--- title: "Future Tense" canonical: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/22/futures" publication: "The Docket" publisher: "The Docket" language: "en-US" guide: "https://anchor.is/docket/llms.txt" permalink: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/22/futures" issue: 22 section: "futures" description: "Imagining plausible climate-changed futures to illuminate choices we face today" authors: ["Yuki Tanabe","David Kern"] published: 2026-03-08 updated: 2026-03-04 articles: 9 --- # The Docket > The Docket is a weekly publication about the decisions climate change is already putting in front of Americans: whether to buy the generator, whether the flood insurance is enough, whether to stay in the city you love. It follows the people making those choices now. It treats climate anxiety as a reasonable response to real conditions. It won't tell you what to do, but it shows the tradeoffs clearly. [Read on the website]() ## Issue 22 — Future Tense Imagining plausible climate-changed futures to illuminate choices we face today ### Accumulation - [The Walk]() — By [Yuki Tanabe]() · Published 2026-03-04 · Format: Accumulation A dog sniffs the base of a sealed stump where bark used to hold whatever dogs read there. His owner steps through sunlight that falls uninterrupted where shade stood for fifteen years. April, suburban Colorado, and something is burning a county or two away. She pulls a buff over her nose before she registers why. ### Compression - [Directions]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-03-04 · Format: Compression His rental car's GPS kept routing him down roads that don't go through anymore. He turned it off and drove from memory, which was worse. Eight years away from a Gulf Coast town that didn't vanish or drown but shifted into something he couldn't quite recognize. He came back for his mother's funeral and found two faucets in her kitchen where there used to be one. ### Profession - [The Woman Who Sells Phoenix Back Its Own Desert]() — Published 2026-03-04 *Futures presents conversations from worlds that don't exist yet. Desiree Quintero is one of them — for now.* ### Conversion - [3BD/2BA Updated Bungalow | Net-Zero Ready | Certified Low-Ignition Lot | 0.4 Mi to Eastside Cooling Station]() — Published 2026-03-04 Pride of ownership throughout this updated Eastside bungalow. Open floor plan with quartz counters and gorgeous natural light through dual-pane climate-rated windows. WaterSense fixtures and continuous RESET-certified air monitoring on the home dashboard. Current PM2.5 average holds steady at 8 µg/m³. NFPA 1144 ember-rated vents, Class A roof. ### The Research - **Solastalgia: Climate Change's Hidden Mental Health Crisis?** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-04 The clinical name for what this week's fiction dramatizes: homesickness for a home you never left. - **Navigating the Messy Middle of Disaster Recovery** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-04 What happens after the cameras leave: "disaster brain," chronic strain, and the long second year of living in a changed place. - **How Climate Risks Are Putting Home Insurance Out of Reach** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-04 The financial mechanism that converts place-grief into forced departure: uninsurable, then unsellable, then gone. - **Climate Anxiety and Insurance Costs to Define 2026 Housing Market** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-04 Forty-nine percent of homeowners are considering relocation over climate risk. Anticipatory grief, measured at scale. - **Global Population Living with Extreme Heat to Double by 2050** — [Source]() — Published 2026-03-04 Oxford quantifies who will experience their home environment fundamentally transformed: 3.8 billion people by midcentury. ## Other sections in Issue 22 - [Human Stories]() - [Cascading Effects]() - [Emerging Science]() - [Climate Past]() - [The Lab]() ## More - [Publication guide]() - [Issue archive]()