A complete guide to building a portable, self-contained router that serves as your main home router for trusted devices day-to-day, then unplugs and travels with you — providing Wi-Fi, mobile data failover, ad-blocking, encrypted networking, and a library of offline content, all from a device smaller than a paperback book.
This is the kind of practical project I talked about in Forget Climate Action — We Need Climate Resilience — building real tools that work when the usual infrastructure doesn’t.
Let’s be honest for a moment. Traditional climate action — the marches, the petitions, the protests — isn’t working. Not because the people doing it are wrong, but because the people in power simply aren’t listening. And when the consequences arrive, they’ll blame everyone but themselves.
So where does that leave the rest of us?
I’d argue it leaves us exactly where we need to be: focused on resilience. Not saving the planet in some grand political gesture, but building something real and local that actually helps people survive what’s coming.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the headlines. Recently, news broke regarding a suppressed government intelligence report detailing the stark security threats posed by climate change. It’s the kind of news that makes you want to tune out—the “inconvenient truth” that many in power would rather keep redacted or hidden behind red tape to avoid rocking the economic boat.
But if we look past the heavy black ink of those reports and the stalemate of global summits, a different story is emerging.
Five years ago I was very motivated to get involved and do my bit for the local part of the world I am in, after realising that my children started worrying about climate change and their future. Let me tell you my story:
I joined the Green Party, ran as a candidate, became a town councillor and even led the party for a while. My journey through local and some national politics left me disillusioned and frustrated.
