Savvy Families editor“It’s not about saving the planet; it’s about saving your wallet.”

That is David W. Stookey’s focus as he examines the slow-motion trainwreck of family finances and wellbeing that is underway across America, thanks to global warming.

Using scores of local examples, Stookey helps readers of Climate-Proof see how each of their day-to-day expenditures, income, and assets are endangered by warming. Using real-life illustrations, Stookey highlights scores of actions that families and communities can take to dodge many of the financial threats from warming.

Not least among the ways savvy families can protect themselves is choosing to live in a hometown that shields its residents from the heavier costs of warming. This theme grows out of Stookey’s discoveries while creating Where-To-Live Scorecards, a longtime feature of this website.

Stookey’s appreciation of the natural world has been molded by climbing expeditions in the Sierra Nevada, a solo transatlantic sailing race, a year living off the grid, and other experiences he treasures. His concern for nature’s degradation began in 1977 with two simultaneous experiences. Reading Amory Lovins’ Soft Energy Paths in mid-Atlantic, he was introduced to the growing burdens from modern energy sources. At the same time he pulled aboard a bucket of seawater, and was horrified to see specks of plastic, globules of tar and other evidence of human threats to the planet.

Stookey’s understanding of financial threats comes from more than a decade as a turnaround CEO, steering financially-troubled companies in the medical and high-tech field back to safety. With a Harvard MBA and experience as an entrepreneur, Stookey is an insightful guide to readers who are ready to assess the personal financial landscape in front of them.

Stookey and the Savvy Families Institute provide free information and tools to help Americans design safe routes through the many challenges ahead. Beyond his experience, Stookey claims his chief qualifications to write Climate-Proof are a lovely wife, three hopeful children, modest income, and a desire to protect them all. He and his wife have sold their home in the floodplain, now rent in a highly walkable neighborhood, and are in the process of taking further actions to climate-proof their family’s future.

(Neither Savvy Families Institute nor Mr. Stookey receive income from any organization mentioned on this site or from any services other than sales of Mr. Stookey’s book.)