Chapter 9 — The Coup

A serial novel in the form of correspondence among a family while the world as we know it collapses around us. I recommend you start at the Introduction:

https://medium.com/climate-for-change/climate-for-change-introduction-5331d5ab9313

But you can start anywhere you want.

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Chapter 9

Email:

Dear Benji,

Here is my best guess about the food: The farmers’ market only has a small capacity, compared to the whole population of the Twin Cities. The farmers who go there are used to providing enough food for just a small subset of the city. The vast majority of the city people normally get their food from big grocery stores, which get their food from national distribution networks. There are regional warehouses located throughout the USA, and food is trucked daily to those warehouses, and from there it is trucked to the grocery stores and restaurants. Because of this (usually efficient) distribution network, at any given time most cities only contain about a week’s worth of food. The grocery stores always seem full, but that is not an endless supply of food. When the refineries went down and fuel prices skyrocketed, trucking became really expensive. In many places, fuel is simply not available. This is because both food and fuel are based on similar national distribution networks. With roads and bridges out all over the east and wildfires raging in the west, food is likely trapped in one part of the country and can’t get to the…