I am 74 years old and I HAVE been "paying attention" for a long time. Nate Hagens presents the most cogent assessment of the present moment that I have heard. His good heart, big brain, and humanistic urgency are qualities that are sorely lacking from our world leaders AND the cognizance of most people.
I genuinely appreciate you three. I’ve been watching this accelerating train wreck since 1989. I cannot believe the rapidity of change I’ve seen. Thank you all for your frank rendering of the terrifying facts.
As my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, used to say...(paraphrasing),''We didn't come from outside of this world, we grew from within it." The earth is really an extension of our own bodies, but the problem, of course, is that we are so alienated from our roots, that we cannot feel it. As long as we feel separate, (from everything else, and each other), we cannot help but behave with fear and violence. Now what kind of a magic wand do we have to wave to change that?
So many conventions limit our ability to think logically, such as not using the correct concise word for many ideas, or an error in thought where we assume that only the limited subset of knowledge that is proven, exists. 😊 America using yards and inches instead of meters, or the bizarre irregularity of numbered months and days having nothing to do with the seasons or phase of the moon.
You know those stadium crushes? Or round my neck of the woods there was something called the station fire. That will be cheery in comparison to the next few years. I do believe things will settle themselves out relatively quickly. It will be a good 100k years before the biosphere recovers but it will recover, it's suffered worse,
I live on a dead end road in a rental house there is a park and a lake at the end of the road I think about all the heavy traffic running non stop day and night on this one road in a small rural town and it's just mind boggling how this kind of energy usage can continue
I've been standing on a major traffic bridge close to the port of Rotterdam, at that time still the largest of the world (in 15 years, it's now #5, even if it didn't get any smaller..) I had the same feeling on that bridge, how much carbon is being breathed out by all that shipping, driving and flying, knowing there's 100s of such ports around the world, plus all factory areas, agriculture, to plus plus plus. It can't just go on like that for even 50 years. My change ? I never take a flight, don't drive, home temp is 15c, don't eat meat for 5 days a week, ride a bike or travel public transport. Partake in street protest, I don't think useful. I do think writing the powers that be, CEO, bankers the lot might work if you do it in family/ neighborhood groups , on paper, not via the Web ( non physical don't impress those types, a mail truck full of letters might, it has worked for Amnesty International to free political opponents. If only knew how to set them wheels in motion...)
Thank you for your video and making us aware of the article "Economics for the future - Beyond the Superorganism (by N.J.Hagens)". I printed it out and read it over 2 days. There's a lot of important information there that I was not aware of about economics and finance and thinking about our whole system as a superorganism with a life of its own. I'm starting on a second time through because my head is overflowing with new information that I want to understand. Listening to your video a second time too in hopes of picking up key points to focus on. Thanks Regina, Paul and Peter! I really appreciate what you do.
In the seventies, a major book came out, well written and researched by many. "Energy for Survival," subtitled "An Alternative to Extinction." Wilson Clark was the amazing author, who died shortly after publication in a CIA like accident.
He was killed after swerving off the road while trying to avoid a deer and was ejected from his car. Darn those CIA agents and their remotely controlled deer!😂
Thanks for discussing these aspects of our predicament. Thanks to Paul Beckwith for the clarity of his final analysis. Although our destination is inevitable, how we get there still matters.
The well-being of the "whole" has never been the focus of anyone in power, be they priest, potentate or politician. That is why we, as a species, are in the mess we are in. We have naively and innocently relinquished our collective decision-making to the hands of individuals who have no concerns other than their own self-aggrandizement. Greed and power, NOT the common good, is their "lodestone". To expect that the accumulating momentum of that history-old dynamic will finally "find jeezus" is a noble yet ludicrous fantasy. I am afraid the We the People are "toast". I am beginning to wonder if that might not be a "good' thing. I am in utter awe of the ancient profundity and fecundity of the Earth itself. To imagine that she might spit us out like a piece of rancid meat has an element of "poetic justice", does it not? We have raped, ravaged and exploited her while convincing ourselves that we are the pinnacle of creation itself. The hubris! The arrogance!.
Spot on with one exception. As a species we’re instinctively driven by our own self interest. Not one of us will give up any advantage of our own for the greater good, simple human nature. As is the denial of any information that doesn’t conform with our core imperatives or beliefs. You cannot convince a parent that their child has no future. They will fight you to the death if need be just to shut you up. Possibly.. probably the nature of all life. Any species allowed to flourish unchecked will consume it’s own habitat to it’s own destruction. Self interest being a, if not the, necessary driver of survival instinct.
This year's El Nino, combined with the increase in solar activity, is going to provide a dramatic example of what happens when you inject a massive amount of energy into a system that has already been rapidly destabilizing for years with much less energy available due to the La Nina condition. I don't think there is really any way to anticipate what the results might be.
We're likely to get a tremendous slap in the face that you'd think almost everyone will finally notice and wake up to. Though knowing humanity we won't or we will and still not have it within us to take the serious needed actions.
I read Eric Fromm’s book “To Have or to Be” a long time ago. It has always stayed with me and what you all discussed today fits in very much with his ideas and philosophy about human nature and greed. I found your discussion extremely informative and hope that we can as a human race, start looking at how privileged we are to have so much and honour the Earth and reconnect. Thank you for your discussion.
Like cleaning a wound the truth can hurt a bit, but it is necessary. This is very good. The three of them give a good holistic view of our situation. It is time to enact a Basic Income to provide economic stability no matter what disasters occur and to allow our market to properly value our labor. 40% of everything we sell goes to waste Everything, food, clothes, utensils, cars, cups, butt plugs, everything Now while we may not convince them to end capitalism, we can probably convince them, that it would be in everyone's interest to end this waste. We need to ditch GDP as yardstick for our society. We need to start building for the harsher environment we will be facing.
With all due respect, I think Paul Beckwidth is understating this problem here. It's not just that we cannot continue to have expotential growth. It is that we need degrowth too. Further, the way the power is in the world, the vast majority of that degrowth (which really is death) is going to be in the third world because they lack the power to secure dwindling resources. All of this will affect first-world nations too, of course, but it will impact the global poor far more seriously in terms of loss of human life. My assumption is that this will lead to war, and I only hope that the nations that are experiencing this mass death don't initiate a nuclear war. Unfortunately, I suspect some will. For example roughly a quarter of Pakistanis (about 55 million people) are living below the poverty line, and much of the rest of the country isn't doing too well either. Pakistan has nuclear weaspons as does it neighbor India, which also has a massive population of poor. Do you really think that all those people will just roll over and die without fighting about something to survive? Of course not. And all it takes are a couple of nukes to initiate the end of days. THAT is what is at stake here, not just expotential growth. It's a dire and grim reality we are heading into, and there are no exists. There is no solution to every increasing environmental pressures with simulataneous resource dwindling. No amount of solar cells, wind power, or nuclear power (fission OR fusion) is going to save us either (in fact all electrical power only makes up about 20% of our fossil fuel use). I wish it weren't true, but it is.
It will be up to then political leaders to keep things in check, or not follow into conflict that already went nuclear. Biden has managed to keep nuclear out of the Ukraine conflict (likely in concert with China, that still has serious influence in Moscow) Things are not settled yet, so... However, China and USA are culturally very different. What's thought of as wise or powerful to do for s Western leader might not come across as such in China, and the other way round. Nevertheless, major powers really have to think twice than follow minor countries into nuclear. Can only hope/ pray on wisdom when things go to a head.
Thanks guys, you express my analysis of the situation, and confirm that I am not going mad or down a rabbit hole for the last twenty years. I had hoped at approaching 70 that I would not live to see the worst, and I won't but the rapid acceleration means I will see some of my fears realised and i will know with considerable certainty that worse is yet to come after my departure.
Energy availability and use is first a function of choice on the user's part. There is no limit to its availability, but your choice will determine its effects on you, your community and the world. Look at your choice as the most important/pivotal factor.
We had a real taste of how everything is linked to fossil fuel in our civilisation, south Africa has feced severe electric supply failure and it's hell, we can't grow food or work, pump sewerage, everything is just falling apart.
Really interesting comments by Paul on this (and everyone else as usual). But especially how agriculture grew up simultaneously around the world I always wondered why this was and it could have been simply that the climate suddenly allowed people to do this.
Twas climate, indeed, after the temps went up and ice retreated. There was a sudden come back of the freeze, younger Dryas, which set beck some early agro experimentations, but things went rolling after it really warmed up. It's just that some regions had the luck of better species that brought good, storable seeds, larger animals that could be tamed, fertile tillable soils . Africa was less lucky in this respect, as it's climate had been the benign for homo to survive and evolve during the ice ages, only to get too warm for comfort after, and more temperate Asia and Europe took over. I think it was Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari wrote great books about the story of man.
7:10 That should not be a problem unless creditors get really nasty enforcing their rights. Authorities can sort defaults and provide credit and liquidity as required. It's just accounts. They can be written off. If we're all struggling, noone should dream of using their savings to extract rents from others, no more than the basic assistance provided from current budget.
“Creation Care” is our way back home. Our Consumption Economy has run its course and a dark future looms. Let us now consider a permanent Restoration Economy to bring us back from the brink and create an abundant and verdant Planet. Another world is possible. Read Ministry for the Future and the funding mechanism of chapter 42.
I found permaculture had the design solution toolbox for creating a lifestyle from current sunlight again. But there no uptake with ethical design science at the scale we actually need.
I agree, and think it would be so extraordinarily exciting to a young design minded brain to be studying at university civil engineering level how to build nature sustainably into our current infrastructure (ie how to assist flooding and drought to not damage roads and waterways etc) and then move it toward an evolved permaculture civilization. So much more life and beauty and wonder for next generations.
You can acknowledge the insidious influence that the advertising industry has over people's consumption. Do you believe that those same techniques are not used by our government and politicians to influence the beliefs of the citizenry? They rely on the very same techniques and encourage unexamined "thinking" and the acquiescence to propaganda.
Note sure I'm tracking w the title... as all predators are organisms, the false dichotomy doesn't seem very useful. "The sueperorgaism is predatory" or "The sueperorgaism is in a predatory mode" doesn't seem to take away from the usefulness of the predation analogy.
Does anyone have any ideas about what can be done with all the disposable diapers that my neighbours have been putting into the landfill over the past 4 years? To be fair, it isn't only them, entire isles are now dedicated to single-use, petroleum-based products such as these. There are now even athlete and adult versions of these capitalistic creations.
Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan - describes the concept of the concentric brain model. Three layers of the human brain comprising of: The primary brain being the brain stem (chordata) and *Reptillian Cortex* - evolving during the reptillian phase of evolution and controlling instinct, territory, foraging and predation. Animal stage: early fish, reptiles and pre-avian dinosaurs. Brain surface: smooth - no convolutions. Surrounding that is the *Limbic Cortex* - Nurturing, social cohesion and communication, cooperation. Animal stage, small mammals, early primates. Brain surface: rippled - minimal convolutions. The outer layer of the brain - *Neo-Cortex* - High order cognitive function - emotions, imagination, advanced planning, cooperation, artisitic ability, language, use of tools. Animal stage: Large vertebrates, cetaceans, cephalapods, primates, modern humans; the brain mass to body weight ratio and extent of brain surface folding (convolutions) being indicative of high intelligence. Though somehow - Homo colossus failed to get the memo on 'brain folding = intelligence'...
I love the way people point out the global debt and are amazed, but no one ever says "but who is the debt owed to?" Unless it's aliens, then it must be other humans. right? Can we name names and also ask who were the incompetent folks who are/were shit at home economics?
An authentic piece of Art this one, brilliant the least. " Para nuestra necesidad lo poco es mucho, más para nuestro deseo lo mucho es poco", " for our needs few is a lot, while for our wishes a lot is too little". Anyway, about Paul Beckwith comment on agriculture starting simultaneusly at 7 locations on earth " ....is this not quite amazing? One could infere something happened that we have not being told about.
Nice saying. I infer from what I've been learning that humanity has done this cyclical apocalypse dance a time or 2wo before. Billionaires and military, guv bunker people will be the next advanced civilization atlanteans (prolly New Zealand) who spread knowledge. There might be enough time left to build orbiting space pods for some people to also survive in for a while (Bezos, Musk, Branson, etc and Co.) They would seem like gods to any humans left behind for several hundred or thousands of years on a ravaged earth. Space survivors fight with the Earth survivors. Wash, wear, and repeat.
wow! I haven't yet watched but have it in queue. There's a lot to dig into. This bit from the description especially caught my attention - "the global debt now is almost 300 trillion dollars having grown in the past year or two over 300 percent funding a 30 percent rise in global GDP."
This is absolutely nuts. I actually came upon the idea of a superorganism through a bit of introspection after reading Eric T. Olsen's The Human Animal and extrapolating a bit from there. It sure makes my confirmation bias glad that I'm not inventing a fantasy world in my head since others are coming to the same conclusion from an Economics angle rather than my untrained and biased philosophical one.
Hydrogen and electricity are the new combination to take us well into the future, to replace Promethean systems. Human society gets a fresh start, with the realization of the hydrogen economy.
Yep, money is the invention that allows us to function with the mental disconnect from earth. If you point out to someone that everything comes from the earth, they'll say, yeah, of course, but still operate in oblivion because the true nature of our survival has been so thoroughly removed from so many for so long. Some get it. Most don't.
A lot to unpack here. I will write a short essay and post here later 2day. Key points that i think need attention: 1.) Happiness is relative to desire. What do we desire? Is this a natural desire (such as food or sex) or a learned behavior ("Introducing the NEW, Lincoln Town Car: power AND performance in a smoooooth and luxury ride... who cares if your kids are going to die in a nuclear war... you didn't want kids anyway.... buy this gas-guzzling climate killer and celebrate the fact that you have arrived... luxury because YOU deserve it!") 2.) "Energy" is directly proportional to "mass" (E=MC^2) which is relative to volume/density- not carbon content. Water is denser than oil (oil floats on water), and therefore an equal volume of water contains more energy for industrial use ("horsepower") than oil, gallon for gallon, or apples to apples. 3.) Energy science has been obfuscated, hidden/occulted, suppressed (deliberately not taught) or out-right LIED about- even more so than all of the lies about global warming, or the foolish cover-ups about water AND evidence of alien life on other planets. For example: mainstream media is now discussing the reality of UFO's ("UAP")- but nobody is talking about the fact that these critters (who out-perform our best fighter jets) are NOT using oil or gasoline for "energy". 4.) In addition to losing their empathy and understanding of their fellow humans, it seems that too much money also destroys the billionaire's capacity to use logic, reason, scientific methods, or do any rational thinking related to "strategic planning"- especially with regard to securing a safe and healthy future for themselves and their own, God-damned children- such as "Greta".
I found your panel discussions fairly recently and love them. You don't sugarcoat things and don't cave into complete nihilism either. Without the advent of syn fertilizer, it's estimated that a billion people would have starved to death mid 20th century. Syn ferts and the world order provided by the American Navy have allowed oil to feed and grow the population to 8 billion. There is absolutely nothing that can replace what oil has done for us in any meaningful way. The world order the USA has provided is going away. We are pulling back and it will plunge a large part of the world into preindustrial levels of existence with at best very unstable energy and agricultural resources. Please take a hard look at Peter Zeihan's work and others concerning the looming demographic collapse and destabilizing world trade systems.
The feared big one - nope, won't be thee total die off, rather, it'll be like how man always has "dealt" with crises, to adapt while you go. Harmonic life of native peoples or old age "primeval" man, forget that romantic BS. Like in ancient times, at some point, the Megafauna became scarce, and with it went the rather generous lifestyle - one mammoth or ancient Ozzie beast could feed a family / small tribe for a quite some time , dry the meat for keeping and take it with you. When the mammoths went, they had to learn different, more balanced ways. Like in northern Asia and Europe, the tribes learnt to herder reindeer, and the American and Aborigines to refrain from overhunting It was like that when white men arrived in America, shooting like wild on a perceived abundance of mammals, which American natives had learnt to not take too much. It happened on Easter island, in another way to the Maya, to the Asean Harappan culture, in quite a different way again, to the overstetch of the Djzengis Kahn Empire - which took too many neighbor cities until distance over stretched even their efficiënt horseback transport Some of these cultures vanished completely, others like American, Australian / Pacific natives got sidelined and oppressed. Wiped out nearly completely, in Latin America. But some folks have always survived, by luck, by resilience, skills, inventivity. That's going to happen again after our final overshoot, and whoever wishes to be on the survival side, better come prepared and be lucky with your choice of living area, so that few robber armies may pass thru. I'd go for isolation, by mountains or seas, but not in popular spots like NZ. And I would know how to farm, hunt, make tools and clothing, and keep a balanced Community, as it's impossible to do this on one's own. Luckily I'm over 60 and chances are it will happen only mid 30s or later. I might just live it out :) (Before 2030 ? Nope, there's loads of coal still, oil and gas will become critical, but renewables aren't yet limited by raw material resource scarcity. Plus, I would hope, but can't believe that climate policy really take hold and help to control economic / environmental overshoot . There be some financial crises, but it'll still be fixed most inventrively* as long as there's enough energy supply to back it all up. *Read up on the role of "coco" convertible bonds" in the latest Credit Suisse crisis. They got away with this trick for 14 years, and they surely will come up with such "solutions" again
Exceptional podcast as it gets to the raw truth without painting a rose like picture of the future. Yes, we must do all we can to slow the bleeding but we are facing real doom. Unfortunately, the Human primate is not quite intelligent enough to succeed. imo.
I am surprised by the naivete of these three people. Where have they been for the last 60 years? Hagens' insights are not new. He is mostly aggregating what has been around for 30 years in the peak oil community. Yes we are going to have a crash in the economy. Yes it is going to be painful. Prepare yourself and help as many of your neighbors as you can. I grow food and give it away. There are plenty of things YOU can do.
@johnbell9069 I for one do not see collapse as a bad thing. I see it as an opportunity for the survivors ( if any ) to learn the lesson that we must respect Nature.
And the hunter-gatherers somehow lifted and perfectly fitted granite stones into monolithic era miracles of engineering with crude stone tools? Academic "Science" is both hilarious and at the same time so terribly sad and amnesiac.
I am 74 years old and I HAVE been "paying attention" for a long time. Nate Hagens presents the most cogent assessment of the present moment that I have heard. His good heart, big brain, and humanistic urgency are qualities that are sorely lacking from our world leaders AND the cognizance of most people.
Treefog thanks for the reading .
I genuinely appreciate you three. I’ve been watching this accelerating train wreck since 1989. I cannot believe the rapidity of change I’ve seen. Thank you all for your frank rendering of the terrifying facts.
Thanks so much for your support!
As my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, used to say...(paraphrasing),''We didn't come from outside of this world, we grew from within it." The earth is really an extension of our own bodies, but the problem, of course, is that we are so alienated from our roots, that we cannot feel it. As long as we feel separate, (from everything else, and each other), we cannot help but behave with fear and violence.
Now what kind of a magic wand do we have to wave to change that?
So many conventions limit our ability to think logically, such as not using the correct concise word for many ideas, or an error in thought where we assume that only the limited subset of knowledge that is proven, exists. 😊 America using yards and inches instead of meters, or the bizarre irregularity of numbered months and days having nothing to do with the seasons or phase of the moon.
The answer is revolution, demolishing our parasitic social system
Thank you so much for this conversation. Real and with grace. Thank you I need to hear this.
Thank you so much for your support.
The fallacy with our monetary social construct is that we do not fairly include the actual caloric value of work or waste into its worth.
Paul is likely right that it won’t be a managed transition to degrowth. It’ll be a miserable, unequal recession, depression and total collapse.
Famine, starvation, migration . . . 🥺
While the wealthy use their preexisting position of power to secure all remaining resources for themselves alone.
You know those stadium crushes? Or round my neck of the woods there was something called the station fire. That will be cheery in comparison to the next few years. I do believe things will settle themselves out relatively quickly. It will be a good 100k years before the biosphere recovers but it will recover, it's suffered worse,
This is why capitalism needs to die
Good show!
I live on a dead end road in a rental house there is a park and a lake at the end of the road I think about all the heavy traffic running non stop day and night on this one road in a small rural town and it's just mind boggling how this kind of energy usage can continue
Why don't you be the first to genuinely set the example
I've been standing on a major traffic bridge close to the port of Rotterdam, at that time still the largest of the world (in 15 years, it's now #5, even if it didn't get any smaller..)
I had the same feeling on that bridge, how much carbon is being breathed out by all that shipping, driving and flying, knowing there's 100s of such ports around the world, plus all factory areas, agriculture, to plus plus plus. It can't just go on like that for even 50 years.
My change ? I never take a flight, don't drive, home temp is 15c, don't eat meat for 5 days a week, ride a bike or travel public transport. Partake in street protest, I don't think useful. I do think writing the powers that be, CEO, bankers the lot might work if you do it in family/ neighborhood groups , on paper, not via the Web ( non physical don't impress those types, a mail truck full of letters might, it has worked for Amnesty International to free political opponents. If only knew how to set them wheels in motion...)
Thank you for your video and making us aware of the article "Economics for the future - Beyond the Superorganism (by N.J.Hagens)". I printed it out and read it over 2 days. There's a lot of important information there that I was not aware of about economics and finance and thinking about our whole system as a superorganism with a life of its own. I'm starting on a second time through because my head is overflowing with new information that I want to understand. Listening to your video a second time too in hopes of picking up key points to focus on. Thanks Regina, Paul and Peter! I really appreciate what you do.
Nate has bern very influential to me...thanks for platforming him.
In the seventies, a major book came out, well written and researched by many. "Energy for Survival," subtitled "An Alternative to Extinction." Wilson Clark was the amazing author, who died shortly after publication in a CIA like accident.
😳💀
He was killed after swerving off the road while trying to avoid a deer and was ejected from his car. Darn those CIA agents and their remotely controlled deer!😂
@@Patrick_Ross you were there?
Ah shot himself in the chest aye?
Thanks for discussing these aspects of our predicament. Thanks to Paul Beckwith for the clarity of his final analysis. Although our destination is inevitable, how we get there still matters.
The well-being of the "whole" has never been the focus of anyone in power, be they priest, potentate or politician. That is why we, as a species, are in the mess we are in. We have naively and innocently relinquished our collective decision-making to the hands of individuals who have no concerns other than their own self-aggrandizement. Greed and power, NOT the common good, is their "lodestone". To expect that the accumulating momentum of that history-old dynamic will finally "find jeezus" is a noble yet ludicrous fantasy. I am afraid the We the People are "toast". I am beginning to wonder if that might not be a "good' thing. I am in utter awe of the ancient profundity and fecundity of the Earth itself. To imagine that she might spit us out like a piece of rancid meat has an element of "poetic justice", does it not? We have raped, ravaged and exploited her while convincing ourselves that we are the pinnacle of creation itself. The hubris! The arrogance!.
Wish I had said that.
Well done.
Spot on with one exception. As a species we’re instinctively driven by our own self interest. Not one of us will give up any advantage of our own for the greater good, simple human nature. As is the denial of any information that doesn’t conform with our core imperatives or beliefs.
You cannot convince a parent that their child has no future. They will fight you to the death if need be just to shut you up.
Possibly.. probably the nature of all life. Any species allowed to flourish unchecked will consume it’s own habitat to it’s own destruction. Self interest being a, if not the, necessary driver of survival instinct.
"Pinnacle of creation" you say.
Did the Creator not give us dominance over the earth and all upon it?
Or was that a Freudian slip in your narrative?
…illusion of dominance. We are not other than Nature so we are never “over” it.
This year's El Nino, combined with the increase in solar activity, is going to provide a dramatic example of what happens when you inject a massive amount of energy into a system that has already been rapidly destabilizing for years with much less energy available due to the La Nina condition. I don't think there is really any way to anticipate what the results might be.
We're likely to get a tremendous slap in the face that you'd think almost everyone will finally notice and wake up to.
Though knowing humanity we won't or we will and still not have it within us to take the serious needed actions.
I’m terrified at the rapidity of change I’m seeing, but I’m willing to bet even I will be surprised.
Don't forget the poles are shifting. If you really want to worry read up on pole shifting in the near future 😂
I've been watching Nate Hagens for the past year. Such a brilliant chanel.
I read Eric Fromm’s book “To Have or to Be” a long time ago. It has always stayed with me and what you all discussed today fits in very much with his ideas and philosophy about human nature and greed. I found your discussion extremely informative and hope that we can as a human race, start looking at how privileged we are to have so much and honour the Earth and reconnect. Thank you for your discussion.
Thank-you and you're welcome.
Like cleaning a wound the truth can hurt a bit, but it is necessary.
This is very good. The three of them give a good holistic view of our situation.
It is time to enact a Basic Income to provide economic stability no matter what disasters occur and to allow our market to properly value our labor.
40% of everything we sell goes to waste
Everything, food, clothes, utensils, cars, cups, butt plugs, everything
Now while we may not convince them to end capitalism, we can probably convince them, that it would be in everyone's interest to end this waste.
We need to ditch GDP as yardstick for our society.
We need to start building for the harsher environment we will be facing.
With all due respect, I think Paul Beckwidth is understating this problem here. It's not just that we cannot continue to have expotential growth. It is that we need degrowth too. Further, the way the power is in the world, the vast majority of that degrowth (which really is death) is going to be in the third world because they lack the power to secure dwindling resources. All of this will affect first-world nations too, of course, but it will impact the global poor far more seriously in terms of loss of human life. My assumption is that this will lead to war, and I only hope that the nations that are experiencing this mass death don't initiate a nuclear war. Unfortunately, I suspect some will.
For example roughly a quarter of Pakistanis (about 55 million people) are living below the poverty line, and much of the rest of the country isn't doing too well either. Pakistan has nuclear weaspons as does it neighbor India, which also has a massive population of poor. Do you really think that all those people will just roll over and die without fighting about something to survive? Of course not. And all it takes are a couple of nukes to initiate the end of days. THAT is what is at stake here, not just expotential growth. It's a dire and grim reality we are heading into, and there are no exists. There is no solution to every increasing environmental pressures with simulataneous resource dwindling. No amount of solar cells, wind power, or nuclear power (fission OR fusion) is going to save us either (in fact all electrical power only makes up about 20% of our fossil fuel use). I wish it weren't true, but it is.
It will be up to then political leaders to keep things in check, or not follow into conflict that already went nuclear. Biden has managed to keep nuclear out of the Ukraine conflict (likely in concert with China, that still has serious influence in Moscow) Things are not settled yet, so...
However, China and USA are culturally very different. What's thought of as wise or powerful to do for s Western leader might not come across as such in China, and the other way round.
Nevertheless, major powers really have to think twice than follow minor countries into nuclear. Can only hope/ pray on wisdom when things go to a head.
Thanks guys, you express my analysis of the situation, and confirm that I am not going mad or down a rabbit hole for the last twenty years. I had hoped at approaching 70 that I would not live to see the worst, and I won't but the rapid acceleration means I will see some of my fears realised and i will know with considerable certainty that worse is yet to come after my departure.
Energy availability and use is first a function of choice on the user's part. There is no limit to its availability, but your choice will determine its effects on you, your community and the world. Look at your choice as the most important/pivotal factor.
We had a real taste of how everything is linked to fossil fuel in our civilisation, south Africa has feced severe electric supply failure and it's hell, we can't grow food or work, pump sewerage, everything is just falling apart.
We (I talk about pampered people, like myself in countries like Australia), have very little idea of what we take for granted..but we will find out..
How is the water situation?
Really interesting comments by Paul on this (and everyone else as usual). But especially how agriculture grew up simultaneously around the world I always wondered why this was and it could have been simply that the climate suddenly allowed people to do this.
Twas climate, indeed, after the temps went up and ice retreated. There was a sudden come back of the freeze, younger Dryas, which set beck some early agro experimentations, but things went rolling after it really warmed up. It's just that some regions had the luck of better species that brought good, storable seeds, larger animals that could be tamed, fertile tillable soils . Africa was less lucky in this respect, as it's climate had been the benign for homo to survive and evolve during the ice ages, only to get too warm for comfort after, and more temperate Asia and Europe took over. I think it was Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari wrote great books about the story of man.
There is never a moment in our lives when the limbic system is not controlling what we do.
read Jeremy Walker's book on ecology and energy via entropy
7:10 That should not be a problem unless creditors get really nasty enforcing their rights. Authorities can sort defaults and provide credit and liquidity as required. It's just accounts. They can be written off. If we're all struggling, noone should dream of using their savings to extract rents from others, no more than the basic assistance provided from current budget.
“Creation Care” is our way back home. Our Consumption Economy has run its course and a dark future looms. Let us now consider a permanent Restoration Economy to bring us back from the brink and create an abundant and verdant Planet. Another world is possible. Read Ministry for the Future and the funding mechanism of chapter 42.
I found permaculture had the design solution toolbox for creating a lifestyle from current sunlight again. But there no uptake with ethical design science at the scale we actually need.
I agree, and think it would be so extraordinarily exciting to a young design minded brain to be studying at university civil engineering level how to build nature sustainably into our current infrastructure (ie how to assist flooding and drought to not damage roads and waterways etc) and then move it toward an evolved permaculture civilization. So much more life and beauty and wonder for next generations.
You can acknowledge the insidious influence that the advertising industry has over people's consumption. Do you believe that those same techniques are not used by our government and politicians to influence the beliefs of the citizenry? They rely on the very same techniques and encourage unexamined "thinking" and the acquiescence to propaganda.
Note sure I'm tracking w the title... as all predators are organisms, the false dichotomy doesn't seem very useful. "The sueperorgaism is predatory" or "The sueperorgaism is in a predatory mode" doesn't seem to take away from the usefulness of the predation analogy.
Live in a business repair truck near work. Drive only when necessary.
Coming on the heels of a John Mohawk talk makes this all the more powerful!
Does anyone have any ideas about what can be done with all the disposable diapers that my neighbours have been putting into the landfill over the past 4 years? To be fair, it isn't only them, entire isles are now dedicated to single-use, petroleum-based products such as these. There are now even athlete and adult versions of these capitalistic creations.
I agree. They are terrible! Without them, Trump would be president! 💩 🥔
You’ll probably need them at some point.
Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan - describes the concept of the concentric brain model. Three layers of the human brain comprising of:
The primary brain being the brain stem (chordata) and *Reptillian Cortex* - evolving during the reptillian phase of evolution and controlling instinct, territory, foraging and predation. Animal stage: early fish, reptiles and pre-avian dinosaurs. Brain surface: smooth - no convolutions.
Surrounding that is the *Limbic Cortex* - Nurturing, social cohesion and communication, cooperation. Animal stage, small mammals, early primates. Brain surface: rippled - minimal convolutions.
The outer layer of the brain - *Neo-Cortex* - High order cognitive function - emotions, imagination, advanced planning, cooperation, artisitic ability, language, use of tools. Animal stage: Large vertebrates, cetaceans, cephalapods, primates, modern humans; the brain mass to body weight ratio and extent of brain surface folding (convolutions) being indicative of high intelligence.
Though somehow - Homo colossus failed to get the memo on 'brain folding = intelligence'...
Nobody will be giving up anything it will be taken from us
I'm sure you have all studied the Hopi Prophecy, Earth Changes readings by Edgar Cayce and have read The Uninhabitable Earth
I love the way people point out the global debt and are amazed, but no one ever says "but who is the debt owed to?" Unless it's aliens, then it must be other humans. right? Can we name names and also ask who were the incompetent folks who are/were shit at home economics?
An authentic piece of Art this one, brilliant the least.
" Para nuestra necesidad lo poco es mucho, más para nuestro deseo lo mucho es poco", " for our needs few is a lot, while for our wishes a lot is too little". Anyway, about Paul Beckwith comment on agriculture starting simultaneusly at 7 locations on earth " ....is this not quite amazing? One could infere something happened that we have not being told about.
Nice saying.
I infer from what I've been learning that humanity has done this cyclical apocalypse dance a time or 2wo before. Billionaires and military, guv bunker people will be the next advanced civilization atlanteans (prolly New Zealand) who spread knowledge. There might be enough time left to build orbiting space pods for some people to also survive in for a while (Bezos, Musk, Branson, etc and Co.) They would seem like gods to any humans left behind for several hundred or thousands of years on a ravaged earth. Space survivors fight with the Earth survivors. Wash, wear, and repeat.
wow! I haven't yet watched but have it in queue. There's a lot to dig into. This bit from the description especially caught my attention - "the global debt now is almost 300 trillion dollars having grown in the past year or two over 300 percent funding a 30 percent rise in global GDP."
High inflation devalues debt, you dont pay it off, but it becomes a smaller claim on resources due to inflation. Insane numbers though.
Please, dear❤ Regina Valdez, start a voting on your channel: if people agree the life on the planet is doomed😢🌏🌍🌎🌹🥀
There’s no plan it B. Everything is not fine.
FEW food energy water. Without
it nothing happens. It’s not for the few.
Thank you for the program.
This is absolutely nuts. I actually came upon the idea of a superorganism through a bit of introspection after reading Eric T. Olsen's The Human Animal and extrapolating a bit from there. It sure makes my confirmation bias glad that I'm not inventing a fantasy world in my head since others are coming to the same conclusion from an Economics angle rather than my untrained and biased philosophical one.
Watching this as I watch all the hundreds of Hugh trucks and suvs pulling campers and boats up and down the road to the lake😂😂
Crisis of overproduction, overconsumption, over littering. Produce less. 😢
merci beaucoup
Vous êtes bienvenue. Merci infiniment pour votre soutien.
❤Please🙏 continue your important work, maybe people will repent😢
Hydrogen and electricity are the new combination to take us well into the future, to replace Promethean systems.
Human society gets a fresh start, with the realization of the hydrogen economy.
And if doesn't matter as long as confidence in the dollar bill remains high.
Can we use cars for 20 years? Yes. Can we use phones for 5 years? Yes. So why don't we? 😢
Seems it has taken a long time for you folks to find this all important research.
You folks? 🤨
Money grows on trees, in the oceans, and in the ground. Humans have turned the earth into money.
Yep, money is the invention that allows us to function with the mental disconnect from earth. If you point out to someone that everything comes from the earth, they'll say, yeah, of course, but still operate in oblivion because the true nature of our survival has been so thoroughly removed from so many for so long.
Some get it. Most don't.
A lot to unpack here. I will write a short essay and post here later 2day.
Key points that i think need attention:
1.) Happiness is relative to desire. What do we desire? Is this a natural desire (such as food or sex) or a learned behavior ("Introducing the NEW, Lincoln Town Car: power AND performance in a smoooooth and luxury ride... who cares if your kids are going to die in a nuclear war... you didn't want kids anyway.... buy this gas-guzzling climate killer and celebrate the fact that you have arrived... luxury because YOU deserve it!")
2.) "Energy" is directly proportional to "mass" (E=MC^2) which is relative to volume/density- not carbon content. Water is denser than oil (oil floats on water), and therefore an equal volume of water contains more energy for industrial use ("horsepower") than oil, gallon for gallon, or apples to apples.
3.) Energy science has been obfuscated, hidden/occulted, suppressed (deliberately not taught) or out-right LIED about- even more so than all of the lies about global warming, or the foolish cover-ups about water AND evidence of alien life on other planets. For example: mainstream media is now discussing the reality of UFO's ("UAP")- but nobody is talking about the fact that these critters (who out-perform our best fighter jets) are NOT using oil or gasoline for "energy".
4.) In addition to losing their empathy and understanding of their fellow humans, it seems that too much money also destroys the billionaire's capacity to use logic, reason, scientific methods, or do any rational thinking related to "strategic planning"- especially with regard to securing a safe and healthy future for themselves and their own, God-damned children- such as "Greta".
Greta is not damned, except inasmuch as we all are damned.
There's not enough gold n silver to back the amount of money printed that's y it had to go off the standard.
'Overshoot' is good book.
This system is effed
I found your panel discussions fairly recently and love them. You don't sugarcoat things and don't cave into complete nihilism either.
Without the advent of syn fertilizer, it's estimated that a billion people would have starved to death mid 20th century. Syn ferts and the world order provided by the American Navy have allowed oil to feed and grow the population to 8 billion. There is absolutely nothing that can replace what oil has done for us in any meaningful way. The world order the USA has provided is going away. We are pulling back and it will plunge a large part of the world into preindustrial levels of existence with at best very unstable energy and agricultural resources. Please take a hard look at Peter Zeihan's work and others concerning the looming demographic collapse and destabilizing world trade systems.
The feared big one - nope, won't be thee total die off, rather, it'll be like how man always has "dealt" with crises, to adapt while you go.
Harmonic life of native peoples or old age "primeval" man, forget that romantic BS. Like in ancient times, at some point, the Megafauna became scarce, and with it went the rather generous lifestyle - one mammoth or ancient Ozzie beast could feed a family / small tribe for a quite some time , dry the meat for keeping and take it with you. When the mammoths went, they had to learn different, more balanced ways. Like in northern Asia and Europe, the tribes learnt to herder reindeer, and the American and Aborigines to refrain from overhunting
It was like that when white men arrived in America, shooting like wild on a perceived abundance of mammals, which American natives had learnt to not take too much.
It happened on Easter island, in another way to the Maya, to the Asean Harappan culture, in quite a different way again, to the overstetch of the Djzengis Kahn Empire - which took too many neighbor cities until distance over stretched even their efficiënt horseback transport
Some of these cultures vanished completely, others like American, Australian / Pacific natives got sidelined and oppressed. Wiped out nearly completely, in Latin America.
But some folks have always survived, by luck, by resilience, skills, inventivity.
That's going to happen again after our final overshoot, and whoever wishes to be on the survival side, better come prepared and be lucky with your choice of living area, so that few robber armies may pass thru. I'd go for isolation, by mountains or seas, but not in popular spots like NZ. And I would know how to farm, hunt, make tools and clothing, and keep a balanced Community, as it's impossible to do this on one's own. Luckily I'm over 60 and chances are it will happen only mid 30s or later. I might just live it out :)
(Before 2030 ? Nope, there's loads of coal still, oil and gas will become critical, but renewables aren't yet limited by raw material resource scarcity.
Plus, I would hope, but can't believe that climate policy really take hold and help to control economic / environmental overshoot . There be some financial crises, but it'll still be fixed most inventrively* as long as there's enough energy supply to back it all up.
*Read up on the role of "coco" convertible bonds" in the latest Credit Suisse crisis. They got away with this trick for 14 years, and they surely will come up with such "solutions" again
Exceptional podcast as it gets to the raw truth without painting a rose like picture of the future. Yes, we must do all we can to slow the bleeding but we are facing real doom. Unfortunately, the Human primate is not quite intelligent enough to succeed. imo.
The Prophets of Chaos enter Ecstasy with the Eminence of the End of the World
I'd love to see the homes and cars you all own😂
Umm a ‘super predator’ is a ‘super organism’ ..?
The planet is super screwed
Supervirus
I am surprised by the naivete of these three people. Where have they been for the last 60 years? Hagens' insights are not new. He is mostly aggregating what has been around for 30 years in the peak oil community. Yes we are going to have a crash in the economy. Yes it is going to be painful. Prepare yourself and help as many of your neighbors as you can. I grow food and give it away. There are plenty of things YOU can do.
We have tô considerando not online El Nino but algo CH4, it is gling yonpush a outra 2 degrees
Not hard to get off oil if you get on sun, wind, and other sustainable energy
The aliens helpt us evolve 👽
less is more.
A birth lottery would lower our population humanely.
@johnbell9069 I for one do not see collapse as a bad thing. I see it as an opportunity for the survivors ( if any ) to learn the lesson that we must respect Nature.
And the hunter-gatherers somehow lifted and perfectly fitted granite stones into monolithic era miracles of engineering with crude stone tools?
Academic "Science" is both hilarious and at the same time so terribly sad and amnesiac.
And howmany children each of you produced
Sigh.