to the places we did not belong. In the park at 3am where we played ninja and ran from the cops, there was a stone wall that cut across a stream and we sat with our legs dangling over the side and recited poetry from tumblr and made fun of it. In the middle of the night golf course we scrawled esoteric phrases in the sand traps. Phrases like “you are not alone” and “love is affirmation.” I imagined the middle aged suits shaking their heads at our teen antics and I left my cigarette butts behind to taunt them. We stowed away in the back seats of our older siblings’ cars on nights when the broken curfew was the smallest crime we would commit.

Jenny

Jenny the donkey is stowed away in a smaller pen sectioned off from the animal corral. Her caretaker tells me she has to be held there until she learns to let the humans get close to her. For her own good. Maggie, who has acquiesced herself to human touch, stands outside the pen and kicks the gate with her hoof. In the middle of the night I sit with Jenny in silence and she stares at me from 10 feet away. Occasionally getting close enough to sniff my fingers which hold nothing of value to her and then backing away dramatically. She has permanently blood stained tear streams where the flies attack her face.

Pisgah

On a trail run I’ve done countless times I take 25 minutes to run to the top, a good time for me but not my best. I pause at the top to catch my breath. I shake my head at a pair of initials carved into a rock. There is a storm cloud in the distance and I think it is beautiful. It does not bother me. I have plenty of time. It should take me 15 minutes to run down, 20 if I’m being really careful. I am alone until a man I passed on the trail makes his way to the top and says something to me which I do not hear. I take one earbud out and he repeats himself, “what a view” he says in a half forced tone that makes me think he is not thinking about the view.

Good

I have a plastic pocket knife that belonged to an ex girlfriend and I don’t really remember how exactly it came into my possession and it is cheap and doesn’t work very well at opening boxes and I don’t like it very much and I keep meaning to replace it but it is less effort to use it anyway and be annoyed that it doesn’t work very well at opening boxes and so most days that is what I do. And anyway when I am standing in a house filled with items and objects and things and stuff that I’ve accumulated over multiple years, all the items and things and stuff and objects that make up a communion, trying to decide which objects to bring with me and what stuff to leave behind, I feel a sickly generosity in every item left unpacked, I want you to keep these things, as if I wouldn’t prefer to leave it all behind and start fresh wherever I go next as if I want anything that won’t fit into the trunk of my car and anyways when we are sorting through the evidence of our life and taping up the last box, no one is thinking about the cheap plastic pocket knife that doesn’t work very well at opening boxes and one day I am at work opening boxes and I reach into my pocket and pull it out and think to myself, now how’d you end up here? After all that I left behind? You, here, still, not even good, mine now, for good.

Jenny

Sometimes I think she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and she will not let me wipe her face clean. Out in the field, she used to run laps and chase Maggie and the other animals. In her pen she barely moves. She just stares. As her caretaker instructed, I keep my hands in my pockets, but I whisper to Jenny it’s okay baby, it’s okay, you’re safe. I fear she sees my presence as a kind of cruelty. She sees a trap.

Pisgah

I’ve done this trail run countless times and I say back “It really is beautiful” in a half forced tone that makes it sound like I’m not really thinking about the view. The man tells me he hasn’t done this hike in years. The storm cloud is getting closer and it only takes me about 15 minutes to run down the mountain and I know if I leave now I can beat the storm. I don’t know why I take out my other ear bud and ask, “How come?”

Bertha

I’m driving her sister’s car which is 20 years old and has a name like Bertha which I find charming because I have a car which is 20 years old and I call it Puerquito and we are going downhill and fast and I shift into a lower gear to slow down and I ask if that’s okay. She says yes, she prefers it and I sigh with relief because I have driven another girls car and slowed down by shifting into a lower gear and she really preferred that I didn’t and someone in the backseat says “I’m addicted to engine braking,” which strikes me as a funny thing to be addicted to but more than anything it is in that moment that I realize for the first time what the phrase “engine braking” means, although I have been doing it for just about as long as I’ve been driving which I’ve been doing ever since it was illegal to be a teenager anymore which is just about half my life. I called it downshifting which is half true because down shifting is what I am physically doing but it strips away the context which strips away the meaning and for half my life which is the entire time I’ve been driving I have been doing something that I didn’t know how to name.

Jenny

One of the girls at work tells me that she fed Jenny a mint and Jenny let her pet her face for just a moment. That night I spend an hour with Jenny. I have no mint, nothing of value to offer her but patience. She does not let me pet her face for just a moment. It is almost 3am and I whisper goodbye and I go back to my trailer, right outside of the animal corral, and for the first time I notice it is smaller than Jenny’s pen. I know I should go to bed or open my journal or read a book. I just stare.

Pisgah

The man tells me he used to do this hike with his wife. She just passed away. He was her main caretaker for the past few years. Alzheimer’s. He tells me it was hard. He watched the love of his life slip away from him. Sometimes she could be cruel and she didn’t even realize she was being cruel. Other times he feared he was being cruel, but he was just trying to keep her safe. That wasn’t the hard part though, not really. It was the slow death. It was the unraveling of a life. The woman he’d admired and feared and loved equally, turning quietly away from him and being replaced by a stranger. And he couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Because it’s not the kind of thing you are supposed to complain about. Your wife. She wasn’t supposed to be a burden. It’s not supposed to be that hard. Not in the way that it was. But it was.

Idyllwild

At work the rintin sound of a line cook’s phone playing youtube music with ads vibrating into a metal bucket makes me ill and I think sometimes I hate people, most especially the ones who are around me and I know that is not a normal way to feel about the rintin sound of a line cook’s phone playing youtube music with ads vibrating into a metal bucket and so I chew the inside of my cheek until I get a headache and at the end of the night I apologize if I was being weird and in the morning I drive into the woods where there is no cell service.

Pisgah

And this is the loneliest he’s felt. Now that she’s passed. Because he misses her. But a part of him feels relieved. And that is not the kind of thing you can talk to anyone about. You aren’t supposed to feel relieved. But while his family was so far away, he was there every day. Up close. Mourning the life that they’d once had. And this is his first time doing this hike in years. And he’s sad because she’s not here with him. And he’s happy. Because he finally gets to do this for himself. And being happy about that makes him feel very sad and very lonely. And it’s not the kind of thing you can talk to people about. Because you aren’t supposed to feel that way. And there is a storm cloud rolling in.

Idyllwild

I take my earbuds out for the 6 mile descent and I don’t know why. At my campsite the flies swarm around my face and the mosquitoes attack my legs and arms and I burn a bundle of dried thyme and smoke american spirits to keep them away which works remarkably well for 30 seconds at a time.

Pisgah

I’ve done this trail run countless times before and even in the rain I can make it down pretty fast. Instead I walk with the man. Slowly. We chat until the rain that soaks our clothes becomes too loud to speak over. He places his feet carefully, afraid to slip down the steep rocky descent. The rain is cold and the droplets are thick and I feel saturated but I do not feel wet. I feel overcome. When we reach the parking lot, the rain clears. He shakes my hand and thanks me for listening. I thank him for walking with me. I put on dry clothes in the car and he drives away and I know I should go home but I don’t. I just stare.

Idyllwild

At the campsite I lay in my hammock and watch the squirrels in the ancient oak tree above me. I listen to the birds. I see a wood pecker. I fill 12 journal pages. I read out loud. I open a packet of instant rice with a cheap plastic pocket knife and the bag rips. Not even good, I think. There is a large boulder next to me. The ground is loose gravelly sand. I scrawl nothing. I have nothing of value to offer. I pack all my stuff and my things into the back of my van. I leave no trace.

Jenny

When I return to my trailer, I stay with Jenny late into the night. I don’t whisper to her. It feels strange after two nights in the woods. I did not whisper to the squirrels.

Idyllwild

Nothing but a half burned bundle of dried thyme laid in the center of the cold fire ring.

Jenny

In the morning, one of the workers leaves her gate open. She makes her exit cautiously. She is suspicious. And then she runs. She finds delight in going to the places she does not belong. She runs circles around the corral. Her caretaker does not make her go back. Jenny never learned to let the humans touch her. She spends the day with her neck pressed against Maggie’s and they are no longer alone and I watch from outside of the gate. I think they are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Wild as ever. I don’t know how to name this feeling. I just stare.

I miss the commute

Dean — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:29:21 GMT

I have in an obtuse way joined the ranks of work from home warriors who turn the invisible cogs that power our imaginary economy. By which I mean I live in an RV and every morning I get ready in my tiny little bathroom and I shake my head disapprovingly at the ants and then I walk across the parking lot and start setting up the kitchen that I work in. …

Killing the Humble Frog

Dean — Tue, 05 May 2026 06:18:24 GMT

When my sister was in her early 20s, her entire family became convinced that her single most love in this life was the humble frog. For years, that probably felt like decades, for every gift giving occasion, Christmas, birthday, even seemingly unfroggable days like Valentine’s Day, my sister received numerous frog related keepsakes from her beloved hum…

Ants

Dean — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:20:26 GMT

I now live in a trailer which means my day to day life is more swayed by the atmospheric whims of Southern California’s shifting weather patterns than I’ve ever experienced, outside of camping. Being parked in the dirt on a farm, I’ve had ants invading my personal space in numbers previously inconceivable to me. I do not like to spray poison inside the …

Family Meal

Dean — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:40:05 GMT

There are days that the food & beverage industry feels especially thankless. Not because of anyone or anything in particular– days when you woke up with a pain in your lower back, when you haven’t seen your friends in weeks, when you’re exhausted after so many consecutive workdays– because someone was sick, because there was some emergency, because you…

There is a ringing in the quiet.

Dean — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 23:34:24 GMT

I went for a walk earlier tonight. I left through my front door, locked it behind me, ducked through the crowd of moths fluttering around the hallway light, and proceeded down the old stone steps that feel too grand for my building. As I walked down the street the world converged. Fireflies strung lights. A pregnant woman out for a walk to my right. A b…

Heavenly Bodies

Dean — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 23:28:48 GMT

The theme for this party was heavenly bodies. My strongest association with both heaven and the body has been shame. Shame for my body’s ungodly shape, for it’s base desires, afraid I will never truly be clean. In Hopewell Church, they taught us we have demons in our blood. The rest is made of rib and mud. They taught us desire is assault in the eyes of…

And Still

Dean — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 17:43:26 GMT

And still

from time to time it occurs to me,

as a new thought, that I will never

see her again, never feel her head,

laid against my stomach, her eyes

closed and so heavy.

I vacuum the rug and still

there are little needle hairs that

will not lift out. Last of a dying breed,

I think. And then I turn off the vacuum,

stand there for awhile. Look

at the ottoman, whic…

Watching the World Burn from the Nosebleeds

Dean — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:25:11 GMT

We woke up that morning with a fridge full of food, wrapped in blankets, in a house without power. Walking towards the river, I paused to send a picture to my family of the big fallen tree blocking our only way out. “Woah, are you okay?” they responded– yeah, we’re just walking around. Just a few fallen trees. The world ends in the same way it turns. Sl…

Cholula -- A Great Love

Dean — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 05:08:21 GMT

During the pandemic I was stuck in a pretty compulsive routine of work, grocery store, laundromat, and nothing else. Terrified I would bring illness into the work place. The only people I ever interacted with were coworkers. I was working

12 hours a day, 6 days a week, not because I was supposed to, but because it was my only lifeline. I was desperate f…

In the Long Run

Dean — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:45:45 GMT

I think it’s because I’m getting older. Maybe, I’m getting wiser, perhaps, I’m simply starting to get desperate. But, I’ve started thinking a lot about longevity– in my career, in my body, in my relationships. It can be consuming at times, obsessing over how to make things more sustainable.

I think I’ve been putting in the work. I show up every day. I’ve…

Coming soon

Dean — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 15:46:24 GMT

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