Conversations On Collapse Retrospective

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Hey everybody, KMO here. Today is March 24th,
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2026. In the spring of 2010, 16 years ago, I
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was living at the Ecovillage Training Center
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in Summertown, Tennessee, and I decided to turn
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a set of early Sea Realm podcast interviews into
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a book. At the time, that was a pretty ambitious
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self -publishing project compared to what it
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would be today. There was no AI transcription,
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and there weren't the same kinds of turnkey self
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-publishing pipelines that now make that sort
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of thing much easier. But I was briefly seized
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by an ambitious spirit, and I got the project
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done in a matter of weeks. The result was Conversations
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on Collapse, Sea Realm podcast transcripts. And
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what you're about to hear is not something I
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just now assembled. This recording goes back
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to the original creation of Conversations on
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Collapse. I put it together at the time as a
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sampler to send to Doug Lane, whose name is in
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the file name. Doug went on to become a well
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-known podcaster and public intellectual in his
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own right, and he was one of the people who came
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along partly under the influence of the Sea Realm
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podcast. So this audio is also a small artifact
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from that moment. Now, 16 years later, I'm returning
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to that material from a different angle. The
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new project is called Getting Over Collapse.
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It won't be just another collection of transcripts.
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It's shaping up to be a reflection on the worldview
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I was caught up in at the time and an attempt
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to unpack it with the benefit of time and distance.
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I'm not going to try to do all of that here because
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I've got a lot of material I want to share with
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you, but if you'd like to follow the progress
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of Getting Over Collapse, head on over to crome
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.org. That's crome .org, not crome .com. The
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.com website is... what's left of the Sea Realm
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Podcast archive. The newer .org site is one that
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is focused on my current projects, including
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Getting Over Collapse. So once again, sea -realm
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.org. I don't have time to say something about
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each of the people you're about to hear, but
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the first and last voice in this collection of
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excerpts is that of Dmitry Orlov. He played a
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pivotal role in changing the direction of the
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Sea Realm podcast, which is why my first conversation
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with him makes up the first chapter of Conversations
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on Collapse. Since the peak oil scene dissolved,
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and the people who gathered under that banner
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went their different ways, I know many of you
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do not approve, not only of some of the trajectories
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those people have taken, but also of the newer
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narratives they've gravitated toward, Dimitri
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included. I'm not going to get into any of that
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here. What I will say is that Dimitri was my
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introduction to peak oil. I had heard the phrase
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before, but I mostly associated it with people
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I didn't particularly want to hear from. What
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changed that was a slide deck from a PowerPoint
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presentation Dimitri had done called Closing
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the Collapse Gap. This was before he was blogging
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regularly, before any of his books, before he
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had much of a public profile at all. All I had
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seen were those slides. But that was enough to
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make me think, I need to get this guy on the
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podcast. And really, it was Dimitri who put me
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on the peak oil vector. Once I had spoken with
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people like James Howard Kunstler and Albert
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Bates, it became much easier to keep interviewing
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people associated with the peak oil worldview.
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But Dimitri was my point of entry. And what I'll
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say for him, entirely to his credit, is that
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he was always entertaining to interview. He did
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not rely on a set of safe, prepackaged talking
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points. He was willing to take chances. He was
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willing to think out loud. In the next hour,
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you're going to hear at least one person who
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really did sound locked into a fixed set of polished
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lines. Dimitri was not that guy. He was willing
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to perform without a net. So this first excerpt
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comes from Episodes 21 and 22 of the Sea Realm
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podcast. Episode 21 was called Closing the Disinfo
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Gap, and Episode 22 was called Space. They were
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released on February 14th and February 21st,
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2007. You know, in the United States, people
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who stay away from doctors tend to be healthier
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than people who don't. So if you want to live
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long and be healthy, don't go see a doctor. In
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this country. In other countries, you know, it's
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different. in some places. But here, it's basically
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a bunch of people who are there to push pharmaceuticals
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on you. And the more experimental the pharmaceuticals,
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the better. So if you have some really strange
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symptoms, you're a goldmine for a doctor or for
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a pharmaceutical company. And they're not likely
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to help you in any way. They're just going to
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treat you as a lab animal. But in general, you
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can read up on the statistics. People who stay
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away from doctors generally do better in terms
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of health. And, you know, the more general point
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is, okay, well, nobody has a retirement. Everybody
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knows that. Now, why is that? Well, that's because
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everybody has been basically spending money they
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don't have. People in this country can't afford
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to drive cars. They can't afford to live out
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in suburbia. None of these things are things
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that they can afford. And so there are credit
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card companies to take advantage of the fact
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that, you know, they're living beyond their means
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and they don't care that they're basically destroying
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their future. And so I don't know if it's really
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all that immoral to help people destroy their
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future if that's what they want to do. But seeing
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an entire country try to do this is a little,
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you know, disappointing, I would say. Certainly,
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we are all responsible for the situations that
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we create for ourselves, and we are all responsible
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for exercising financial prudence. But at the
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same time, vast fortunes have been made by seducing
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folks with easy credit and with a constant barrage
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of imagery, which describes the lifestyle of
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a happy, successful person in the United States.
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Well, that's another difference between the Soviet
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Union and the United States. turned out to be
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to the advantage of the Soviet Union, which is
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American propaganda is very good. There is all
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this advertising, all this marketing, you know,
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seducing people and doing things that are bad
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for them. Soviet propaganda was heavy -handed,
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it was kind of ugly, and it was not seducing
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people. It was trying to basically harangue and
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browse -beat people into doing things that were
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good for them. Now it turns out that human nature
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is such that people won't respond very well to
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that treatment. Humans like to be seduced. They
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like to be, you know, cajoled, and they like
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to do things that are bad for them if somebody
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tells them that that's okay. So... In terms of
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that, you know, Soviet propaganda pretty much
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made people kind of think for themselves a little
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bit, you know. And American propaganda kills
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that, you know. So you have very few people in
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this country, you know. There's all this talk
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about individualism, but really it's very much
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a, you know, hard mentality kind of country where
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everybody thinks that, you know, it's okay to
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have credit cards. It's okay to, you know, max
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out your credits. It's fine. That's what everybody's
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doing. And the thing is, I've seen a lot of just
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really horrendous suffering, you know, and so
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I can't really be sort of lighthearted about
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it. Oh, you know, capitalism is going to fall
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apart. People are not going to be exploited anymore.
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You know, how wonderful. You know, the fact is
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that, you know, it's going to be really painful
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to watch. You know, and that's the part that
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I don't like about it. That was Dmitry Orlov.
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Next up is Albert K. Bates. And what you're about
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to hear was either in episode 29 of the Sea Realm
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podcast, it was called Corporatized, and that
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was released on April 18th, 2007, or the next
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episode, Vine of the Soul, which was released
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on the 25th of April, 2007. I think that what
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I'm seeing is a race. It's a race between whether
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we will attain a degree of consciousness on this
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planet. And it's a race between whether we're
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going to have a habitable planet or whether we'll
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attain as life forms on this planet some form
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of cosmic consciousness in time. to carry out,
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finish out this experiment that was begun many
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billions of years ago. And I think that what
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I've been seeing in this last few weeks or months
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is some warning signs that we're not winning
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our race, that Gaia is in a lot worse trouble
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than we thought. And I'm seeing all of this,
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and it's sad to say it, but it seems to me that
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history might indeed be ended. And if climate
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change tips us into a desert world and it does
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it in less than a thousand years, maybe even
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a hundred years instead of a billion years, well,
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it's our fault that, you know, blame is pretty
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useless. So what was the end result of the experiment?
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You know, some would say that the purpose of
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the experiment of having life on this planet
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was to lift off consciousness, you know, to transcend
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the corporeal realm. And to start working consciousness
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through various dimensions. And for the past
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many decades, that's what we've been doing. You
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know, Albert Hoffman discovered LSD about the
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end of the 1940s. You had Gordon Wasson going
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down to meet with the curanderos in Mexico in
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the 50s. You had a lot of people who were gaining
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this exploration. And the fact that those numbers
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have been expanding every year. And time is now
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getting very short. And we have to wonder whether
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we're going to make it to the finish line in
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time. That's the race I see underway. And who
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knows how it's going to come out. But I think
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whoever is engaged in this exploration is doing
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the heavy lifting for all life on Earth at this
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point. It's absolutely essential work. And it's
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much more important than sending rockets to Mars
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or building fusion reactors. Consciousness is
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the most important field of scientific endeavor
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we could possibly engage right now. And, you
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know, at the same time, I had to say that I think
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the age of science may soon be ending and giving
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way to an age of art. And it'll be artists, not
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scientists, who save us. I think one of the major
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problems that we face is that we have this set
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of expectations that are part of our education,
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part of our development as individuals when we're
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young. And it comes from our heritage, which
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is out of a kind of war -like evolutionary process
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over the course of many centuries. And we see
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the need to be somehow striving constantly for
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achievement in some way or shape or form. And
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I think that that's one of the big problems that
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we have as... As a society, it's why we're having
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the issues that we're having with climate change,
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because we are overextended. We're overextended
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on our resource. Our demands on Gaia have greatly
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exceeded what Gaia's capabilities are. And I
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think that we have to change that mean. We need
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to shift. We need to go to a much more less consumptive,
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but also easygoing. society. And I think that
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probably that's going to happen through education
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of children more than any other way. Although
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we need to also think about how do adults change
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and what are the ways we change adult thinking.
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And I think arts are one of the ways that we
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do that. But I think that also the change may
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not happen fast enough if we wait generationally
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to make the shifts that we need to make. One
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of the major changes that has to happen has to
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deal with population. We have religious and ethical
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and cultural boundaries that we've placed on
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large families. You know, we say, okay, we should
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have people, a lot of religions want you to have
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more and more kids and prohibit birth control
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and so forth. And what we find is we get into
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the situation now where we are exceeding the
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carrying capacity of the planet with us. sudden
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explosion in the last few hundred years of up
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to six and a half billion of us now headed on
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its way to nine billion, pretty hard to stop
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that. And the question is, how do we bring that
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down? What's the process by which we bring our
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population down? And I think as we go through
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this crisis in coming years and have to shift
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to an agricultural economy, in some ways that
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even gets harder because people will think of,
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you know, They need their kids in order to help
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them grow food and to care for them in old age
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and that sort of thing, which is traditional.
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And a farming economy is an economy that tends
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to have large families. But we really have to
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change. We need to figure out ways to make not
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having kids more fashionable and to begin to
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bring the population down by whatever means we
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can come to. Because if we can't do that in an
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organized, peaceful way, then nature will take
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a hand and do it in a way that's not very pleasant.
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That was Albert Bates. Next up is Thomas Homer
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Dixon. He's the author of a book called The Upside
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of Down. And my one interview with him, and I
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only talked to him once, was really, it was quite
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profound to me in retrospect. And what you're
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about to hear came from episode number 36, Locus
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of Agency, released May 30th, 2007. The most
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adaptive systems in the world tend to solve their
00:14:01.559 --> 00:14:03.700
problems through distributed or decentralized
00:14:03.700 --> 00:14:08.179
action of problem -solving agents. These systems
00:14:08.179 --> 00:14:11.379
would include market economies, immune systems,
00:14:11.620 --> 00:14:15.700
or many kinds of ecological systems. They deal
00:14:15.700 --> 00:14:18.779
with their problems by creating loosely coupled
00:14:18.779 --> 00:14:22.740
networks of relatively autonomous agents. You
00:14:22.740 --> 00:14:24.940
think about a market, for example, relatively
00:14:24.940 --> 00:14:29.960
autonomous firms, each of which can attempt to
00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:33.200
tackle a part of the problem in experimental
00:14:33.200 --> 00:14:38.980
ways. And solutions that turn out to be reasonably
00:14:38.980 --> 00:14:41.899
effective can be communicated across the network
00:14:41.899 --> 00:14:47.019
quite quickly. And also, things that turn out
00:14:47.019 --> 00:14:50.600
not to work, experiments that fail, that information
00:14:50.600 --> 00:14:53.000
can also be communicated across the network.
00:14:53.539 --> 00:14:55.539
Decentralized systems and distributed problem
00:14:55.539 --> 00:15:00.379
solving, those approaches tend to produce solutions
00:15:00.379 --> 00:15:03.440
to complex problems much faster. They may seem
00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:05.460
inefficient because you get a lot of experimentation
00:15:05.460 --> 00:15:08.440
and pursuit of dead ends and a lot of stuff that
00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:10.899
just doesn't work. But the point is that you
00:15:10.899 --> 00:15:13.139
need to do a lot of that experimentation to find
00:15:13.139 --> 00:15:17.580
out what does work. This is fundamentally the
00:15:17.580 --> 00:15:20.039
distinction between, for instance, the old style
00:15:20.039 --> 00:15:23.019
command and control hierarchical Soviet economies
00:15:23.019 --> 00:15:26.259
and the highly adaptive Western economies. And
00:15:26.259 --> 00:15:30.600
we saw ultimately that the Soviet economies were
00:15:30.600 --> 00:15:34.679
incapable of adapting to a rapidly changing global
00:15:34.679 --> 00:15:37.340
economy and a rapidly changing economic environment,
00:15:37.539 --> 00:15:40.379
whereas market economies not only were capable
00:15:40.379 --> 00:15:44.559
of adapting, but in many ways actually defined
00:15:44.559 --> 00:15:49.399
the larger economic environment. And I think
00:15:49.399 --> 00:15:52.620
that lesson of the power of distributed systems
00:15:52.620 --> 00:15:59.200
is one that we need to take to heart. I think
00:15:59.200 --> 00:16:02.019
that it's an interesting ideological twist in
00:16:02.019 --> 00:16:05.500
a way, because you could say that people who
00:16:05.500 --> 00:16:08.240
are progressive, liberal in the American context,
00:16:08.340 --> 00:16:12.179
even on the left, need to understand that there
00:16:12.179 --> 00:16:14.120
are some very important things that we can learn
00:16:14.120 --> 00:16:17.799
from people whom we would have regarded traditionally
00:16:17.799 --> 00:16:20.179
as being conservative and on the right, that
00:16:20.179 --> 00:16:23.340
markets are... very effective problem -solving
00:16:23.340 --> 00:16:25.919
institutions. This is the new kind, I think,
00:16:25.919 --> 00:16:28.320
of liberalism, a new kind of left -of -center
00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:34.100
ideology that understands that distributed problem
00:16:34.100 --> 00:16:36.879
-solving and decentralization is exactly the
00:16:36.879 --> 00:16:38.980
kind of thing that somebody like Adam Smith was
00:16:38.980 --> 00:16:41.279
talking about in The Wealth of Nations. And there's
00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:43.399
a possibility for a constructive dialogue, I
00:16:43.399 --> 00:16:46.259
think, across ideological divides here. What
00:16:46.259 --> 00:16:47.799
we've learned, I think, in the recent decades,
00:16:47.960 --> 00:16:50.080
and this is sort of my point, The point I was
00:16:50.080 --> 00:16:52.460
trying to make about the Soviet command control
00:16:52.460 --> 00:16:55.360
economies is that the top -down hierarchical
00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:59.759
problem -solving approaches tend not to work
00:16:59.759 --> 00:17:05.380
in a very dynamic and complex environment. There's
00:17:05.380 --> 00:17:08.559
a principle derived from complexity theory, the
00:17:08.559 --> 00:17:10.660
study of complex systems. It's called the law
00:17:10.660 --> 00:17:13.440
of requisite variety. And it goes something like
00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:19.339
this, that any... in order to be successfully
00:17:19.339 --> 00:17:23.539
adaptive to its environment has to be as complex
00:17:23.539 --> 00:17:27.299
as its environment. And that's because the complex
00:17:27.299 --> 00:17:30.900
environment will produce a certain range of behaviors.
00:17:31.180 --> 00:17:33.700
If it becomes more complex, it produces a larger
00:17:33.700 --> 00:17:37.579
range of behaviors. A system that's trying to
00:17:37.579 --> 00:17:40.559
survive within that complex environment needs
00:17:40.559 --> 00:17:43.819
to have a repertoire of behaviors that's just
00:17:43.819 --> 00:17:48.059
as broad. as the range of behaviors of its environment.
00:17:48.599 --> 00:17:52.299
And so it needs to be as complex as its environment.
00:17:52.380 --> 00:17:55.279
And it turns out that if we're talking about
00:17:55.279 --> 00:17:57.920
human systems, human decision -making environments
00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:00.480
and human problem -solving systems, the hierarchical
00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:02.880
ones tend to be too simple for what has become
00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:07.079
an enormously complex world. So we see hierarchies
00:18:07.079 --> 00:18:10.700
breaking apart. We see... tightly controlled
00:18:10.700 --> 00:18:14.059
corporation going bankrupt and not adapting to
00:18:14.059 --> 00:18:16.200
their environments. We see social and political
00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:19.480
systems like the Soviet political system finding
00:18:19.480 --> 00:18:23.779
themselves incapable of surviving within our
00:18:23.779 --> 00:18:28.519
new world of recent decades. And I think people
00:18:28.519 --> 00:18:31.700
on the political left need to understand that
00:18:31.700 --> 00:18:35.200
we can't return to state -centric solution to
00:18:35.200 --> 00:18:38.000
the challenges we face. This is why I recommend
00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.000
in much of my work, and I'll be pursuing this
00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:44.720
issue further in my future research, that we
00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:47.839
must think a lot more about distributed or decentralized
00:18:47.839 --> 00:18:52.000
problem -solving based electronically on the
00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:56.160
Internet that involves large numbers of people
00:18:56.160 --> 00:19:00.019
incorporated into some kind of open architecture
00:19:00.019 --> 00:19:02.240
decision -making or problem -solving process,
00:19:02.579 --> 00:19:07.730
a kind of wiki process. Next up is Sharon Astic.
00:19:07.950 --> 00:19:10.109
She's the author or co -author of a book called
00:19:10.109 --> 00:19:12.730
Nation of Farmers. And I think she came to my
00:19:12.730 --> 00:19:16.390
attention when she was pushing back against Albert
00:19:16.390 --> 00:19:21.250
Bartlett's metaphor about 20 people having to
00:19:21.250 --> 00:19:25.589
share a single bathroom. It was an anti -overpopulation
00:19:25.589 --> 00:19:30.690
metaphor, and she didn't like it. So that is
00:19:30.690 --> 00:19:32.690
basically the topic of the conversation with
00:19:32.690 --> 00:19:36.539
Sharon Astic. Population control. fertility rates,
00:19:36.740 --> 00:19:40.079
and their trajectories. This is from episode
00:19:40.079 --> 00:19:42.519
number 42, Tragedy of the Bathroom, released
00:19:42.519 --> 00:19:48.140
June 20, 2007. I should be up front and say I
00:19:48.140 --> 00:19:51.180
have four children. Not entirely intentionally,
00:19:51.500 --> 00:19:53.839
but I have four children, and I'm not unhappy
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:56.460
about that fact. So there certainly are plenty
00:19:56.460 --> 00:19:58.700
of people who will say that I am a major contributor
00:19:58.700 --> 00:20:01.720
to the problem. And honestly, first world children
00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:05.599
are a much bigger problem than third world children.
00:20:05.720 --> 00:20:07.920
I mean, I don't actually deny that what I do
00:20:07.920 --> 00:20:10.400
doesn't meet the requirements of the categorical
00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:12.759
imperative. That is, everybody can't do what
00:20:12.759 --> 00:20:15.559
I do and have a livable world. So I just want
00:20:15.559 --> 00:20:17.400
to get that out of the way up front because,
00:20:17.460 --> 00:20:20.259
you know, people know this and it's appropriate
00:20:20.259 --> 00:20:22.619
that sort of I acknowledge my own complicity
00:20:22.619 --> 00:20:25.200
in this. I think the point at which we have to
00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:26.980
start dealing with the population issue is right
00:20:26.980 --> 00:20:32.380
now. But I don't necessarily believe in dealing
00:20:32.380 --> 00:20:35.660
with it in some of the sort of stronger ways
00:20:35.660 --> 00:20:38.579
that get floated around among people who feel
00:20:38.579 --> 00:20:41.039
very strongly about this. That is, I believe
00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:44.000
that on some level, we are dealing with population
00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:48.400
growth right now. Since 1950, the world TFR,
00:20:48.660 --> 00:20:51.119
that's total fertility rate. has fallen from
00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:54.279
around five children per person to about 2 .7,
00:20:54.319 --> 00:20:56.819
which is just an enormous drop in fertility.
00:20:57.900 --> 00:21:03.180
There is a fertility transition that happened
00:21:03.180 --> 00:21:08.359
after death rates began to fall due to modern
00:21:08.359 --> 00:21:10.759
medicine and vaccines and things in the world,
00:21:10.799 --> 00:21:13.019
is that for a short period of time, people have
00:21:13.019 --> 00:21:15.380
a lot more children because they haven't quite
00:21:15.380 --> 00:21:17.039
adapted to the fact that more of their children
00:21:17.039 --> 00:21:19.279
are going to survive into adulthood. And then
00:21:19.279 --> 00:21:23.259
you begin to see a demographic transition, which
00:21:23.259 --> 00:21:26.059
is what demographers call it, where birth rates
00:21:26.059 --> 00:21:28.380
begin to fall and people start having fewer children.
00:21:28.920 --> 00:21:31.460
And all over the world, that's actually happening.
00:21:31.660 --> 00:21:34.319
Now, it's famously happening in places like Europe
00:21:34.319 --> 00:21:37.099
and Japan, where total fertility rates are, you
00:21:37.099 --> 00:21:39.700
know, one and a half and under. That's also happening
00:21:39.700 --> 00:21:42.140
in poor countries. It's happening in Sri Lanka,
00:21:42.259 --> 00:21:46.119
in Thailand, in Kerala, in the state of Kerala,
00:21:46.119 --> 00:21:50.910
in India. in much of Eastern Europe. And these
00:21:50.910 --> 00:21:55.869
are places that tend to be quite poor, but where
00:21:55.869 --> 00:21:59.210
women have simply managed to get to the point
00:21:59.210 --> 00:22:01.069
where their children are starting to live to
00:22:01.069 --> 00:22:03.789
adulthood, and they're making rational choices.
00:22:03.869 --> 00:22:05.650
That is, they're choosing to have fewer children.
00:22:05.990 --> 00:22:09.869
What seems to help world PFR is good education
00:22:09.869 --> 00:22:14.849
for women. reasonable chances of infant survival
00:22:14.849 --> 00:22:17.730
rates, which is actually something that does
00:22:17.730 --> 00:22:19.410
require some medical infrastructure, but can
00:22:19.410 --> 00:22:22.410
be done quite cheaply and doesn't require a lot
00:22:22.410 --> 00:22:26.710
of medical infrastructure. And the reasonable
00:22:26.710 --> 00:22:28.789
hope that your kid won't be taken off and killed
00:22:28.789 --> 00:22:31.130
in some war or something. Essentially, women,
00:22:31.210 --> 00:22:33.390
you could get to have the kids they do have grow
00:22:33.390 --> 00:22:37.329
up and they have fewer children. We're in the
00:22:37.329 --> 00:22:40.160
process of a vast demographic transition. It
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:41.920
may not be happening as fast as we like. It may
00:22:41.920 --> 00:22:43.920
not even be happening fast enough. And that's
00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:47.359
another issue. But it's happening around the
00:22:47.359 --> 00:22:52.980
world. And it's so the more coercive methods
00:22:52.980 --> 00:22:55.019
that people advocate, for example, the China
00:22:55.019 --> 00:22:57.779
-style solutions, actually China's birthright
00:22:57.779 --> 00:23:00.000
is still well above a number of poor nations
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:02.200
where it's happening voluntarily, including,
00:23:02.259 --> 00:23:05.559
again, like Sri Lanka and Thailand. I think a
00:23:05.559 --> 00:23:07.599
lot of people have this vision of agriculture
00:23:07.599 --> 00:23:12.289
as endless drudgery and drudgery um they think
00:23:12.289 --> 00:23:14.750
oh god i'm going to spend the rest of my life
00:23:14.750 --> 00:23:17.509
you know working in the hot sun you know sort
00:23:17.509 --> 00:23:20.069
of you know one of those chain gang movies and
00:23:20.069 --> 00:23:23.950
part i mean one of the things i can say is that
00:23:23.950 --> 00:23:26.869
that it just doesn't have to be that hard um
00:23:26.869 --> 00:23:29.410
one of my favorite poems is a wordsworth poem
00:23:29.410 --> 00:23:31.990
called the solitary reaper and it's about this
00:23:31.990 --> 00:23:35.109
woman out with the sides cut and grain and she's
00:23:35.109 --> 00:23:37.660
singing while she's doing it And, you know, when
00:23:37.660 --> 00:23:39.640
I read it in graduate school, I don't think it
00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:41.940
ever registered on me that if you can sue while
00:23:41.940 --> 00:23:44.660
you're doing something, it's not that hard. You
00:23:44.660 --> 00:23:47.539
know, if you ever try and do it, it's not that
00:23:47.539 --> 00:23:50.400
much work. It's not that farming isn't work.
00:23:50.500 --> 00:23:52.660
It's a lot of, it can be a lot of work, but there
00:23:52.660 --> 00:23:55.200
are a lot of methodologies that make it anything
00:23:55.200 --> 00:23:57.539
but, okay, I'm going to spend the rest of my
00:23:57.539 --> 00:23:59.779
life swinging a mattock at the clods of dirt
00:23:59.779 --> 00:24:02.539
for the rest, for those things. You don't have
00:24:02.539 --> 00:24:06.319
to do that stuff. A lot of our models of agriculture
00:24:06.319 --> 00:24:11.880
have been based on cheap oil. That is, it makes
00:24:11.880 --> 00:24:14.240
a lot of sense to pill up fields with tractors,
00:24:14.259 --> 00:24:16.180
even though that's really bad for the soil and
00:24:16.180 --> 00:24:20.160
things if you have all that horsepower. On the
00:24:20.160 --> 00:24:22.339
other hand, if you have a yard and limited free
00:24:22.339 --> 00:24:24.759
time, it makes a lot of sense to mulch with your
00:24:24.759 --> 00:24:27.140
own grass clipping and with the compost that
00:24:27.140 --> 00:24:29.640
you make on your property and never pill anything
00:24:29.640 --> 00:24:32.269
at all. Just stir it up a little with a fork
00:24:32.269 --> 00:24:34.710
and plant some vegetables into it. I know a lot
00:24:34.710 --> 00:24:36.410
of people who live in neighborhoods and they
00:24:36.410 --> 00:24:38.349
don't know the people on the other side of them
00:24:38.349 --> 00:24:41.529
well enough to talk to. But if you depend on
00:24:41.529 --> 00:24:44.230
other people for help with things that you now
00:24:44.230 --> 00:24:46.890
have sort of electric servants to do for you,
00:24:46.950 --> 00:24:50.430
then you have to know your neighbors. You can't
00:24:50.430 --> 00:24:52.710
get away with that. And that does come with,
00:24:52.910 --> 00:24:55.930
as Barbara Ehrenreich has pointed out, with some
00:24:55.930 --> 00:24:58.890
real opportunities for celebration and festivity.
00:24:59.460 --> 00:25:02.160
Helena Norberg -Hodge talks about the Ladakis
00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:05.740
who live in high plain areas around Sedet, who
00:25:05.740 --> 00:25:08.059
said that basically they spend four months working
00:25:08.059 --> 00:25:09.759
really hard to get their food and the rest of
00:25:09.759 --> 00:25:12.779
the year they spend partying. They drink beer
00:25:12.779 --> 00:25:16.539
and socialize and have a really good time. Medieval
00:25:16.539 --> 00:25:19.039
peasants in Britain in the 11th century used
00:25:19.039 --> 00:25:23.180
to work only 176 days a year. The rest were Sabbaths
00:25:23.180 --> 00:25:27.440
and festivals. And there was a hog set of beer
00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:33.000
for every six peasants for every festival. There's
00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:37.380
a real culture of celebration and of joy and
00:25:37.380 --> 00:25:41.559
delight that goes around with strong community
00:25:41.559 --> 00:25:44.420
structures and local economies and local food.
00:25:44.859 --> 00:25:46.460
The other thing is I think that there's a chance
00:25:46.460 --> 00:25:48.079
we could get back some of our political power.
00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:51.819
A lot of people that I know feel very powerless.
00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:54.880
They feel like their world is won by interests
00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:56.920
they don't control. And I think that's absolutely
00:25:56.920 --> 00:26:00.900
true. But when you reduce the scale of your world,
00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:04.880
when you take away power from corporate... corporate
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:06.779
hands, where you don't depend on corporations
00:26:06.779 --> 00:26:09.859
to feed you and clothe you and shelter you, then
00:26:09.859 --> 00:26:12.740
you can also take that political power. You can
00:26:12.740 --> 00:26:15.099
get a little closer to sort of the democracy
00:26:15.099 --> 00:26:18.019
that was imagined by our founding fathers. And
00:26:18.019 --> 00:26:21.079
I think that alone might be worth an enormous
00:26:21.079 --> 00:26:24.299
amount of change, is to get back the right to
00:26:24.299 --> 00:26:27.079
a kind of self -determination that I think a
00:26:27.079 --> 00:26:31.660
lot of us really have lost. All right. Next up
00:26:31.660 --> 00:26:34.970
is Albert Bartlett. Albert Bartlett was the guest.
00:26:35.150 --> 00:26:39.069
I talked to him a couple times, but the interview
00:26:39.069 --> 00:26:41.769
that provides the segment or the excerpt that
00:26:41.769 --> 00:26:43.609
you're about to hear is either from episode number
00:26:43.609 --> 00:26:47.869
53, important but trivial, or episode 54, Malthusian
00:26:47.869 --> 00:26:51.869
Memes, released August 29th and September 5th,
00:26:51.869 --> 00:26:55.670
2007. Well, we don't have the resources to supply
00:26:55.670 --> 00:26:59.289
the present world population. The world population
00:26:59.289 --> 00:27:04.529
today is unsustainable. reach our conclusion
00:27:04.529 --> 00:27:08.269
by just observing that if any fraction of the
00:27:08.269 --> 00:27:12.130
present global warming is due to the actions
00:27:12.130 --> 00:27:16.150
of humans, then this by itself is proof that
00:27:16.150 --> 00:27:19.069
the human population has exceeded the carrying
00:27:19.069 --> 00:27:23.930
capacity of the Earth. 200 years ago, oil production
00:27:23.930 --> 00:27:26.829
worldwide was zero. 200 years from now, it's
00:27:26.829 --> 00:27:30.309
going to be zero. In between, it rises to one
00:27:30.309 --> 00:27:34.160
or more maxima. and you can approximate that
00:27:34.160 --> 00:27:37.420
by a smooth error curve. And the real question
00:27:37.420 --> 00:27:40.279
is, a lot of reporters ask, well, when are we
00:27:40.279 --> 00:27:41.960
going to run out of oil? And the answer is never.
00:27:42.099 --> 00:27:45.539
We'll never run out of oil. But the question
00:27:45.539 --> 00:27:47.920
that has to be asked and understood is, when
00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:50.539
will oil production peak? When will we pass that
00:27:50.539 --> 00:27:53.559
peak production? And the peak production marks
00:27:53.559 --> 00:27:57.619
the point at which we have consumed half of the
00:27:57.619 --> 00:28:02.460
initial resource. And so after you pass the peak,
00:28:02.500 --> 00:28:05.799
then production declines and approaches zero,
00:28:05.920 --> 00:28:07.960
and it may take another hundred years for it
00:28:07.960 --> 00:28:09.799
to approach zero. It took a hundred years to
00:28:09.799 --> 00:28:13.160
get up to where it is now. But as you have declining
00:28:13.160 --> 00:28:17.079
production and a growing world population and
00:28:17.079 --> 00:28:20.140
a growing world per capita demand for oil, then
00:28:20.140 --> 00:28:23.559
you have all the makings of a real disaster because
00:28:23.559 --> 00:28:26.299
everything in our modern society is dependent
00:28:26.299 --> 00:28:29.359
on oil. And the first thing you think of is a
00:28:29.359 --> 00:28:33.160
food production. And one can observe that modern
00:28:33.160 --> 00:28:37.640
agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum
00:28:37.640 --> 00:28:42.880
into food. And, you know, we can see rapidly
00:28:42.880 --> 00:28:47.380
rising prices of petroleum as we pass over the
00:28:47.380 --> 00:28:50.880
peak. And that'll immediately be reflected in
00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:54.599
very rapid rise in the cost of food and a cost
00:28:54.599 --> 00:28:58.000
of everything else in society. Now, where are
00:28:58.000 --> 00:29:00.880
we with regard to the world peak? The U .S. peaked
00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:04.740
in 1970, and we're well down on the downhill
00:29:04.740 --> 00:29:08.259
side of the curve. World production could peak
00:29:08.259 --> 00:29:10.859
any time now. There are some experts who say
00:29:10.859 --> 00:29:14.200
the peak has already been passed. My own analysis
00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:18.700
says we're very close to the peak, and there
00:29:18.700 --> 00:29:25.099
are the latest I have heard from any practical...
00:29:25.640 --> 00:29:28.279
from any scientist in the field, a geologist,
00:29:28.420 --> 00:29:35.640
is about 2020. But I think most of the consensus
00:29:35.640 --> 00:29:39.480
feeling among people who are really into this
00:29:39.480 --> 00:29:42.599
problem is that it's much earlier than 2020,
00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:46.799
that it's any day now. And unfortunately, we
00:29:46.799 --> 00:29:49.220
won't know when we pass the peak. We could already
00:29:49.220 --> 00:29:52.230
have passed it. You'll have to have... four or
00:29:52.230 --> 00:29:56.049
five or ten years of consistent downturn in world
00:29:56.049 --> 00:29:59.490
production before you can say statistically it's
00:29:59.490 --> 00:30:02.690
clear that back there five years ago or so that
00:30:02.690 --> 00:30:07.069
was the peak. One point being a little bit lower
00:30:07.069 --> 00:30:10.190
than the current trend does not prove that the
00:30:10.190 --> 00:30:12.950
peak has been passed. So we won't know for at
00:30:12.950 --> 00:30:16.130
least five years after the peak that the peak
00:30:16.130 --> 00:30:20.809
has actually been passed. You know, it's in our
00:30:20.809 --> 00:30:23.509
national self -interest to reduce our annual
00:30:23.509 --> 00:30:27.289
consumption of petroleum right now. Now, you
00:30:27.289 --> 00:30:30.210
hear people say, and again, these are people
00:30:30.210 --> 00:30:32.849
who are well -meaning, often well -educated,
00:30:32.869 --> 00:30:35.569
but don't understand the problem, say that all
00:30:35.569 --> 00:30:37.670
American agriculture is the most efficient in
00:30:37.670 --> 00:30:40.509
the world today. That's nonsense. It's the least
00:30:40.509 --> 00:30:43.589
efficient in the world today. It's the least
00:30:43.589 --> 00:30:46.859
efficient because... If you have to use as your
00:30:46.859 --> 00:30:49.299
definition of efficiency, how much energy does
00:30:49.299 --> 00:30:52.539
it take in the form of petroleum, natural gas,
00:30:52.579 --> 00:30:55.619
et cetera, to produce one unit of energy that's
00:30:55.619 --> 00:31:00.539
on your dinner table? And that's about 10 units
00:31:00.539 --> 00:31:03.200
of petroleum energy for one unit of food energy
00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:06.099
on your table. Now, the thing to make people
00:31:06.099 --> 00:31:08.299
say we're more efficient is they use a different
00:31:08.299 --> 00:31:11.990
measure. They say how many person... hours on
00:31:11.990 --> 00:31:15.009
the farm are required to produce one unit of
00:31:15.009 --> 00:31:17.789
food. Well, that number has been going down,
00:31:17.890 --> 00:31:20.509
leading these people, without understanding,
00:31:20.710 --> 00:31:23.089
to say, oh, we're more efficient. We don't use
00:31:23.089 --> 00:31:26.750
as many people farming as we used to. But that's
00:31:26.750 --> 00:31:29.950
not a good measure. That's just a measure of
00:31:29.950 --> 00:31:33.410
we're substituting petroleum for people on the
00:31:33.410 --> 00:31:36.569
farm. And as petroleum peaks and starts down,
00:31:36.789 --> 00:31:39.390
we're not going to be able to continue to do
00:31:39.390 --> 00:31:44.009
that. That was Albert Bartlett. Next up is another
00:31:44.009 --> 00:31:46.609
voice that you probably wouldn't associate with
00:31:46.609 --> 00:31:50.930
the peak oil scene. As far as I know, she didn't
00:31:50.930 --> 00:31:53.410
really have anything to say on the topic of peak
00:31:53.410 --> 00:31:56.970
oil specifically, but somehow she came to my
00:31:56.970 --> 00:31:59.730
attention at a time when I was talking about
00:31:59.730 --> 00:32:03.509
issues related to agriculture and modern life
00:32:03.509 --> 00:32:06.809
and farming and that sort of thing. And I think
00:32:06.809 --> 00:32:09.569
that you'll find what Cornelia Butler Flora had
00:32:09.569 --> 00:32:12.950
to say on the topic of community and human psychological
00:32:12.950 --> 00:32:16.829
needs is very much in place here in this collection
00:32:16.829 --> 00:32:20.950
of interviews. This is from episode 56, Quality
00:32:20.950 --> 00:32:26.349
of Life, released September 19th, 2007. What
00:32:26.349 --> 00:32:30.589
a number of the 9 -11 terrorists have demonstrated
00:32:30.589 --> 00:32:36.089
is that these are people who actually whose standard
00:32:36.089 --> 00:32:39.170
of living was fine, and the folks that are being
00:32:39.170 --> 00:32:43.970
arrested now in England and France and Spain,
00:32:44.190 --> 00:32:47.750
the issue is quality of life. The things that
00:32:47.750 --> 00:32:49.849
we have found as we have done studies of quality
00:32:49.849 --> 00:32:55.109
of life is this. You are respected by the people
00:32:55.109 --> 00:33:00.029
around you. The notion of inclusion, not being
00:33:00.029 --> 00:33:04.859
the same as, But being respected by the people
00:33:04.859 --> 00:33:08.359
around you turns out to be an incredibly important
00:33:08.359 --> 00:33:15.279
part of quality of life. And you're respected
00:33:15.279 --> 00:33:18.599
not for what you have. It's not because of the
00:33:18.599 --> 00:33:21.660
car you drive. This is why we tend to conflate
00:33:21.660 --> 00:33:24.559
quality of life and standard of living. But it's
00:33:24.559 --> 00:33:28.460
based on relationships. And these take time.
00:33:29.609 --> 00:33:32.109
And you can't just drop relationships on people.
00:33:32.269 --> 00:33:36.509
Whereas you can do things to increase income,
00:33:36.670 --> 00:33:41.809
it's much more difficult to increase quality
00:33:41.809 --> 00:33:44.769
of relationships. But we can make investments
00:33:44.769 --> 00:33:49.309
collectively as a society that can greatly increase
00:33:49.309 --> 00:33:53.789
the possibilities of people feeling included,
00:33:54.109 --> 00:33:59.869
respected, and heard. And it seems to me that
00:33:59.869 --> 00:34:04.630
might be a better investment against terrorism
00:34:04.630 --> 00:34:09.869
rather than assuming it's all economics. I mean,
00:34:09.869 --> 00:34:12.190
there has been a really interesting explanation
00:34:12.190 --> 00:34:15.769
by our president and others that somehow people
00:34:15.769 --> 00:34:19.230
are jealous of our stuff. And that's why we're
00:34:19.230 --> 00:34:23.070
having these problems in terms of terrorism.
00:34:23.789 --> 00:34:27.239
I just read an interesting... review of a new
00:34:27.239 --> 00:34:29.780
book called the republic where they're saying
00:34:29.780 --> 00:34:32.239
you know the problem with the internet communities
00:34:32.239 --> 00:34:36.880
is they are incredibly ideologically similar
00:34:36.880 --> 00:34:40.500
so you never talk to anybody who doesn't share
00:34:40.500 --> 00:34:45.039
all your values and beliefs and part of quality
00:34:45.039 --> 00:34:49.159
of life is feeling comfortable around people
00:34:49.159 --> 00:34:52.539
who aren't like you so you don't feel you live
00:34:52.539 --> 00:34:55.929
in some sort of enclave which you can't venture
00:34:55.929 --> 00:34:58.989
out of unless you're totally armed. Interacting
00:34:58.989 --> 00:35:01.909
with and being respected by people who aren't
00:35:01.909 --> 00:35:06.030
exactly like you definitely helps increase your
00:35:06.030 --> 00:35:09.789
quality of life. But even more importantly, it
00:35:09.789 --> 00:35:13.769
really helps create a safer world. It gives you
00:35:13.769 --> 00:35:18.690
the opportunity to examine your own values and
00:35:18.690 --> 00:35:21.389
beliefs and to decide what's really important.
00:35:22.699 --> 00:35:26.219
And what really is important is neither stuff
00:35:26.219 --> 00:35:31.840
nor homogeneity. And right now we're, I think,
00:35:31.840 --> 00:35:35.400
in a crisis of quality of life, not because we
00:35:35.400 --> 00:35:39.519
don't have enough stuff, but because we have
00:35:39.519 --> 00:35:42.980
become very fearful that other people somehow
00:35:42.980 --> 00:35:48.039
want our stuff. And we simply don't understand
00:35:48.039 --> 00:35:50.719
different ways of seeing the world and different
00:35:50.719 --> 00:35:54.719
ways of viewing things that can help us then
00:35:54.719 --> 00:36:01.539
fit ourselves into a very complex and interesting
00:36:01.539 --> 00:36:08.780
puzzle rather than simply being the answer that's
00:36:08.780 --> 00:36:13.369
all clearly black and white That was Cornelia
00:36:13.369 --> 00:36:16.570
Butler Flora, the late Cornelia Butler Flora,
00:36:16.630 --> 00:36:19.210
I'm afraid to say. She is the second of three
00:36:19.210 --> 00:36:21.769
people that I interviewed for the Sea Realm podcast
00:36:21.769 --> 00:36:24.309
and whose words are recorded here in this book,
00:36:24.389 --> 00:36:27.670
who has since passed. The other is Albert Bartlett,
00:36:27.750 --> 00:36:30.969
and then the third is Joe Bajent, who appears
00:36:30.969 --> 00:36:35.010
late in this book. But next up is an interview
00:36:35.010 --> 00:36:37.690
or an excerpt from an interview with Bill McKibben.
00:36:38.489 --> 00:36:41.269
He appeared on episode number 68 of the Sea Realm
00:36:41.269 --> 00:36:43.550
podcast, Durable Communities, released December
00:36:43.550 --> 00:36:49.389
12, 2007. There's polling data in this country.
00:36:49.469 --> 00:36:51.550
They've asked Americans every year since the
00:36:51.550 --> 00:36:55.690
end of World War II, are you happy with your
00:36:55.690 --> 00:36:58.329
life or not? And the number of Americans who
00:36:58.329 --> 00:37:02.530
say, I'm very happy with my life, peaks in 1956
00:37:02.530 --> 00:37:08.500
and goes downhill since. And... That's odd, because
00:37:08.500 --> 00:37:11.340
in that same 50 years, we've trebled our material
00:37:11.340 --> 00:37:14.420
standard of living. If the economy worked the
00:37:14.420 --> 00:37:17.079
way we intuitively think it does, those curves
00:37:17.079 --> 00:37:19.960
shouldn't go that way. It turns out that around
00:37:19.960 --> 00:37:24.239
the world, once you get past a per capita income
00:37:24.239 --> 00:37:28.300
of about $10 ,000 per year, any correlation between
00:37:28.300 --> 00:37:34.239
more and better scatters, the plot goes in all
00:37:34.239 --> 00:37:37.960
different directions. And, you know, that's something
00:37:37.960 --> 00:37:40.880
we need to know. It's a basic fact about human
00:37:40.880 --> 00:37:44.960
beings that's as important as knowing, you know,
00:37:44.980 --> 00:37:48.099
what temperature water freezes at. Because we
00:37:48.099 --> 00:37:51.820
have geared so much of our life as a country
00:37:51.820 --> 00:37:54.820
to endlessly expanding the economy past the point
00:37:54.820 --> 00:37:57.559
where it's producing anything in terms of satisfaction.
00:37:59.340 --> 00:38:03.199
also producing great negative consequences, environmentally
00:38:03.199 --> 00:38:06.000
in particular, it would be good to get a hold
00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:09.619
of that. It would be good to figure out some
00:38:09.619 --> 00:38:11.940
other things to be asking our economy to aim
00:38:11.940 --> 00:38:18.400
for. We've concentrated obsessive interest on
00:38:18.400 --> 00:38:22.460
growth, and hence we've largely ignored durability,
00:38:22.840 --> 00:38:26.420
the idea that we might be building an economy
00:38:26.420 --> 00:38:29.670
and a society that could last. for a long time
00:38:29.670 --> 00:38:33.190
that could survive disruptions. And we've ignored
00:38:33.190 --> 00:38:36.030
this question of whether that growth is producing
00:38:36.030 --> 00:38:40.389
satisfaction or not. If we aimed for those two
00:38:40.389 --> 00:38:43.409
things in addition or instead of just endless
00:38:43.409 --> 00:38:45.869
expansion, I think we'd have more interesting
00:38:45.869 --> 00:38:49.690
possibilities for getting out of some of the
00:38:49.690 --> 00:38:51.750
trouble we've gotten into with things like global
00:38:51.750 --> 00:38:54.750
warming and for building the kind of society
00:38:54.750 --> 00:38:57.320
that people actually want to live in. a kind
00:38:57.320 --> 00:39:00.760
of society that's marked by more connection and
00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:03.639
more community than we have at the moment. That's
00:39:03.639 --> 00:39:06.500
what the data shows people are most missing from
00:39:06.500 --> 00:39:10.900
their lives. Cheap fossil fuel and the affluence
00:39:10.900 --> 00:39:15.139
that it provides have allowed us to become the
00:39:15.139 --> 00:39:17.440
first people in the world who have no need of
00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:20.460
our neighbors. We've taken that to be a good
00:39:20.460 --> 00:39:22.860
thing and talked a lot about independence and
00:39:22.860 --> 00:39:27.710
individualism and all that. But in fact, as the
00:39:27.710 --> 00:39:31.550
descendants of socially evolved primates who
00:39:31.550 --> 00:39:34.210
spent all day sitting around grooming each other,
00:39:34.309 --> 00:39:37.190
it turns out that it's not what we were built
00:39:37.190 --> 00:39:41.050
for and it's not what we like. And, you know,
00:39:41.090 --> 00:39:44.230
one of the benefits of getting away from the
00:39:44.230 --> 00:39:48.570
fossil fuel world we now inhabit will be the
00:39:48.570 --> 00:39:52.389
inevitable resurgence of more community. We see
00:39:52.389 --> 00:39:55.760
it happening already. Farmer's markets are the
00:39:55.760 --> 00:39:58.079
fastest growing part of the food economy in this
00:39:58.079 --> 00:40:00.420
country. And one of the reasons that they're
00:40:00.420 --> 00:40:02.980
going fast is because people like the experience
00:40:02.980 --> 00:40:05.880
of shopping at them. The average shopper at a
00:40:05.880 --> 00:40:10.380
farmer's market has 10 times as many conversations
00:40:10.380 --> 00:40:12.860
as the average shopper at a supermarket. That's
00:40:12.860 --> 00:40:16.840
a lot. That's what we're built for. One of the
00:40:16.840 --> 00:40:19.840
uses of the 20th century was that we found out
00:40:19.840 --> 00:40:24.269
things that don't work. For instance, huge centrally
00:40:24.269 --> 00:40:26.110
planned economies where the government tells
00:40:26.110 --> 00:40:28.750
everybody what to do all the time does prove
00:40:28.750 --> 00:40:32.610
to be a bad idea in a lot of ways. However, that
00:40:32.610 --> 00:40:36.349
doesn't mean that what does work is everybody
00:40:36.349 --> 00:40:38.849
doing exactly what they want to and no one ever
00:40:38.849 --> 00:40:41.329
trying to get together as a community and figure
00:40:41.329 --> 00:40:45.730
out what makes sense. That is ideologically extreme
00:40:45.730 --> 00:40:48.809
and is unlike sort of where human beings have
00:40:48.809 --> 00:40:54.630
come from. Marxist collectivism was. What we
00:40:54.630 --> 00:40:59.690
need are things that sound and are normal. Communities,
00:40:59.789 --> 00:41:03.570
neighbors, people figuring out how to do things
00:41:03.570 --> 00:41:06.869
together. That's what government at its best
00:41:06.869 --> 00:41:10.070
is. And there were some tasks that only government
00:41:10.070 --> 00:41:12.949
can perform. We're going to need to deal with
00:41:12.949 --> 00:41:17.250
climate change. One of the places where I lost
00:41:17.250 --> 00:41:19.449
a lot of respect for libertarians in the last
00:41:19.449 --> 00:41:22.369
decade was the that they became in many ways
00:41:22.369 --> 00:41:25.010
scientific denialists about global warming. All
00:41:25.010 --> 00:41:27.429
you had to do was read the webpage of the Cato
00:41:27.429 --> 00:41:30.730
Institute or Reason magazine or things. And one
00:41:30.730 --> 00:41:34.590
of the reasons was that the chemistry and physics
00:41:34.590 --> 00:41:37.710
conflicted with their ideology. And the syllogism
00:41:37.710 --> 00:41:41.449
became markets solve all problems. Markets aren't
00:41:41.449 --> 00:41:43.690
solving global warming. Therefore, global warming
00:41:43.690 --> 00:41:46.889
isn't a problem. That's poor logic, but it's
00:41:46.889 --> 00:41:49.559
emotionally comforting. If you're the kind of
00:41:49.559 --> 00:41:54.239
person who needs some abstract ideological system,
00:41:54.420 --> 00:41:59.159
you know, Marxism, Leninism, Randian objectivism,
00:41:59.199 --> 00:42:03.340
whatever it is to order your life. For the rest
00:42:03.340 --> 00:42:09.380
of us, what we need is trying to figure out what
00:42:09.380 --> 00:42:12.699
scale to solve what problems at. And some of
00:42:12.699 --> 00:42:15.099
those are solved individually and some of them
00:42:15.099 --> 00:42:17.239
are solved in your neighborhood. and some of
00:42:17.239 --> 00:42:20.119
them are solved internationally, and, you know,
00:42:20.199 --> 00:42:25.760
it's not as comforting as having a one -size
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:28.280
-fits -all explanation for everything. On the
00:42:28.280 --> 00:42:32.639
other hand, those don't work. The logic of the
00:42:32.639 --> 00:42:37.480
fossil fuel world has been a logic of great globalization,
00:42:37.900 --> 00:42:43.940
of great... disconnection, one from each other,
00:42:44.019 --> 00:42:46.440
because we no longer have a practical need for
00:42:46.440 --> 00:42:50.480
our neighbors. Hence the logic of a world past
00:42:50.480 --> 00:42:53.559
cheap fossil fuel, I think, is one where we begin
00:42:53.559 --> 00:42:57.500
to draw a little closer together again. What
00:42:57.500 --> 00:43:01.059
we know about human satisfaction would lead us
00:43:01.059 --> 00:43:03.239
to believe that that will have at least as many
00:43:03.239 --> 00:43:08.010
benefits as costs. And we'll get better at it
00:43:08.010 --> 00:43:10.010
as we do it. We've lost some of those skills
00:43:10.010 --> 00:43:12.710
in the last 50 years. We're not that good at
00:43:12.710 --> 00:43:15.889
cooperating. We could each other on things, you
00:43:15.889 --> 00:43:19.829
know. We're all obsessed with the idea that we
00:43:19.829 --> 00:43:22.849
should pay less taxes and be left alone and whatever.
00:43:23.210 --> 00:43:26.309
But in fact, the community that survived best,
00:43:26.349 --> 00:43:28.550
the people that survived best in more challenging
00:43:28.550 --> 00:43:31.760
times. are going to be those who live in communities
00:43:31.760 --> 00:43:34.380
that are able to adapt and work with each other
00:43:34.380 --> 00:43:38.059
well. Next up is the name probably most associated
00:43:38.059 --> 00:43:41.579
with the Sea Realm podcast in its entirety, and
00:43:41.579 --> 00:43:43.980
that is James Howard Kunstler. The segment you're
00:43:43.980 --> 00:43:46.300
about to hear comes from either episode number
00:43:46.300 --> 00:43:50.719
72, The Long Emergency, or episode 73, Cui Bono.
00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:54.880
They were released on January 9th and 16th, 2008.
00:43:55.260 --> 00:43:58.260
So this is the first... interview in the book
00:43:58.260 --> 00:44:02.539
that is post -2007. It's from very early, from
00:44:02.539 --> 00:44:07.000
January of 2008. I want to point out that I was
00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:08.960
having all of these conversations, which were
00:44:08.960 --> 00:44:15.179
seemingly academic and speculative in 2007. And
00:44:15.179 --> 00:44:19.460
then in mid to late 2008, it started to feel
00:44:19.460 --> 00:44:24.480
very, very real. Anyway, here are excerpts from
00:44:24.480 --> 00:44:27.079
a C -ROM conversation with James Howard Kunstler.
00:44:28.019 --> 00:44:30.619
You know, I think that the most obvious difficult
00:44:30.619 --> 00:44:37.480
transition for us is going to be what entails
00:44:37.480 --> 00:44:42.420
the destiny of suburbia, you know, and how we're
00:44:42.420 --> 00:44:45.300
going to cope with our inability to live in this
00:44:45.300 --> 00:44:47.300
arrangement that we constructed for ourselves,
00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:49.960
this elaborate suburban arrangement. I really...
00:44:50.619 --> 00:44:53.099
have no idea how we're going to manage that.
00:44:53.159 --> 00:44:57.099
I can only think that it will entail a lot of
00:44:57.099 --> 00:45:04.420
loss, economic loss, and eventually maybe some
00:45:04.420 --> 00:45:09.719
fighting over the cable scraps of the 20th century.
00:45:10.599 --> 00:45:12.739
It's going to be very difficult for us to...
00:45:13.130 --> 00:45:17.530
get back to farming at a scale that is appropriate
00:45:17.530 --> 00:45:20.889
to what our conditions present, because so many
00:45:20.889 --> 00:45:23.630
of those skills have been lost. But perhaps even
00:45:23.630 --> 00:45:28.730
more importantly, the difficulty of reallocating
00:45:28.730 --> 00:45:33.409
land, you know, in smaller parcels to people
00:45:33.409 --> 00:45:35.750
who know what to do with it. I mean, right now,
00:45:35.829 --> 00:45:38.590
an awful lot of the ag land in the heartland
00:45:38.590 --> 00:45:41.489
of America, you know, in the grain belt and...
00:45:41.769 --> 00:45:44.269
you know, in the center of the country, is owned
00:45:44.269 --> 00:45:50.190
in very large chunks, in some cases by corporations.
00:45:51.170 --> 00:45:55.650
And I really don't know how we're going to adapt
00:45:55.650 --> 00:46:01.250
to the need to do this on a smaller scale. I
00:46:01.250 --> 00:46:06.969
have to say, I am not a conspiracy theory aficionado.
00:46:07.050 --> 00:46:10.429
I really don't. I'm allergic to conspiracy theories.
00:46:10.969 --> 00:46:13.190
I think that an awful lot of what's happened
00:46:13.190 --> 00:46:17.210
to us has been a totally consensual thing in
00:46:17.210 --> 00:46:19.269
the sense that the American public went along
00:46:19.269 --> 00:46:23.190
with whatever their leaders or corporate plutocracy
00:46:23.190 --> 00:46:27.550
wanted them to do. So it's been a completely
00:46:27.550 --> 00:46:31.590
consensual trip the whole way. But the American
00:46:31.590 --> 00:46:34.369
public is certainly going to be greatly disappointed.
00:46:35.039 --> 00:46:37.539
When things really don't hold together and they
00:46:37.539 --> 00:46:40.460
discover, well, there aren't going to be hydrogen
00:46:40.460 --> 00:46:44.980
cars and there is no realistic way of putting
00:46:44.980 --> 00:46:47.860
up the hydrogen filling stations all over America.
00:46:47.900 --> 00:46:49.840
And we're probably just not going to be able
00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:53.099
to drive as much as we did, if at all. So these
00:46:53.099 --> 00:46:54.900
things are going to come as huge disappointments
00:46:54.900 --> 00:46:59.969
to the nation. I do think that the restoration
00:46:59.969 --> 00:47:03.989
of public space and indeed the restoration of
00:47:03.989 --> 00:47:08.610
satisfying daily environments in the U .S. is
00:47:08.610 --> 00:47:12.670
liable to follow that kind of socially emergent
00:47:12.670 --> 00:47:19.170
quality that I alluded to earlier. Just as the
00:47:19.170 --> 00:47:23.489
disaggregation of our towns and cities proceeded
00:47:23.489 --> 00:47:26.530
from the conditions of the 20th century, namely...
00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:29.199
You know, this incredible abundance of cheap
00:47:29.199 --> 00:47:33.420
oil. So things are going to, I think, reorganize
00:47:33.420 --> 00:47:36.599
and re -self -organize in the other direction
00:47:36.599 --> 00:47:40.659
as we're forced to downscale. The only real big
00:47:40.659 --> 00:47:43.519
question is how disorderly this process is likely
00:47:43.519 --> 00:47:46.840
to be, because unlike a lot of other people who
00:47:46.840 --> 00:47:50.099
think about these issues, I assume that there
00:47:50.099 --> 00:47:53.090
will be quite a bit of disorder. In the process
00:47:53.090 --> 00:47:57.469
and that it won't be a simple segue or transition
00:47:57.469 --> 00:48:01.909
to the next thing, because we're going to be
00:48:01.909 --> 00:48:05.289
left with an awful lot of liabilities and frankly,
00:48:05.570 --> 00:48:08.110
just a big myth to clean up. You know, a lot
00:48:08.110 --> 00:48:10.050
of the stuff that we've invested in over the
00:48:10.050 --> 00:48:13.030
last 60 years, the shopping malls and the strip
00:48:13.030 --> 00:48:15.070
malls and all of the automobile infrastructure
00:48:15.070 --> 00:48:18.329
and the parking lots, most of this stuff doesn't
00:48:18.329 --> 00:48:21.780
really lend itself to being retrofitted. along
00:48:21.780 --> 00:48:24.420
the lines that a lot of people fantasize about.
00:48:24.780 --> 00:48:28.280
For one thing, we're probably going to be a much
00:48:28.280 --> 00:48:31.679
less affluent society in the coming decades than
00:48:31.679 --> 00:48:34.940
we were in the previous decades. So we're not
00:48:34.940 --> 00:48:38.460
going to have the investment resources to put
00:48:38.460 --> 00:48:41.960
into retrofitting the suburbs and the mall. That's
00:48:41.960 --> 00:48:44.579
why I maintain a lot of those things will end
00:48:44.579 --> 00:48:47.699
up as either ruins, plums, or salvage yards.
00:48:49.289 --> 00:48:53.550
We are probably going to have to return to traditional
00:48:53.550 --> 00:48:58.369
human environments, namely smaller cities, small
00:48:58.369 --> 00:49:02.130
towns that have a meaningful relationship with
00:49:02.130 --> 00:49:06.510
productive agricultural surroundings. And, you
00:49:06.510 --> 00:49:09.010
know, we do have a lot of small towns and small
00:49:09.010 --> 00:49:12.269
cities in America that are suitable for this.
00:49:12.369 --> 00:49:16.349
The fate of our larger cities, I think, is somewhat
00:49:16.349 --> 00:49:20.679
more tragic. because we're not going to be able
00:49:20.679 --> 00:49:24.159
to maintain these so -called metroplexes in their
00:49:24.159 --> 00:49:29.099
current scale. And what happens to them is liable
00:49:29.099 --> 00:49:33.619
to be extremely messy and disorderly, especially
00:49:33.619 --> 00:49:36.820
the ones that are overburdened with skyscrapers,
00:49:36.820 --> 00:49:39.780
although there aren't that many of them, mainly
00:49:39.780 --> 00:49:42.539
New York and Chicago. There are going to be a
00:49:42.539 --> 00:49:46.099
lot of forces in motion. I think that the redevelopment
00:49:46.099 --> 00:49:48.670
that we see in the future... is going to be on
00:49:48.670 --> 00:49:52.409
a much smaller increment and a much finer grain
00:49:52.409 --> 00:49:55.150
than what we've been used to. We're not going
00:49:55.150 --> 00:49:58.710
to be doing 40 -acre redevelopments. We're going
00:49:58.710 --> 00:50:01.369
to be doing the single building lot in a town
00:50:01.369 --> 00:50:05.489
at a time because the investment is simply not
00:50:05.489 --> 00:50:07.949
going to be there to do $50 million projects
00:50:07.949 --> 00:50:10.630
anymore or $300 million projects. We're going
00:50:10.630 --> 00:50:13.190
to have to do it on a much finer scale than that.
00:50:16.139 --> 00:50:20.280
As we also move into an era in which the car
00:50:20.280 --> 00:50:24.880
is a diminishing presence in our lives, we're
00:50:24.880 --> 00:50:28.059
not going to be designing strictly for cars and
00:50:28.059 --> 00:50:30.599
for motoring anymore. And I think we're going
00:50:30.599 --> 00:50:33.260
to naturally return to some of the modes of design
00:50:33.260 --> 00:50:37.260
that can be described as traditional. And when
00:50:37.260 --> 00:50:40.400
we do that, we're going to rediscover that the
00:50:40.400 --> 00:50:44.860
street is the primary public place that we have
00:50:44.860 --> 00:50:47.480
in our... in our world, and that we're going
00:50:47.480 --> 00:50:53.420
to find a way to embellish it and honor it that
00:50:53.420 --> 00:50:58.340
is consistent with a much healthier existence.
00:50:59.219 --> 00:51:03.059
So, you know, a lot of the traditional things
00:51:03.059 --> 00:51:06.619
that we understood how to do in architecture
00:51:06.619 --> 00:51:09.079
and urban design, which we threw in the garbage
00:51:09.079 --> 00:51:12.780
in the mid -20th century, are going to return,
00:51:12.920 --> 00:51:16.590
and indeed they are returning already. That was
00:51:16.590 --> 00:51:19.170
James Howard Kunstler, a name and a voice and
00:51:19.170 --> 00:51:20.909
personality that will be familiar to anybody
00:51:20.909 --> 00:51:23.610
who was following the peak oil scene when it
00:51:23.610 --> 00:51:27.210
was at its most vital. The next person you're
00:51:27.210 --> 00:51:30.289
going to hear from is possibly a name that you
00:51:30.289 --> 00:51:32.590
either don't know, or if you remember it, it's
00:51:32.590 --> 00:51:34.869
only because he was on the Zero -Om podcast once.
00:51:35.289 --> 00:51:38.219
I'm talking about Colin Tudge. who wrote a book
00:51:38.219 --> 00:51:41.579
called Feeding People is Easy. Colin Tudge was
00:51:41.579 --> 00:51:44.639
the guest on Episode 77, Agricultural Intelligence,
00:51:44.900 --> 00:51:49.980
and 78, Fuel vs. Food, Not. Released February
00:51:49.980 --> 00:51:55.139
13th and 20th, 2008. If we are serious about
00:51:55.139 --> 00:51:57.800
wanting to feed people, then we have to start
00:51:57.800 --> 00:51:59.760
from the very beginning, from first principles,
00:51:59.960 --> 00:52:03.400
and say, what do we need to do if we want to
00:52:03.400 --> 00:52:06.340
feed people? And the answer can be provided in
00:52:06.340 --> 00:52:09.260
one simple... sentence which is if you want to
00:52:09.260 --> 00:52:12.219
feed people you have to design agriculture especially
00:52:12.219 --> 00:52:15.639
for that purpose what we need to do is design
00:52:15.639 --> 00:52:19.420
agriculture to feed people now i call that agriculture
00:52:19.420 --> 00:52:22.579
in my book enlightened agriculture and the reason
00:52:22.579 --> 00:52:26.300
i call my book feeding people is easy is that
00:52:26.300 --> 00:52:28.860
i think it really should be possible if we design
00:52:28.860 --> 00:52:31.719
agriculture especially to feed people it should
00:52:31.719 --> 00:52:34.840
be easy to feed or fairly easy to feed everybody
00:52:34.840 --> 00:52:37.320
who is likely to be born onto this earth forever
00:52:37.320 --> 00:52:40.239
and to feed them furthermore to the highest standards
00:52:40.239 --> 00:52:43.900
of nutrition and gastronomy if we continue going
00:52:43.900 --> 00:52:46.219
down the present route then they're heading for
00:52:46.219 --> 00:52:48.519
disaster and i know there are scientists and
00:52:48.519 --> 00:52:50.480
mathematicians who control all sorts of grass
00:52:50.480 --> 00:52:53.920
to show that what they're doing is right but
00:52:53.920 --> 00:52:56.079
actually common sense and what actually happening
00:52:56.079 --> 00:52:58.440
on the ground shows that what they're doing is
00:52:58.440 --> 00:53:01.800
absolutely disastrous I know there are also people
00:53:01.800 --> 00:53:03.960
who say that if you try to design agriculture,
00:53:04.260 --> 00:53:07.019
as it were, to feed people, and you start re
00:53:07.019 --> 00:53:09.300
-using, you know, you start re -invoking the
00:53:09.300 --> 00:53:12.300
kind of methods that people did use 30 years
00:53:12.300 --> 00:53:15.239
ago or 100 years ago, not that I'm talking about
00:53:15.239 --> 00:53:17.059
being old -fashioned, but if you do this, then
00:53:17.059 --> 00:53:18.860
you're simply going backwards. You know, this
00:53:18.860 --> 00:53:21.960
is regressive. And you have to go forward. You
00:53:21.960 --> 00:53:24.139
have to get more industrial life and make more
00:53:24.139 --> 00:53:26.179
money and all that kind of stuff. And to me,
00:53:26.199 --> 00:53:28.769
this is just nonsense. I think... What happened
00:53:28.769 --> 00:53:32.269
over the last 30, 40, 50 years shouldn't be seen
00:53:32.269 --> 00:53:34.530
as progress. It should be seen as a massive diversion
00:53:34.530 --> 00:53:38.269
away from common sense. And I think the world
00:53:38.269 --> 00:53:40.949
has got to come to its senses and say this really
00:53:40.949 --> 00:53:43.389
is just anomalous, what they're doing at the
00:53:43.389 --> 00:53:45.610
moment. We have to move back to first principles.
00:53:46.030 --> 00:53:49.929
In effect, redesign, start again. And then I
00:53:49.929 --> 00:53:52.750
think we're in with a chance. That's basically
00:53:52.750 --> 00:53:56.949
what I think about that. So if you're really
00:53:56.949 --> 00:53:59.409
trying to feed... people well provide maximum
00:53:59.409 --> 00:54:02.550
amount of food easily you finish up focus on
00:54:02.550 --> 00:54:05.070
the arable fit in the horticulture in the best
00:54:05.070 --> 00:54:09.530
places and then just fit in the uh um the the
00:54:09.530 --> 00:54:13.329
the animals well you can if you do that you finish
00:54:13.329 --> 00:54:18.699
up with a lot of plants not much meat and maximum
00:54:18.699 --> 00:54:21.019
variety. The whole thing becomes very, very varied
00:54:21.019 --> 00:54:23.159
if you start doing it in this kind of way, using
00:54:23.159 --> 00:54:25.300
different classes of livestock, different kinds
00:54:25.300 --> 00:54:28.940
of crops, playing one off against another. If
00:54:28.940 --> 00:54:31.500
you then say, well, take this little slogan,
00:54:31.800 --> 00:54:35.860
rock of plants, not much meat, maximum variety.
00:54:36.280 --> 00:54:38.340
This also, this is what you do if you want to
00:54:38.340 --> 00:54:42.000
farm well, but it also summarizes the best of
00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:44.860
the nutritional theory from the last 30 years.
00:54:45.369 --> 00:54:47.550
In other words, farming that's designed simply
00:54:47.550 --> 00:54:51.590
to produce lots of good food will also meet human
00:54:51.590 --> 00:54:54.309
nutritional requirements as well as they can
00:54:54.309 --> 00:54:57.409
be met. If you now look at all the great cooking
00:54:57.409 --> 00:54:59.969
in the world, all the great cuisine, and I'm
00:54:59.969 --> 00:55:02.489
talking about places like India, Turkey, China,
00:55:02.809 --> 00:55:06.670
southern France, Italy, Italy possibly being
00:55:06.670 --> 00:55:09.570
the greatest of all, North Africa, and indeed
00:55:09.570 --> 00:55:11.789
from your own country, you know, Cajun cooking
00:55:11.789 --> 00:55:16.199
and that kind of thing. you find that all great
00:55:16.199 --> 00:55:20.019
cuisines also make use of this fundamental pattern
00:55:20.019 --> 00:55:23.639
of a lot of plants, not much meat and maximum
00:55:23.639 --> 00:55:26.800
variety and what this means is that good farming
00:55:26.800 --> 00:55:30.699
designs and produces lots of good food is perfect
00:55:30.699 --> 00:55:34.079
nutritionally and also supports the greatest
00:55:34.079 --> 00:55:37.340
cuisines that the world has ever produced and
00:55:37.340 --> 00:55:41.260
this is why I'm saying that feeding people is
00:55:41.260 --> 00:55:45.050
easy because actually If you farm reasonably,
00:55:45.210 --> 00:55:47.769
according to a basic good principle, you would...
00:55:47.769 --> 00:55:50.250
Basically, you don't have to ask people even
00:55:50.250 --> 00:55:52.269
to be austere. You don't have to ask them to
00:55:52.269 --> 00:55:54.070
do without. You merely have to ask them to take
00:55:54.070 --> 00:55:56.789
food very, very seriously. And, in fact, to become
00:55:56.789 --> 00:55:59.449
gourmets. And the kind of people who are very
00:55:59.449 --> 00:56:02.250
easy to feed, are people like the Italians who
00:56:02.250 --> 00:56:04.550
really do understand food, and the southern French
00:56:04.550 --> 00:56:07.280
who really do understand food. love their food
00:56:07.280 --> 00:56:09.599
and it's a very high standard they're very easy
00:56:09.599 --> 00:56:11.559
to feed because they like a lot of plants not
00:56:11.559 --> 00:56:14.239
much meat maximum variety so this is the kind
00:56:14.239 --> 00:56:17.099
of route i want to go down now then the other
00:56:17.099 --> 00:56:19.800
thing if you then ask the question but how do
00:56:19.800 --> 00:56:22.059
you farm in this beautiful way lots of plants
00:56:22.059 --> 00:56:24.360
maximum you know not much meat maximum but how
00:56:24.360 --> 00:56:26.599
do you do that the answer is it has to have you
00:56:26.599 --> 00:56:28.460
have to have a very high standard of husbandry
00:56:28.460 --> 00:56:30.800
because this kind of farming is very intricate
00:56:30.800 --> 00:56:33.420
so you have to have lots and lots of farmers
00:56:34.170 --> 00:56:36.050
And if you've got lots and lots of farmers farming
00:56:36.050 --> 00:56:38.090
intricately, then really you're better off with
00:56:38.090 --> 00:56:41.389
lots of small farms, none as farm, family farms,
00:56:41.730 --> 00:56:44.710
than you are by having very big, you know, very
00:56:44.710 --> 00:56:47.670
big places, very big, not, than you are by having
00:56:47.670 --> 00:56:50.130
very big places and just trying to, you know,
00:56:50.130 --> 00:56:53.949
produce monocultures. I admire, in my, enormously,
00:56:54.230 --> 00:56:57.190
you know, and you're one of the great founders
00:56:57.190 --> 00:56:59.940
of your country, Thomas Jefferson. I think they
00:56:59.940 --> 00:57:02.199
got it entirely right in the early 19th century.
00:57:02.300 --> 00:57:04.260
One of the things that Thomas Jefferson said
00:57:04.260 --> 00:57:08.239
was, I envisage America as a country of small
00:57:08.239 --> 00:57:11.199
farmers. And it was a country of small farmers
00:57:11.199 --> 00:57:14.219
until well into the 20th century. And now, as
00:57:14.219 --> 00:57:16.820
I'm sure you know, you have only 1 % of people
00:57:16.820 --> 00:57:19.340
working on the land in your country. In your
00:57:19.340 --> 00:57:21.059
country, you've got more people in jail than
00:57:21.059 --> 00:57:23.039
are working full -time on the land, which I think
00:57:23.039 --> 00:57:25.969
is a pretty foul statistic. The thing is that
00:57:25.969 --> 00:57:28.190
you talk to these big industrial types and they
00:57:28.190 --> 00:57:30.289
say, well, we're interested in farming efficiency.
00:57:30.710 --> 00:57:32.670
Well, it depends what you mean by efficiency.
00:57:32.730 --> 00:57:36.050
If you're interested in money, efficiency defined
00:57:36.050 --> 00:57:38.789
in terms of money, then the system is very efficient
00:57:38.789 --> 00:57:41.210
because they've cut out all the labor, which
00:57:41.210 --> 00:57:43.889
means they've cut out most of the cost, which
00:57:43.889 --> 00:57:46.389
means that they're getting huge and they're putting
00:57:46.389 --> 00:57:48.469
in loads and loads of fertilizer and so on, which
00:57:48.469 --> 00:57:50.909
means they're getting very, very big yield at
00:57:50.909 --> 00:57:53.590
very little cost. And in cash terms, it's very
00:57:53.590 --> 00:57:56.139
efficient. But what we should be talking about,
00:57:56.260 --> 00:57:58.519
if we're interested in seriously in feeding people,
00:57:58.760 --> 00:58:01.119
and if we're talking about the long -term future,
00:58:01.360 --> 00:58:04.119
is biological efficiency. In other words, how
00:58:04.119 --> 00:58:06.159
much energy you're putting in compared with how
00:58:06.159 --> 00:58:08.760
much energy you're getting out. And how sustainability,
00:58:09.139 --> 00:58:11.119
you know, can we really go on farming in this
00:58:11.119 --> 00:58:13.780
kind of way in a hundred years, a thousand years,
00:58:13.900 --> 00:58:15.659
ten thousand years? If the answer to that is
00:58:15.659 --> 00:58:18.800
no, then it's not efficient at all. So you see,
00:58:18.920 --> 00:58:22.250
I just... You see what I mean? I mean, we need
00:58:22.250 --> 00:58:25.210
exactly the kind of farming that the present
00:58:25.210 --> 00:58:28.250
industrialists are doing their best to destroy.
00:58:28.550 --> 00:58:31.230
We need lots of people on the land. We need basically
00:58:31.230 --> 00:58:34.210
agrarian authorities. We need very, very mixed
00:58:34.210 --> 00:58:36.710
agriculture, whereas these people are trying
00:58:36.710 --> 00:58:39.090
to create monocultures. A million agriculture
00:58:39.090 --> 00:58:41.389
is designed to produce food, which is entirely
00:58:41.389 --> 00:58:43.210
different from agriculture that's designed to
00:58:43.210 --> 00:58:46.349
produce money. And that's my non -answer to your
00:58:46.349 --> 00:58:50.260
question. That was Colin Tudge. And now, Joe
00:58:50.260 --> 00:58:53.840
Bajent. Again, unfortunately, the late Joe Bajent.
00:58:54.900 --> 00:58:57.579
This is from Sea Realm Podcast episode number
00:58:57.579 --> 00:59:01.679
149, A Chemical Season of the Mind, released
00:59:01.679 --> 00:59:06.099
April 15, 2009. You know, when I did the book,
00:59:06.159 --> 00:59:09.340
I had to tie it together. The book is about why
00:59:09.340 --> 00:59:11.300
working -class people vote against their own
00:59:11.300 --> 00:59:13.000
interests, and I didn't want to write a political
00:59:13.000 --> 00:59:15.619
book. I wanted to write a human book about...
00:59:15.769 --> 00:59:18.369
people I knew and grew up with. But at the end,
00:59:18.389 --> 00:59:21.670
I had to tie it together some way, and why would
00:59:21.670 --> 00:59:24.269
anybody behave this way against their own interest?
00:59:24.409 --> 00:59:28.929
And so I discussed what I call the American hologram,
00:59:29.050 --> 00:59:32.530
and it's a self -referential bubble in which
00:59:32.530 --> 00:59:36.210
the people inside of it, you know, who directly
00:59:36.210 --> 00:59:38.530
wired particularly to television and movies and
00:59:38.530 --> 00:59:41.349
media, it's like a snow globe, you know, and
00:59:41.349 --> 00:59:46.449
a bloody war killing children. disemboweling
00:59:46.449 --> 00:59:49.289
people and hundreds of thousands of dead is reduced
00:59:49.289 --> 00:59:53.309
to our boys and the flag and america a place
00:59:53.309 --> 00:59:56.449
of church spires and freedom and opportunity
00:59:56.449 --> 01:00:00.820
when the hologram gives us that message as if
01:00:00.820 --> 01:00:03.559
it were we were inside a snow globe and it's
01:00:03.559 --> 01:00:05.960
the only thing we have to refer to is the language
01:00:05.960 --> 01:00:08.659
and the images that were fed practically directly
01:00:08.659 --> 01:00:11.559
to the brain stem from all of our media it's
01:00:11.559 --> 01:00:13.800
the uniform message there's really no big evil
01:00:13.800 --> 01:00:16.559
guy controlling it we manifest it in ourselves
01:00:16.559 --> 01:00:20.579
but the thing about it is is that the system
01:00:20.579 --> 01:00:23.159
that we've created which is a malignant system
01:00:23.159 --> 01:00:25.599
you'd have to call it malignant when you look
01:00:25.599 --> 01:00:28.650
at it in the Total perspective, here we are 6
01:00:28.650 --> 01:00:31.769
% of the world. We use 36 % of its resources.
01:00:31.769 --> 01:00:35.349
I count water and air, by the way. Most of those
01:00:35.349 --> 01:00:39.670
counts don't do that. But everybody is a willing
01:00:39.670 --> 01:00:42.909
prisoner. And that's why I say it's the Stockholm
01:00:42.909 --> 01:00:46.230
Syndrome of the soul. They're willing prisoners.
01:00:46.530 --> 01:00:49.789
They identify with their captors. Capitalism
01:00:49.789 --> 01:00:52.869
is an extractive process. It's a faceless machine
01:00:52.869 --> 01:00:56.039
that exists for one reason. you know, to extract
01:00:56.039 --> 01:01:00.880
from you production and profit, you know. And
01:01:00.880 --> 01:01:05.480
as citizens, well, people have been reduced,
01:01:05.539 --> 01:01:08.639
most people have been reduced to a market demographic.
01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:11.340
They're consumers. They're not citizens, you
01:01:11.340 --> 01:01:14.820
know. In no way are they citizens. You know,
01:01:14.820 --> 01:01:16.900
no matter how active they are within the system,
01:01:16.980 --> 01:01:19.559
the system is the problem. But they're prisoners
01:01:19.559 --> 01:01:22.280
of it. They don't even see that it owns their
01:01:22.280 --> 01:01:24.650
soul. that the very things they see as solutions
01:01:24.650 --> 01:01:28.269
are also part of it buy green do this you know
01:01:28.269 --> 01:01:31.110
capitalism offers you it co -ops everything and
01:01:31.110 --> 01:01:34.630
offers it as a product a consumer identity and
01:01:34.630 --> 01:01:37.250
so on so that's why i say they're prisoners willing
01:01:37.250 --> 01:01:40.329
prisoners of their captors they totally identify
01:01:40.329 --> 01:01:44.260
for instance the bailout of the banks we cannot
01:01:44.260 --> 01:01:47.579
live without corporations corporations feed us
01:01:47.579 --> 01:01:50.699
corporations give us health corporations give
01:01:50.699 --> 01:01:53.980
us transportation we cannot let them die we cannot
01:01:53.980 --> 01:01:56.800
let the banks die and so just like the egyptians
01:01:56.800 --> 01:01:59.139
making their offerings or the aztecs drop the
01:01:59.139 --> 01:02:02.760
temples we get the bailouts the extracted sweat
01:02:02.760 --> 01:02:05.719
of the people is offered up to reserve the vast
01:02:05.719 --> 01:02:08.900
corporations because you know as sole prisoners
01:02:08.900 --> 01:02:12.190
you know They will not die if the corporations
01:02:12.190 --> 01:02:15.909
die, but they believe they will. You know, the
01:02:15.909 --> 01:02:18.929
evidence around them, you know, tells them, oh,
01:02:19.010 --> 01:02:21.789
I will die if the banks fail. I will, you know
01:02:21.789 --> 01:02:23.829
what I mean? The world as I know it will disappear.
01:02:24.190 --> 01:02:27.489
Well, no, 6 % of the world will have their ass
01:02:27.489 --> 01:02:29.469
up the crick real quick, but the rest of the
01:02:29.469 --> 01:02:33.530
world is not as affected. You know, if the banks
01:02:33.530 --> 01:02:36.230
go broke in the third world, gee, what else is
01:02:36.230 --> 01:02:41.340
new? Yes, it causes a lot of pain and inconvenience,
01:02:41.480 --> 01:02:46.659
but life is full of pain and inconvenience. I've
01:02:46.659 --> 01:02:50.500
never made any bones about it. LSD, along with
01:02:50.500 --> 01:02:53.159
Buddhism and psychology, but particularly LSD,
01:02:53.260 --> 01:02:55.780
the other two wouldn't have even happened, was
01:02:55.780 --> 01:02:58.340
the great awakening for me. I was a rural kid
01:02:58.340 --> 01:03:01.239
living in a small town, and I'd read about it
01:03:01.239 --> 01:03:03.099
when I was in the ninth grade and wanted some.
01:03:04.199 --> 01:03:07.769
I'd read about it in Life magazine. This terrifying
01:03:07.769 --> 01:03:09.849
drug, and hell, I never even thought to figure
01:03:09.849 --> 01:03:13.869
it out in my life, but I wanted some. And anyway,
01:03:14.670 --> 01:03:17.510
it finally came along. John Hopkins, a friend
01:03:17.510 --> 01:03:20.070
of mine who was being treated for his homosexuality
01:03:20.070 --> 01:03:22.789
with LSD, went, man, we can take his treatment
01:03:22.789 --> 01:03:25.750
as long as we could possibly push it. I need
01:03:25.750 --> 01:03:28.989
to bring it. And it was legal. It was the first
01:03:28.989 --> 01:03:31.849
three years I took it, it was legal. And from
01:03:31.849 --> 01:03:36.750
the very first time I took it, For once, I saw
01:03:36.750 --> 01:03:39.050
the world, you know, and I saw how malleable
01:03:39.050 --> 01:03:41.909
reality was. And when it was done, I sat and
01:03:41.909 --> 01:03:44.090
cried because I knew life could be this good.
01:03:44.170 --> 01:03:46.570
I knew there was more meaning there. It was more
01:03:46.570 --> 01:03:51.230
to be felt and lived and know and to be, you
01:03:51.230 --> 01:03:54.789
know. And so nothing was ever the same after
01:03:54.789 --> 01:03:57.750
that, but because I had applied myself, like
01:03:57.750 --> 01:04:00.170
so many other people, not because it was LSD.
01:04:00.650 --> 01:04:03.309
Same way with ayahuasca. Until very recently,
01:04:03.329 --> 01:04:06.619
I had a big... refrigerator full of it. I haven't
01:04:06.619 --> 01:04:09.400
taken it in years, but there seems to be a lot
01:04:09.400 --> 01:04:16.059
of interest in it. Anyway, the expansion of consciousness,
01:04:16.219 --> 01:04:20.000
you have to call it that, realizing how malleable
01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:23.380
and that reality is a consensus agreement between
01:04:23.380 --> 01:04:27.039
people. You could also agree on something else
01:04:27.039 --> 01:04:31.280
than capitalism and brutal commuting and murdering
01:04:31.280 --> 01:04:34.760
each other psychologically for jobs. It's possible
01:04:34.760 --> 01:04:37.300
that they agree on something else, and maybe
01:04:37.300 --> 01:04:39.599
that's why I like the third world in my later
01:04:39.599 --> 01:04:42.400
years is that they have agreed on something else.
01:04:43.440 --> 01:04:47.920
I personally think that it was one of the greatest
01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:51.599
threats to the system. I mean, my God, the Republicans
01:04:51.599 --> 01:04:55.019
spent, what was it, $30 million to things like
01:04:55.019 --> 01:04:59.139
the Heritage Foundation erasing the 60s. It was
01:04:59.139 --> 01:05:01.340
a terrible threat, you know, because here you
01:05:01.340 --> 01:05:05.150
had this generation. This baby boom post -war
01:05:05.150 --> 01:05:08.150
generation that was best fed, best educated,
01:05:08.409 --> 01:05:10.809
had every reason to be optimistic. I mean, we
01:05:10.809 --> 01:05:15.969
really believed we were going to win. Now, people
01:05:15.969 --> 01:05:18.510
were told today that we were naive and it was
01:05:18.510 --> 01:05:21.170
all just bell bottoms, pot smoke, beads. Well,
01:05:21.190 --> 01:05:25.570
that's just not so. There was a core of very
01:05:25.570 --> 01:05:29.070
dedicated people who essentially, you have to
01:05:29.070 --> 01:05:32.750
call it spiritual, But anyway, that generation
01:05:32.750 --> 01:05:37.929
was very well equipped. And so the tide of optimism
01:05:37.929 --> 01:05:41.730
was just huge. It wasn't all the war in Vietnam.
01:05:41.769 --> 01:05:45.769
The war in Vietnam was like the war now. But
01:05:45.769 --> 01:05:49.730
it wasn't the catalyst. Everybody wants to politicize
01:05:49.730 --> 01:05:52.630
everything. Yes, yes, yes, yes. There were demonstrations.
01:05:53.050 --> 01:05:56.710
Yes, yes. But the main thing going on was...
01:05:56.889 --> 01:05:58.969
that a generation was becoming consciousness
01:05:58.969 --> 01:06:02.590
mutants, and in a good way, believing an optimistic,
01:06:02.690 --> 01:06:06.110
hopeful message of creativity, love, and peace
01:06:06.110 --> 01:06:10.150
that was a direct threat to the military -industrial
01:06:10.150 --> 01:06:13.050
complex, you know, that was built up particularly
01:06:13.050 --> 01:06:18.409
during World War II. And finally, this was an
01:06:18.409 --> 01:06:20.889
interview that I conducted with both Daniel Pinchbeck
01:06:20.889 --> 01:06:25.010
and Dimitri Orlov. It is from an unnumbered episode
01:06:25.010 --> 01:06:28.190
of the Sea Realm podcast. This is a special Reinventing
01:06:28.190 --> 01:06:31.190
Reality Sea Realm episode, but it is from September
01:06:31.190 --> 01:06:35.570
26th, 2008. Again, the guests are Daniel Pinchbeck
01:06:35.570 --> 01:06:39.090
and Dmitry Orlov. Personally, I feel like probably
01:06:39.090 --> 01:06:41.650
a lot of people at the moment are in this interesting
01:06:41.650 --> 01:06:44.409
paradox where on the one hand I feel anxiety,
01:06:44.809 --> 01:06:48.849
fear, concern that the food supply will go down
01:06:48.849 --> 01:06:51.050
and all that kind of stuff as the financial system
01:06:51.050 --> 01:06:53.639
melts down. On the other hand, I kind of feel
01:06:53.639 --> 01:06:56.420
like popping the champagne cork because, you
01:06:56.420 --> 01:06:58.940
know, I've always hated the Wall Street system
01:06:58.940 --> 01:07:01.739
and, you know, have felt this incredible manipulation
01:07:01.739 --> 01:07:04.699
of artificial value, you know, kind of sucking
01:07:04.699 --> 01:07:08.559
off the, you know, the energy and the life energy
01:07:08.559 --> 01:07:11.760
from the middle class and the, you know, third
01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:14.079
world countries around the world. And the idea
01:07:14.079 --> 01:07:16.320
that that whole system, you know, is now in a
01:07:16.320 --> 01:07:20.489
paraxism. I think, you know, is kind of an exciting
01:07:20.489 --> 01:07:25.690
one. And, you know, so I do think that there's
01:07:25.690 --> 01:07:28.630
obviously the potential for things to become
01:07:28.630 --> 01:07:32.030
very chaotic and dislocated and dangerous and
01:07:32.030 --> 01:07:35.610
for the kind of depressing decline that Dimitri
01:07:35.610 --> 01:07:38.429
outlines to happen. But I also think that there's
01:07:38.429 --> 01:07:41.030
a whole other possibility or set of possibilities
01:07:41.030 --> 01:07:46.079
or set of prospects that are much more... positive
01:07:46.079 --> 01:07:48.699
and much more empowering and equally plausible.
01:07:49.179 --> 01:07:53.860
Even with the stresses on the ecology, we're
01:07:53.860 --> 01:07:58.679
still kind of in a world where we could provide
01:07:58.679 --> 01:08:02.400
for everybody. I mean, if we were to really investigate
01:08:02.400 --> 01:08:04.900
intensive permaculture practices, scale down
01:08:04.900 --> 01:08:07.940
waste of resources, really think about the whole
01:08:07.940 --> 01:08:12.090
planet as a single unified system. we potentially
01:08:12.090 --> 01:08:15.010
could make tremendous progress. So I still feel
01:08:15.010 --> 01:08:19.609
that basically the barrier to a kind of positive
01:08:19.609 --> 01:08:23.170
transformation of human society is our limits
01:08:23.170 --> 01:08:25.670
in our consciousness and our kind of projections
01:08:25.670 --> 01:08:29.289
of shadow and negativity of the system. Yeah,
01:08:29.289 --> 01:08:33.789
well, I don't really have any problem with trying
01:08:33.789 --> 01:08:37.649
these. more optimistic approaches. As far as
01:08:37.649 --> 01:08:39.710
changing the direction of society, we have to
01:08:39.710 --> 01:08:42.829
keep in mind that rational approaches like Buckminster
01:08:42.829 --> 01:08:45.930
Fuller's are almost beside the point because
01:08:45.930 --> 01:08:50.310
we're dealing with an atavistic sort of very
01:08:50.310 --> 01:08:55.109
emotional species that dwells mostly in the realm
01:08:55.109 --> 01:08:59.649
of images as opposed to any sort of rational
01:08:59.649 --> 01:09:02.039
thought. You know, that's why everybody insists
01:09:02.039 --> 01:09:04.420
on having flush toilets and driving cars that
01:09:04.420 --> 01:09:06.939
have four wheels instead of three. You know,
01:09:06.979 --> 01:09:09.239
because that's an image that's embedded in the
01:09:09.239 --> 01:09:11.840
psyche and nothing will dislodge it. You know,
01:09:11.840 --> 01:09:13.779
going back to what Daniel said about the collapse
01:09:13.779 --> 01:09:15.619
of Wall Street, I don't think that it will be
01:09:15.619 --> 01:09:18.479
replaced with anything better. This is basically
01:09:18.479 --> 01:09:21.520
a transfer of wealth to foreigners that will
01:09:21.520 --> 01:09:24.399
be ongoing for quite a while now. And I don't
01:09:24.399 --> 01:09:26.859
think that they'll be nicer to us than we have
01:09:26.859 --> 01:09:29.000
been to ourselves. That would be wishful thinking.
01:09:29.710 --> 01:09:33.829
the basic fundamental way money has been sort
01:09:33.829 --> 01:09:37.890
of constructed. has a deep flaw in that. We created
01:09:37.890 --> 01:09:39.810
the system that's basically debt -based. You
01:09:39.810 --> 01:09:43.109
go to the bank, they check your credit rating
01:09:43.109 --> 01:09:45.670
to see if you can compete aggressively in our
01:09:45.670 --> 01:09:48.390
contemporary society, and then they loan you
01:09:48.390 --> 01:09:50.569
a certain amount of money, but they don't create
01:09:50.569 --> 01:09:52.270
the extra money and interest that you have to
01:09:52.270 --> 01:09:54.010
bring back. So then you have to go into society
01:09:54.010 --> 01:09:56.149
and compete with everybody else in the society
01:09:56.149 --> 01:09:59.149
to bring back that interest, that extra money.
01:09:59.869 --> 01:10:02.989
So that creates a situation where there's this
01:10:02.989 --> 01:10:05.789
constantly expanding bubble of debt. And it also
01:10:05.789 --> 01:10:09.170
creates a mentality of artificial scarcity. And
01:10:09.170 --> 01:10:12.989
I think what's happening now is that the debt
01:10:12.989 --> 01:10:14.890
-based expansion, which is at the basis of the
01:10:14.890 --> 01:10:18.649
capitalist system, is no longer able to function.
01:10:19.130 --> 01:10:21.510
And the reasons for that are, I think, twofold.
01:10:21.569 --> 01:10:24.250
One is that we've seen a globalization of the
01:10:24.250 --> 01:10:27.529
marketplace. earlier analyses of capitalism,
01:10:27.590 --> 01:10:29.369
including like Lenin's and Marx's and so on,
01:10:29.449 --> 01:10:31.729
you know, it requires constant expansion and
01:10:31.729 --> 01:10:34.489
penetration into new markets to survive. And
01:10:34.489 --> 01:10:37.050
so that's reached its limit. And one answer to
01:10:37.050 --> 01:10:39.289
that was like Naomi Klein, the shock doctrine,
01:10:39.350 --> 01:10:41.829
talked about how they began to, you know, capitalists
01:10:41.829 --> 01:10:43.930
began almost like look forward to destruction,
01:10:44.310 --> 01:10:47.010
like hurricanes and terrorist attacks that allowed
01:10:47.010 --> 01:10:49.550
them to rebuild, you know, aspects of their own
01:10:49.550 --> 01:10:52.029
society as if they were new markets, you know,
01:10:52.050 --> 01:10:55.229
but that's really unsustainable. And then the
01:10:55.229 --> 01:10:57.829
other second piece of that is the decline in
01:10:57.829 --> 01:11:00.649
world energy production. So in a way, having
01:11:00.649 --> 01:11:05.430
a debt -fueled expansion model of economics is
01:11:05.430 --> 01:11:07.550
only going to work as there's an increasing abundance
01:11:07.550 --> 01:11:10.550
of cheap oil, cheap energy. And then now that
01:11:10.550 --> 01:11:12.909
that energy is no longer available, there's kind
01:11:12.909 --> 01:11:15.869
of a law of thermodynamics in effect, where the
01:11:15.869 --> 01:11:20.949
debt is just not going to be recoupable. So the
01:11:20.949 --> 01:11:23.229
entire debt -based structure of the system is
01:11:23.229 --> 01:11:27.069
now collapsing. But in a way, I think it's one
01:11:27.069 --> 01:11:28.829
of the best things that could possibly happen
01:11:28.829 --> 01:11:31.890
to us at the moment because, first of all, the
01:11:31.890 --> 01:11:35.090
post -industrial economy is literally destroying
01:11:35.090 --> 01:11:38.170
the ecosystems of the planet and immiserating
01:11:38.170 --> 01:11:43.310
vast populations. So for it to not be able to
01:11:43.310 --> 01:11:46.119
continue... would be a good thing. And for this
01:11:46.119 --> 01:11:48.539
to happen, you know, without, you know, nuclear
01:11:48.539 --> 01:11:52.159
war or, you know, martial law, you know, which,
01:11:52.239 --> 01:11:55.039
you know, it might be on the cards, but it seems
01:11:55.039 --> 01:11:58.399
to be happening in an almost kind of like sudden
01:11:58.399 --> 01:12:02.619
deflation of the whole, you know, hypertrophied
01:12:02.619 --> 01:12:05.680
enterprise. So I think there's a potential here
01:12:05.680 --> 01:12:10.880
for a new proposition of value to sort of enter
01:12:10.880 --> 01:12:14.529
the equation. You know, what I'd like to say
01:12:14.529 --> 01:12:16.970
to Daniel is that, you know, his optimism, I
01:12:16.970 --> 01:12:20.510
hope it's, you know, it's catchy because I'm
01:12:20.510 --> 01:12:23.970
really sick of people telling me that what I'm
01:12:23.970 --> 01:12:27.090
proposing is, you know, doom and gloom or anything
01:12:27.090 --> 01:12:31.430
like that. Because, you know, my point is that
01:12:31.430 --> 01:12:33.609
life goes on no matter what. You just have to
01:12:33.609 --> 01:12:36.170
adjust. You have to get rid of some preconceived
01:12:36.170 --> 01:12:38.609
notions, maybe endure some hardship. But, you
01:12:38.609 --> 01:12:40.750
know, that builds character in some people, at
01:12:40.750 --> 01:12:43.970
least. It's not the end of the world. So I think
01:12:43.970 --> 01:12:47.689
that, you know, I hope that his optimism is helpful.
01:12:48.510 --> 01:12:51.949
And, you know, I enjoyed listening to him and
01:12:51.949 --> 01:12:55.449
responding to him. So thank you, Kimmel. And
01:12:55.449 --> 01:13:04.149
I guess that's it. The last voice you heard there
01:13:04.149 --> 01:13:07.350
was Dmitry Orlov, speaking with me and Daniel
01:13:07.350 --> 01:13:11.159
Pinchbeck. When I decided to revisit this material,
01:13:11.359 --> 01:13:13.619
I expected to approach it mainly as a record
01:13:13.619 --> 01:13:16.720
of failed predictions. Back then, I was deeply
01:13:16.720 --> 01:13:20.439
invested, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally,
01:13:20.739 --> 01:13:23.060
in the idea of a rapid collapse of industrial
01:13:23.060 --> 01:13:26.960
civilization. Sitting here in 2026, with the
01:13:26.960 --> 01:13:29.119
grid still up, the internet still humming, and
01:13:29.119 --> 01:13:32.140
AI embedding itself into everyday life, it is
01:13:32.140 --> 01:13:35.399
impossible not to look back critically on the
01:13:35.399 --> 01:13:38.399
expectations I promoted during that period. But...
01:13:38.720 --> 01:13:41.600
Listening again, I'm reminded that those conversations
01:13:41.600 --> 01:13:43.800
contained more than just failed predictions.
01:13:44.600 --> 01:13:47.800
Again and again, guests returned to a simple
01:13:47.800 --> 01:13:50.920
but profound point. Human flourishing does not
01:13:50.920 --> 01:13:53.659
actually require the scale of energy use, complexity,
01:13:53.859 --> 01:13:56.159
and systemic overhead that industrial society
01:13:56.159 --> 01:14:01.880
demands. Food, shelter, clothing, health, dignity,
01:14:02.260 --> 01:14:06.720
recognition, community. These are basic human
01:14:06.720 --> 01:14:09.710
goods. And we have built a civilization that
01:14:09.710 --> 01:14:12.270
burns staggering quantities of fossil fuel while
01:14:12.270 --> 01:14:15.149
frustrating our yearning to live meaningful lives.
01:14:15.989 --> 01:14:20.710
Feeding people is easy. Community is not thermodynamically
01:14:20.710 --> 01:14:23.810
expensive. Life in industrial society is more
01:14:23.810 --> 01:14:25.909
expensive than we can afford in the long term.
01:14:27.170 --> 01:14:29.310
There was a time when I wanted to build a small
01:14:29.310 --> 01:14:31.890
farmstead for myself and my family and live in
01:14:31.890 --> 01:14:33.550
community with people who shared that vision.
01:14:34.840 --> 01:14:37.539
I don't think preparing for collapse is a workable
01:14:37.539 --> 01:14:39.819
way to create the sort of world I want to live
01:14:39.819 --> 01:14:42.399
in, but I still think the impulse was motivated
01:14:42.399 --> 01:14:46.180
by something true. So, getting over collapse
01:14:46.180 --> 01:14:49.680
is not just an exercise in correcting bad predictions.
01:14:49.899 --> 01:14:52.699
It's also an attempt to recover what was valuable
01:14:52.699 --> 01:14:55.340
in that world. The civilizational criticism.
01:14:55.619 --> 01:14:58.659
The psychological insight. The intuition that
01:14:58.659 --> 01:15:01.920
a viable human life may require much less energy
01:15:01.920 --> 01:15:05.840
throughput. Then the system insists. If you want
01:15:05.840 --> 01:15:07.760
to follow that project, you can sign up for updates
01:15:07.760 --> 01:15:12.680
at crome .org. All right. That's all for now.
01:15:13.760 --> 01:15:14.340
Stay well.