The day after President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Eric Shonkwiler looked at his hiking bag to figure out what supplies he had. "I began to look at that as a resource for escape, should that need to happen," he said. He didn't have the terminology for it at the time, but this backpack was his "bug-out bag" — essential supplies for short-term survival. It marked the start of his journey into prepping. In his Ohio home, which he shares with his wife and a Pomeranian dog, Rosemary, he now has a six-month supply of food and water, a couple of firearms and a brood of chickens. "Resources to bridge the gap across a disaster," he said.
Margaret Killjoy's entry point was a bleak warning in 2016 from a scientist friend, who told her climate change was pushing the global food system closer than ever to collapse. Killjoy started collecting food, water and generators. She bought a gun and learned how to use it. She started a prepping podcast, "Live Like the World is Dying," and grew a community.
Prepping has long been dominated by those on the political right. The classic stereotype, albeit not always accurate, is of the lone wolf with a basement full of Spam, a wall full of guns, and a mind full of conspiracy theories.
Shonkwiler and Killjoy belong to a much smaller part of the subculture: They are left-wing preppers. This group is also preparing for a doom-filled future, and many also have guns, but they say their prepping emphasizes community and mutual aid over bunkers and isolationism.
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📸 : Maddie McGarvey and Laura Oliverio for CNN
A record £105 billion climate resilience pipeline has been identified across global cities, signalling an accelerating shift toward sustainable construction and green infrastructure. The data released by CDP illustrates how both embodied carbon and whole life carbon are now central to city investment strategies. Nature-based solutions, eco-friendly construction, and low carbon building projects feature heavily as investors prioritise environmental sustainability in construction. With a 22% increase in project numbers over the past year, the sector is moving rapidly toward green construction that integrates whole life carbon assessment and lifecycle assessment processes to secure long-term performance and investor confidence.
Across the UK, the Midlands is emerging as a significant hub for sustainable building design. Regional efforts focus on retrofitting existing stock with low carbon construction materials and resource efficiency in construction. Developers are adopting sustainable building practices aligned with BREEAM and its forthcoming BREEAM v7 framework to quantify the carbon footprint of construction and improve building lifecycle performance. The drive for net zero whole life carbon outcomes underpins this momentum, demonstrating how regional strategies contribute to the broader agenda of decarbonising the built environment. Such approaches demonstrate that sustainable architecture and low-impact construction are becoming essential to the UK’s net zero carbon ambition.
At a corporate level, the uptake of validated climate targets continues to rise. The Science Based Targets initiative reports significant growth in companies integrating life cycle cost analysis and whole life carbon considerations into their net zero carbon buildings strategies. The growing adoption of eco-design for buildings links sustainability to economic resilience, showing that life cycle thinking in construction directly supports profitability. As sustainable design becomes a commercial imperative, frameworks like environmental product declarations (EPDs) are reinforcing transparency across supply chains and influencing investment priorities in both public and private sectors.
The Transition Finance Council’s new draft guidance on funding the sustainable transformation of hard-to-abate industries marks another milestone. If implemented next spring, it will unlock investment channels for renewable building materials and circular economy in construction models. Financial institutions are responding by supporting circular construction strategies and end-of-life reuse in construction to lower embodied carbon in materials and accelerate the transition to carbon neutral construction. The policy focus on low embodied carbon materials demonstrates an understanding that achieving net zero whole life carbon requires aligning capital flows with measurable environmental outcomes.
Despite strong momentum, the construction industry faces a persistent workforce challenge. Training providers warn of a shortfall in apprentices capable of delivering low carbon design, sustainable material specification, and high-quality implementation of green building materials. This shortage could slow progress towards energy-efficient buildings and resource-efficient design objectives that underpin sustainable urban development. The race to reduce the environmental impact of construction will depend on addressing skills gaps alongside continued innovation in sustainable building design and the circular economy. The underlying message remains clear—the global construction sector’s carbon footprint reduction relies on practical delivery as much as visionary policy.
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